Five years ago, I was coming out of Vidiots, my favorite video store in Venice, California, when I spotted him sitting on the ground against the painted brick wall. He was dressed in rags and his skin had that dusky look of someone long homeless.

“A dollar so I can eat?” He said it by rote, without looking at me; underneath I heard no hope.

I tucked my videos under my arm, dug around in my wallet and bent down to hand him some money. As I pressed it into his palm, I made eye contact, said hello and smiled. His whole face lit up.

“Bless you! Thank you!” His watery blue eyes had that luminous, raw fragility one sometimes sees in the mentally ill. I squeezed his hand. He squeezed mine back, then fumbled through some plastic bags on the ground. Pulling out a plastic necklace, he held it out to me.

“You are a queen! You are beautiful! Thank you! Here.” The necklace was of green beads with a fake jade pendant, Cleopatra-like. I hesitated; he had so very, very little, and I knew I would never wear it. But he was insistent. “This is for you. You are a queen.” I bowed my head, suddenly overwhelmed. This unexpected exchange was cracking my heart wide open.

“If you knew the power of generosity, you would not let a single meal go by without sharing it,” the Buddha said. Indeed, generosity is so highly valued in Buddhism  that “giving is the first of the Ten Perfections that the Buddha taught about,” says James Baraz , a founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in northern California and co-author of the new book Awakening Joy: Ten Steps That Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness.

Giving — in Sanskrit, dana – was advocated by the Buddha because it “both acknowledges the interdependence we have for each other and is the active practice of letting go, which is where freedom from suffering lies,” explains Baraz. “When we’re giving without any sort of expectation, just because we’ve been moved, we’re awakening the natural gladness that comes when the heart opens.”

We’ve all felt the high that comes from giving, the “natural gladness” Baraz talks about. Recent science suggests there is a biological basis for it. In 2006, neuroscientist Jorge Moll and a team of National Institutes of Health researchers gave subjects some money and a list of causes to which they might contribute. They found that the mere thought of giving money to charity activates the primitive part of the brain associated with the pleasures of eating and having sex. Functional MRIs indicated that donating money stimulates the mesolimbic pathway, the reward center in the brain, which is responsible for dopamine-mediated euphoria.

A year later, a study by Ariel Knafo and other researchers from the psychology department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem discovered evidence for a genetic predisposition toward giving. Participants in a staged game were given money and told they could give all, part or none of it to an unidentified player. The subjects’ DNA samples were analyzed and compared against their reactions. Those who had certain variants of a gene called “AVPR1a” gave an average of nearly 50 percent more money than those not displaying that variant. AVPR1a facilitates the production of a receptor that enables the social-bonding hormone arginine vasopressin to act on brain cells. “The experiment provided the first evidence, to my knowledge, for a relationship between DNA variability and real human altruism,” wrote Knafo.

It is somehow heartening to discover we’re hard wired for behavior that all the great spiritual traditions have urged for centuries. In 2 Corinthians 9:7, Paul exhorts, “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.” In the Qu’ran, the practice of zakat, or “alms giving,” is one of the Five Pillars of Islam; it is intended not only to provide welfare for needy Muslims but to purify the spirit of the giver (who is cleansed of greediness and selfishness) and the receiver (who is saved from the humiliation of begging and envy). The Torah orders, “If there is a needy person among you, don’t harden your heart; don’t shut your hand against your needy kin. For there will never cease to be people with need in your land, which is why I command you to open your heart to the poor and to the needy kin in your land.”

In my parents’ families, both of which suffered hard times in the Great Depression in Puerto Rico, giving was valued as an outgrowth of their faith. My maternal grandmother, widowed as a young mother in her twenties, worked two teaching jobs to support not only her daughter but her own mother and the children of her mentally ill brother. “She was so generous,” my mother recalls. “On Saturday the campesinos [peasant farmers] would come to ask for alms, and she would save food for them, give them coffee, give them a little money. She would also find medical care for people who needed it and arrange for them to go to the hospital without paying. She felt that God had given her so much that she had to help people who were in need.”

My father, the youngest of seven children, was lucky to get hand-me-down shoes to wear, but nonetheless my grandparents fed and housed an ever-evolving array of cousins, aunts, uncles, family friends and acquaintances; no one was ever turned away. “Mama would share what she had with people whom she thought were in a more needy situation than her,” remembers my father. “She was very strapped for money, but her sense of compassion and charity were very high. Papa would go along with that; he was very generous too.”

