Practicing With the Dana Bowl
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By Stephen Sloan
About two years ago I was asked to hold up the dana bowl on Tuesday nights. Dana is the Sanskrit word for generosity. The dana bowl is where contributions for Aryaloka may be placed. While I was never told why I was chosen for this task, I accepted it as something I was trying to do to help out.
Generosity is an important concept
in Buddhism. It is said that when the
Buddha came to a new place, generosity
was the first practice he taught. One of
the most important considerations in
practicing generosity is the state of mind
of the giver. It can be very easy to give
for the wrong reason. Looking back I can
see that, initially, giving my time to hold
up the dana bowl may not have been for
the most skillful reasons. Perhaps I saw
standing up on Tuesday nights as some sort
of recognition of the depth of my Buddhist practice. There was more than just a little
bit of ego involved.
Of course ego can have its way of
sticking out a foot to trip us as we try to
follow the path of the Dharma. For while
I may have craved the recognition, I also
feared making myself look foolish in front
of the Tuesday night crowd. For the first
six months, I had a set script that I repeated
every week. This afforded me a bit of
protection, I wasn’t likely to slip up if I
said the same thing each week. It was one
of those screens that the ego sets up to keep
us apart from others.
One day someone parroted my speech
back to me, and I knew things would have
to change. It was time for me to come
out from behind the mask and practice
generosity with more skillful motivation. I
decided that I would try to offer something
back as part of each of my presentations
Tuesday nights. This would take the form
of some piece of dharma that I would read.
The transition wasn’t easy. At first, I
would write everything down and read it to
avoid the opportunity for slipping up. The
ego was still whispering in my ear: “What
are you doing?” As I went along, I realized
that reading the message wasn’t going far
enough. I had to learn to share myself, to
share my practice of generosity.
These days, I offer a short dharma
reading and frequently some reflection. I’m
working on opening my heart and really
connecting with the people I’m talking to.
I try to maintain compassion and increasing
metta as the motivations for my actions.
Mostly I’m grateful for the opportunity that my Tuesday night activities with the dana bowl offer me to work on my practice of generosity.