Jack: Mindfulness training allows you to bring dignity and wholehearted care to whatever you do. Martin Luther King described the spirit when he said, “If a man is called to sweep streets for a living, he should sweep like Michael Angelo painted, like Beethoven composed music, like Shakespeare wrote his poetry.” And as we've seen, the mindfulness and compassion that helps you be present for yourself also helps you connect more fully with others. When you feel connected to someone, your concern and generosity grows. Not as an onerous responsibility, or because you're supposed to be generous, but because with growing mindfulness and compassion, you feel a natural relatedness. You're sensitive to their happiness and struggles, and it's natural to help. As mother Teresa puts it, “You no longer draw your family circle too small.”

Generosity is not about saintly behavior, but simple human caring. Our way of being generous and serving doesn't mean just giving money, but offering time, concern, help, sympathetic support. The most successful manager in a software company and the aid cleaning hospital rooms with a spirit of good cheer both spread wellbeing wherever they go. A growing body of research points to something we each intuitively understand. Generosity goes hand in hand with happiness. In acts of giving, parts of the brain associated with happiness light up. Spending money on others makes us happier than spending it on ourselves.

Remarkably, even studies of rats show them sharing treats with captive companions in nearby cages, and research at Yale shows that even one and a half year old children try to share and be generous. It's important to remember that generosity is an expression of caring that must equally include ourselves. When we're living from a generous heart, just as we attune to others, we also need to tend to ourselves as well, respecting our own present situation and needs. Like mindfulness itself, the spirit of generosity and service can be deliberately developed and enjoyed as it grows step-by-step. The first steps are called tentative giving, where you try out being more generous, even in small ways. For some, it helps to set the intention for three acts of kindness a day. It could be an email or a call, a smile, or a touch.
As you discover how good it feels, then generosity grows stronger and becomes what is called brotherly and sisterly giving. With this spirit, you enjoy sharing with those around you like your beloved sisters and brothers. When the pleasure of this practice grows stronger, you can discover royal generosity. This arises when you feel like a benevolent king or queen, with such abundant goodwill, that it flows naturally to those around you. Your happiness grows from offering your best to tend and nourish the garden of the world around you, as well as the garden of your own life. 

Let's start with our core practice. Let yourself settle as you have with graciousness and ease. Take a few deep breaths and then return to your natural breathing. Now, continue to bring mindfulness and compassion to the breath and body, or the other strong experiences as they arise.

Now, shift your attention and bring to mind someone in your life who you care about. Someone who is dear. Take some moments to sense what you appreciate about them. Now imagine offering them a random act of kindness. As you picture this, take some moments to feel in your body and heart the experience of generosity. You might also imagine their pleasure in receiving what you've offered and allow the feelings of generosity to deepen.

You're becoming familiar with the pleasure of a generous heart. Now, bring to mind another person in your life toward whom you'd like to develop generosity. Take some moments to sense what you appreciate about them. Again, imagining offering them an unexpected act of kindness or generosity. As you do, take some moments to feel in your body and heart, the experience of doing so. Remember to also envision their pleasure in receiving what you offer, and allow the feelings of generosity to deepen. Now let yourself think of a situation at work or in the wider world that calls forth generosity and service. Imagine bringing a generous spirit to this situation, offering your best actions, ways to support the wellbeing of others. Open to the pleasure this image brings and the goodness of serving life within and around you in a mindful and generous way.

And now, with whatever feelings arose from this meditation, return to your core practice for a time, breath and body, mindfulness of all that arises.
© Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield
Reprinted by permission