Feeding others is a classically human way of bonding; it likely has its roots in that most basic of interactions, the mother feeding the child. James Baraz recalls being at a meditation  retreat in Massachusetts, washing pots and pans in the kitchen: “Here comes the manager of the retreat center, and he has something wrapped in aluminum foil. ‘This is for your good work.’ It’s this really big piece of cheesecake with glaze and nuts — at this retreat, an extra piece of bread and tea were a big deal. I broke it into four pieces, kept one, and put three pieces in the bowls of some other yogis I felt connected with. At tea time, I watched and saw each person’s mouth drop. And then one person took her piece and broke it into another bowl to give away. The interesting thing is that 30 years later, I still feel a connection with five other people through that sharing.”

Scientists would say Baraz’s feel-good sensations are biochemically rooted. “Your good chemicals like dopamine and serotonin are actually evoked by self-giving love,” Stephen Post explains, co-author of Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life by the Simple Act of Giving and the founder and director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook University Medical Center. Post defines self-giving love as “compassionate care for others that is unconditional; it’s not dependent on reciprocation.”

So are we neurologically programmed (and biochemically rewarded) to give because we get an evolutionary advantage by strengthening social bonds, which helps ensure the survival of the group? Quite possibly, since the impulse can even be seen in one of our closest primate relatives. Duke University’s Brian Hare and Suzy Kwetuenda from Lola y Bonobo, a Congolese center for orphaned bonobos (a type of chimpanzee), gave hungry bonobos access to a room containing food one by one. The bonobo could see into two other rooms, one empty and one containing another bonobo. “We found that the test subjects preferred to voluntarily open the recipient’s door to allow them to share the highly desirable food that they could have easily eaten alone,” Hare wrote when the study was published in the journal Current Biology earlier this year.

Giving doesn’t only strengthen social bonds and make you feel good — it can also measurably impact your health, both physical and mental. Writer Cami Walker experienced this firsthand. In her early thirties, newly married and working a high-powered advertising job, Walker was stricken with multiple sclerosis (MS). She lost the use of her hands, then vision in one eye; the fatigue and numbness that come with the incurable neurological disease debilitated her. Within two years, she had quit her job, developed an addiction to prescription drugs and become completely dependent on her husband.

One night, in a state of depression, she called her friend Mbali Creazzo, a South African  medicine woman who draws from the Dagara African tradition and has also been a pioneer in integrative medicine  in San Francisco. Creazzo prescribed a ritual: Give away 29 gifts in 29 days. Walker was resistant. “I couldn’t even get out of bed, so how was I going to give something to someone every day? And Mbali said, ‘It doesn’t have to be material. It can be that you say something nice.’”

On Day One, Walker decided to give the gift of her time and attention to a friend who was in a more advanced stage of MS. Her friend was ecstatic to hear from her, and they made a plan to get together. “When I hung up the phone, I felt lighter and I was smiling,” she says. “And I thought, ‘Okay, it does feel good to give.’ I gave my gift, and then out of the blue I got this call to do a consulting project. And I took myself out to breakfast to celebrate, and there was a guy who just anonymously paid for my breakfast that day!”

Walker continued her giving ritual and chronicled her experiences in the 2009 New York Times bestseller 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life. On Day 29, her gift was the launch of an online challenge site, 29Gifts.org, intended “to inspire a worldwide revival of the giving spirit.” Some 11,000 people in 48 countries signed up, shared online journals about their own 29-day giving rituals and raised thousands of dollars for charities.

“The biggest change for me is I really did get my health back,” Walker says. “I’m not 100 percent good as new, but there’s been no further progression of my disease. Also, my creativity just exploded during that 29 days and I started writing again, and my business started to get back on track financially.” She also kicked her drug addiction, and her marriage bonds became stronger. She is such a believer in the power of giving that she’s continued to do so in 29-day cycles.

The idea that giving might have beneficial health effects such as those Walker experienced was first raised by psychiatrist Hans Selye, a McGill University researcher, in his 1956 book The Stress of Life. Selye discovered the dangerous impact of stress on lab rats, and he posited that one way for humans to begin to lower their stress levels would be to help others.

Subsequent studies have substantiated Selye’s theory. In 1983, Larry Scherwitz and his researchers at the University of California at San Francisco found that the incidence of heart attacks and other stress-related illnesses was closely correlated with self-preoccupation, and they suggested giving could result in healthier hearts. Indeed, “just thinking about giving seems to have a physiological impact,” says Stony Brook University Medical Center’s Post.

He cites a 1988 study in which Harvard behavioral psychologist David McClelland found that students who watched a film about Mother Teresa’s work with the orphans of Calcutta experienced a boost to their immune systems. And in 2007, University of Michigan psychologist Stephanie Brown studied 423 older couples and found that those who gave substantial support to others were more than twice as likely to remain alive in a five-year period.

The popularity of Walker’s 29Gifts.org website exemplifies something else researchers have found: Giving is contagious. In March of 2010, James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis, who study the effects of social networks, published a paper showing that when one participant gave away money to help someone, those recipients became more likely to give money away, leading to a cascade of generosity. The online 93 Dollar Club was formed as an immediate result of this exponential type of giving.

In August of 2009, Jenni Ware was stranded at a grocery checkout stand without her wallet. Carolee Hazard, a complete stranger, paid her $207 bill. When Ware paid Hazard back, she included an extra $93 as a thank-you gift. Hazard donated the extra money to a local food bank, matched it with another $93, and posted about the events on Facebook — thereby setting off an avalanche of $93 donations to food banks. A single random act of kindness has led to the raising of more than $82,000 to fight hunger. (For more on how to make generosity contagious, see “Reflections on the generous life .”)

Considering all the benefits of giving, it makes sense to teach it to kids. Christine Carter, executive director of the University of California’s Greater Good Science Center — a Berkeley hub for research on gratitude, compassion, altruism, awe and positive parenting  – says, “I’ve found that parents who start consciously cultivating gratitude and generosity in their children quickly see how much happier and more resilient their children become.”

Giving also empowers children, as Jeanie Bernard discovered when she was the director of special education for the St. Tammany Parish public schools, near New Orleans, Louisiana. Bernard became concerned about the system’s 4,000 special needs children because, she says, “so much was given to them, they saw themselves as helpless.” She began to seek opportunities for the kids to give back to their school community. “I would meet with teachers, janitors, coaches, parent groups and ask what they needed help with.” The children accompanied her to the meetings and chose what services they wanted to give.

She particularly remembers a severely autistic boy whose behavior was so aggressive “people were afraid of him. He would make all these sounds, and people would slam their doors in the hall. But every day his job was to go door to door and get the absentee notices for the principal. And when he did that, he acted differently; he talked differently. It was amazing! People came out of their best place and met him in his best place.” The whole giving project “changed behaviors,” Bernard says. “It changed the ways the adults saw the kids, because they began to see them as responsible. And instead of being these kids who took from the system, they became part of the holistic needs of the system.”

One teenager’s challenge to her family to give more resulted in a complete life change for them all. In the book The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back, the Atlanta father-daughter team of Kevin and Hannah Salwen describe how, in 2006, they had seen a homeless man begging for food by the side of the road. “Dad, if that man had a less nice car” — Hannah pointed at a black Mercedes coupe — “that man there could have a meal.” The light changed and they drove home, but the idealistic teen did not let go of the image.

“When we got home, I talked to my parents about it,” remembers Hannah. “They were explaining to me, ‘We’re really generous at the end of the year, and we give a lot.’ But I was feeling like it was quite lame. It sounded pathetic compared to how much we had.”

Indeed it was, admits Kevin. “I think you could have easily looked at our lives and said the most important relationships we had were with our house and with our other stuff. And when Hannah brought up her anger over what she had seen in the car, she challenged us to be a family to make a difference in the world.”

Kevin, Hannah, wife Joan and younger brother Joseph took up the gauntlet and spent the following year researching and discussing worthy causes. Then they sold their luxurious home and pledged $800,000 — half the proceeds of the sale — to sponsor food, health, microfinancing  and other programs for 40 villages in Ghana, through the New York City-based Hunger Project.

Now, with their book, they travel around encouraging people to examine where in their lives they might be able to “pick a half,” as Hannah says — to take half of one’s TV-watching time and give it away by volunteering, for example. Interestingly, the Salwens vow that they are the biggest beneficiaries of their giving, which has deepened both their roots in community and their closeness.

“The American dream always seems to be about stuff,” says Kevin. “And what we should be dreaming about is, Can we really be happy? I certainly feel in my gut that the only thing that makes people happy is a deep community.” Adds Hannah, “The main thing I’ve experienced is the change within my family and how much I can share with them and how comfortable with them I am now.”

The Salwens could be poster children for “Mental Capital and Wellbeing,” a 2008 report issued by Foresight, a British government think tank. In the report, “giving to neighbors and communities” was cited as one of the five critical elements of well-being and mental illness prevention. Tellingly, the word “community ” comes from the Latin communis, which means “bound together” — and that word, in turn, has as part of its root the word munus, meaning “gift.” So giving is glue that binds us as a group, creating a system of exchange and acknowledging our interdependence as humans.

My own community of Taos, a small rural town in New Mexico, has been a remarkable example of how giving and receiving weave a fabric of interdependence that benefits all. Potlucks, fundraisers and volunteering abound; when I’m in need of any sort of help, I’ll send out an email and get multiple responses.

One day my friend Pat McCabe, a poet and activist of Native American Dine ancestry, called to invite me to a Thanksgiving dinner — in February. When I arrived at her house, I discovered that it was Pat’s birthday, and she had laid out an opulent feast for two dozen friends. Before we dug in, she had us stand in a circle, and she blessed the food and thanked us as a community for having made a difference in her life in the past year. The feeling of connection as we stood holding hands was palpable, strong and sweet.

Later, she explained that “the giveaway” is vital in many Native American traditions. “It’s about repaying the sacred debts that were fulfilled by others for me,” she said, “the moms I know helping each other out to raise our kids, the spiritual community that calls on me to do ceremony and strengthens me because it reminds me of who I am. All of these can be happily repaid because they deepen the sense of family. It’s also a way of recognizing that I lead an incredibly blessed life, and I feel the need to keep this river of goodness moving and flowing.” This giveaway not only fortified our ties as members of her community, it also fed and strengthened her spirit.

Author Genevieve Vaughan believes giving is so powerful that a giving paradigm could save the world. In books like Homo Donans and For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange, Vaughan has proposed a shift from the exchange system of economics — capitalism — to a gift-giving economy. Exchange is ego-centered, competition-based and profits from the gifts of others, whereas gift giving is other-oriented, non-hierarchical and noncompetitive.

“The exchange system creates scarcity for many,” Vaughan says. “Precapitalist economies had a much better way of living. Many of the indigenous societies were and are gift-giving societies, based on mothering values, egalitarian and non-hierarchical.” She cites the Iroquois, the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, the Sami of northern Scandinavia and the KhoSan of southern Africa as examples of societies grounded in gift-giving -economies. In contemporary Western society, such practices as community gardens, freeware, Creative Commons licensing, couch surfing and bartering are all forms of gift-giving economics.

Many gift-giving economies are matriarchal, says Vaughn, which makes sense because the mothering impulse represents “unilateral gift giving without expectation of exchange or return. Humans are all formed according to gift giving. As mothered children, we all have the gift paradigm deep within us.”

Vaughan believes that in mainstream Western culture, the natural gift-giving impulse has been educated out of people — particularly out of male children — and that “if we stopped educating our boys not to be like their gift-giving mothers, we could recreate humanity on the basis of the gift paradigm. Direct gift giving is the human way of doing things. We are in alignment with our humanity when we participate in gift-giving economics.”

Back on the street in Venice, I open my hands to receive the necklace from the homeless man. My heart is full of astonished tenderness at this gift he has given me back — not only the plastic jewels, but the honor of being seen as a queen.

I feel humbled. I thank him and ask his name. “My mother named me Michael,” he tells me. “Like the Archangel. That’s how you can remember me. Michael the Archangel.” I walk to my car, get inside and burst into tears. That simple act of giving him a little money for food opened such a huge, unexpected door between our hearts. I feel unspeakably grateful. As a result of my giving, I have indeed been touched by an angel.

Make your life into a giving. When I say a giving, it is not to be understood as an act. Giving as an act is a deception because, after all, what can you give? Everything that we have, including this body, we have taken from this planet. What we can give is only a paltry part of what we have taken. Giving as an act could be very deceptive and could turn ugly, but if your way of being is giving and your actions are only a manifestation of that, when you open your heart to give, grace invariably seeps in. That is inevitable.

It has been my fortune and privilege that at a very early age, I became witness to a certain state of giving — my great grandmother who lived to be 113 years of age.  In the morning, if she was given breakfast, she would always go about giving away at least two-thirds of it to the ants, birds and squirrels, particularly to the ants.  People would say, ‘She is throwing all her food around, this old woman will die without eating,’ but they all died while she lived.  There were many days where I saw her with a little bit of breakfast that was left on her plate. She would simply sit there, watching the ants eat. Tears would be streaking down her cheeks and when somebody asked, ‘Won’t you eat?’ she would say, ‘I’m full. I’m already full.’ It was many years later that I realized her way of transacting with the world. If the ants ate, she was being nourished. A logical mind would never understand this, but it was this nourishment which gave her an extraordinary longevity.

Each of us can also make every act and every breath into a process of giving – seeing how we can contribute to everything around us, no matter what we are doing.  In just 24 hours, we will be so rich that the experience of life, the beauty of life, will set a glow on our face because that is the only way life functions.  The whole process of life is a giving. It is a transaction. In every giving there is a taking. We are taking more than we are giving, but in your mind, just ignore the taking. You just keep giving because you do not have to take; it will be pushed into you.

There was a man who cleared one hundred acres of forest and made it into farmland. His two sons helped him and they became prosperous. When the man was dying, he called his two sons and told them that the land should never be divided, but the produce should be taken equally, fifty percent, by each son.

Accordingly, they went by their father’s word. One of the brothers got married and had five children. The other one never got married. Life went on and they each took fifty percent. One day, a thought entered the mind of the brother who had a wife and five children: “I’m getting fifty percent; my brother is also getting fifty percent. But I have a wife and five children while my brother has nobody. When he gets old, who will take care of him? He should have a little more than me because I have the wealth of my children. But he is too proud; he will not take it from me.” So in the dark of the night, he carried a bagful of grain quietly and walked into his brother’s store, dropped this bag and walked back. Whenever he could, he went on doing this.

The same thought also entered his brother’s mind. He thought, “I am alone, my brother has five children to feed and I am getting fifty percent, but if I give him extra, he will not take it.” So he started doing the same thing at night. This went on for many years and both of them never noticed. One night, both of the brothers carrying sacks of grains in secrecy walked towards each other’s storehouse and came face to face. Suddenly, they realized what was happening.

–Jaggi Vasudeva

We live in an exciting time. As cultural historian, Thomas Berry put it: “We are between stories.” The old story — bracketed on the one side by reductionist scientific materialism, and on the other by institutional religious dogmas — is no longer able to guide us toward human or planetary flourishing. Instead, the chasms created by both science and religion, and the various social philosophies they spawned, are implicated in pushing us toward the precipitous edge upon which we now stand. At this edge we see both breakdowns and breakthroughs.

While the story of scientific materialism has been part of our evolutionary journey, it has created a map of reality — a worldview — that de-legitimized a vast portion of wisdom and experience. It placed reason over intuition, intellect over emotion, material over spiritual, objectivity over subjectivity, exteriority over interiority, and condensed this into a story that we live in a mechanistic, material world that can only be known through objective and measurable observation in which human reason reigns supreme.

Institutionalized religion upheld a story that gave male authority figures the power to interpret and mediate purported divine laws and construct theological justifications for power over women, children, the natural world, and non-believers. While scientific and religious stories were at odds with each other, both saw it in their interests to label metaphysical or spiritual worldviews outside their boundaries as heresy, superstition or witchcraft.

Yet ironically, science itself has now begun to step into the realm of the mystics. The “new sciences” story finds biologists and neuroscientists astounded by the hitherto unstudied capacities of the human brain and heart, indicating our ability to intentionally amplify love and compassion. It finds psychologists exploring the territory of contemplatives and revealing a map of human consciousness far beyond the individual ego-self. It finds physicists discovering that the presumed separation of observed and observer doesn’t exist. Much like the African worldview of Ubuntu — “I am because you are” – all things exists as a communion of subjects, not an assortment of objects.

The new story frames the human journey, not within the context of tribes or nations, but embedded in a constantly evolving planet and cosmos, interconnected and interdependent at every level. The implications of this framing could signal dramatic changes in every field of human endeavor.

The trends we are seeing within restorative justice, reconciliation, transitional justice, dialogue and other forms of peace practice, are evidence of new ways of addressing human conflict that are moving beyond the old dichotomies. We have chosen to name this trend social healing partly because we see an evolving paradigm that is not fundamentally hinged around the dualities of good vs. bad and right vs. wrong, but is rather inclined toward viewing human conflict through the lens of wounding and healing. Social healing, then, is not guided by revenge, retribution or punishment, but rather by the compassionate response of relating to all people — victims, transgressors and bystanders alike – as inextricably connected.

–Judith Thompson, in Social Healing Project report

I’m rather good at maps. I’m also good at using a GPS device. But I forgot the maps and here we were, late afternoon, last day of vacation, my daughter my cousin and I, driving along a two-lane highway in midstate Oregon. No other car in sight, and the sun had just gone down. Where was that charming little village? It was supposed to be right along this river.  We drove on, farther and farther into the unknown, river always at left as our guide. We kept passing farms and fields and scattered houses and now a few lights were coming out.  In my head, I was doing a litany of self-criticism: Why didn’t we start earlier, leave more time, have lunch sooner, save dessert for the little town, bring the map, and on and on and on, a list of all we did wrong — reliving it as if that could help us now. My cousin and I were both impatient and stressed. My daughter, at least, was happy in the back seat, text messaging a friend. I pull up on the shoulder of the road to think.

Just then — WOW! Amazing! A new scene had appeared. A new slide projected on a screen.  Where did it come from?

Look! LOOK! I insisted. Even my daughter looked up.  Right there, out of nowhere: a magical misty landscape. Fields moving off to infinity in muted purples and pastels, fuzzy in the haze, with clusters of tall lush tress, darkening and receding in the dusk. I turned the car engine off. All was silent in the hot summer air. Beside us a plum-colored river barely moved between a border of trees, its dark lazy water reflecting the last light of day.

How breathtaking! This landscape had cast a spell. We sat in the silence of an indrawn breath. Where had it been? If I had seen even a trace of this beauty while driving along, not a neuron had registered it, no mental bell had rung so that the conscious mind could stop and take a look. I had missed it all. We had all missed it.

Magical Moment

 We miss a lot, almost everything, in fact, in our world. Our task-focused filters take care of that, selecting only what we need.  We need to get to work. Have some lunch. Find that report. Water the garden. Go out on a date. We see what we need to see, often for purposes of survival — or survival of the species. Gregory Bateson, speaking of beauty, said aesthetic judgment is selection of a fact.  We create the sight even as we become conscious of it. We do not simply see it. In our daily lives, who or what is doing the selecting? And why? Is this predetermined? Can we — in the here and now – make a change?  Can we see further?  Can we see better?  Can we  even better our world?

Opening our vision is a first step in Everyday Creativity.

–Ruth Richards, in Everyday Creativity

In every interaction you have with another human being—doesn’t matter who—you always have two main choices.

(The keyword is choice.)

One choice usually leads to logical (boring) interaction, politeness, formalities. And, more importantly, a lack of connectivity.

The other usually leads to interesting discussion, love (yes, love), aliveness, friendship, gift giving. And connectivity.

In every interaction you are either giving somebody else your mind—your intellect, your intelligent points, the who/what/where/when/why of your existence.

This is the easy thing to do. The safe thing to do. It doesn’t require much, if any, emotional strength or really expose who you are. In this way, you can hide from others (or from your self, depending on how you look at it) and not risk rejection by not even giving somebody the chance to reject you.

Or, you are giving somebody your heart—the real you, your presence, your true attention.

This is the hard thing to do. The risky thing to do. It involves an enormous amount of emotional strength (until it doesn’t). It entails entering the present moment. And it entails pushing through the challenging and stifling fear of doing so.

Instead of thinking about what to say or do, you let your inwardly felt experience inform your words and actions toward others.

Think about how often you self-censor and hit the mute button. Why? Why not just assume that what you have to say is valuable, even if it comes out not so smooth? Then maybe you say next, “oh, that was lame” and then laugh.

It’s this kind of moment-to-moment truthfulness that is required.

It’s so easy (but frightening) to practice because you always know what to say or do in any interaction with somebody else. The problem is having the courage to act on it.

Isn’t it time to feel less anxious and less alone and less unfulfilled?

–Christopher Lowman

Be kind whenever possible.

It’s always possible.

—The Dalai Lama

Wouldn’t it be great if we could lose weight just by being nice? Bear with me as I make the case that the answer is most assuredly yes. I invite you to suspend judgment for a moment and take a little journey with me. Researchers at Ohio State University found that when mice were given the opportunity to engage more socially with other mice, they expended more energy, burned more fat, and lost significant weight. They found this to be true even though the mice eat more. The scientists discovered that the key to the animal’s weight loss was a dramatic conversion of their white storage fat to energy–burning brown fat. The head researcher, Matthew During, felt compelled to say, “I’m still amazed at the degree of fat loss that occurs. The amount that comes off is far more than you would get from a treadmill.” This is the holy grail of weight loss research—turning white fat to brown. Why is this? Having more metabolically active brown fat is the signature of a healthy and fit body.

Don’t underestimate the power of connecting with other people. Supportive relationships are known to be crucial for health and happiness. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true; feeling isolated and alone is as harmful to our health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. So where does kindness fit in? Kindness may be the most underrated virtue on the planet and is powerful medicine. Kindness may be the antidote for feelings of aloneness and shyness. Being kind is not the same as being a doormat. The principles of healthy boundaries and good communication skills still apply. Sometimes saying no clearly, can be the kindest thing in the long run for all concerned. Previous research has demonstrated that both performing acts of kindness and “merely” meditating upon kindness boosts authentic happiness. Kindness and generosity are premiere social lubricants. Think of the people in your life that you are most fond of and I would wager that kindness is one of their strongest traits.

What I am suggesting—if you want to be healthier, happier, or need to lose some weight—is to set a goal to be kinder to the people around you. This is enlightened self-interest in action. Being kinder will increase and improve your relationships, which in turn will help convert some of your white fat to brown, and melt the pounds away! This is in addition to a whole host of other benefits, both psychological and physiological. I will use myself as an example: I am on a campaign to be a kinder driver when I’m behind the wheel of my car. I grew up in New York City and learned to drive there. I realize now that I don’t have to cut people off and speed up to make every light. My car trips become a pleasurable outing when I see how nice I can be to other drivers and to pedestrians. I just need to compensate and allow a few more minutes of driving time. Leaving a bit more time for making appointments is also a great stress reducer. The opportunities for kindness are limitless.

Of course, eating right and exercising is still important. But even your benefit from these activities will be noticeably improved if you involve other people, such as joining an exercise class or sharing meals with family and friends. Life is better when we share it. If everybody tried this, we just might create a little bit of heaven here on earth and we could even drop a few pounds in the process.

What will you do if you’re too tough to be a good woman, too sensitive to be a good man, too selfish to be a good husband, too lazy to be a good employee, too shy to be a good friend, too caring to be rational, too fat to be pretty, too effeminate to be straight, too introverted to be a good leader, too smart to be kind, too young to be taken seriously, too old to make a difference, or too far behind to even get in the race?

These are all false standards and false dichotomies, but they are so common and so ingrained that we sometimes believe in them without even realizing it. And this leads to a mountain of insecurities, because nobody measures up to these crazy standards (and nobody should). But even if we don’t believe in these things, it still matters what other people think, right? What will the neighbors think? Or how about our co-workers, or the people at church? And so everyone works to hide their insecurities, and they look around at their peers for comparison, and maybe they feel bad because everyone else seems to have it easy, to have it all figured out. The truth is, nobody can see the truth anymore. They are all working to hide the truth, because the truth is that they are afraid of who or what they really are. So they all put on a show, and they pretend to be a good whatever. Or maybe they rebel, and make a point of being a bad whatever, but then they are still under the control of that false standard, and they are still not being themselves.

That is all so exhausting.

I am nothing. It’s simple. If I were smart, I might be afraid of looking stupid. If I were successful, I might be afraid of failure. If I were a man, I might be afraid of being weak. If I were a Christian, I might be afraid of losing faith. If I were an atheist, I might be afraid of believing. If I were rational, I might be afraid of my emotions. If I were introverted, I might be afraid of meeting new people. If I were respectable, I might be afraid of looking foolish. If I were an expert, I might be afraid of being wrong.

But I am nothing, and so I am finally free to be myself.

This isn’t license to stagnate. Change is inevitable. Change is part of who we are, but if we aren’t changing for the better, then we are just slowly decaying.

By returning to zero expectations, by accepting that I am nothing, it is easier to see the truth. Fear, jealousy, insecurity, unfairness, embarrassment — these feelings cloud our ability to see what is. The truth is often threatening, and once our defenses are up, it’s difficult to be completely honest with anyone, even ourselves. But when I am nothing, when I have no image or identity or ego to protect, I can begin to see and accept things as they really are. That is the beginning of positive change, because we cannot change what we do not accept and do not understand. But with understanding, we can finally see the difference between fixing problems, and hiding them, the difference between genuine improvement, and faking it. We discover that many of our weaknesses are actually strengths once we learn how to use them, and that our greatest gifts are often buried beneath our greatest insecurities.

–Paul Buchheit, in I Am Nothing

In the old days, no one ever stole. Those who were well off always shared what they had. If there was any thing someone wanted, that person had only to ask the owner and that thing would be given. And no one minded if someone borrowed something and then brought it back to its owner later.

But when the sacred elk dogs, the horses, came, they brought with them new problems. It was not so easy to give away a horse, unless it was a special occasion. As a result, some people began to borrow horses that belonged to others without permission.

They would bring them back, but sometimes many moons passed before that horse was returned. So the matter was brought to the Elk Society and they put forth a new rule for the people:

“From this day on, there will be no more borrowing of horses without permission. If anyone does so, we will follow that person, take back that horse, and give him a whipping.”

Pawnee was young. He did not listen to what was said. He borrowed a horse without permission. The Bowstring Soldiers took after him. Three days out on the trail they tracked him down. They took back that horse. Then they beat Pawnee, destroyed his clothes, broke his saddle and gun, took all that he had and left him there, alone and naked on the prairie.

High Back Wolf came upon poor Pawnee, sitting there and waiting to die. High Back Wolf said, “I am going to help you. That is what I am here for, for I am a chief. But from this day on you must behave right.”

High Back Wolf took Pawnee back to his lodge.

High Back Wolf gave him new clothing.

High Back Wolf said to him, “Outside are three horses. Take your pick and that horse will be yours. Here is the skin of a mountain lion. I give it to you. Wear this skin as proof that your heart is good.”

From that day on, Pawnee’s heart was good.

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Giving in a sacred way has always been a central part of American Indian cultures. It may be a means of giving thanks, of bringing the people together, of gaining honor, of distributing material goods so that all may survive, of teaching. It maintains the balance that is needed to hold a nation together and to keep an individual in the right relationship within him or herself and with the community—a community that is not just composed of humans, but also of animals, plants, even the stones. For all things are alive.

The Tstsistas (Cheyenne) story of Pawnee and High Back Wolf took place in the early part of the nineteenth century. It exemplifies several aspects of the act of giving, as well as pointing out the role of a chief as one whose first thought must be of others, one whose job is to make peace, to be generous. (When the Lakota leader Sitting Bull was asked by a white reporter why his people loved and respected him, Sitting Bull replied by asking if it was not true that among white people a man is respected because he has many horses, many houses? When the reporter replied that was indeed true, Sitting Bull then said that his people respected him because he kept nothing for himself.)

Pawnee is a young man who forgets or has not yet learned that right relationship of sharing. He takes without permission. But when Pawnee is punished by one of the soldier societies whose job includes maintaining order among the people, rather than turning his back on the young man, High Back Wolf—still remembered as one of the great chiefs of that period—engages in a restorative act of giving.

One of the very common practices of virtually every American Indian nation is some form of what is called otuhan in Lakota and in English “a Giveaway.” Even today, if you go to a gathering such as a powwow, a traditional wedding, a naming ceremony, a burial, a Giveaway may be part of the event. It consists of first spreading out a large blanket on the ground. Whoever is holding the event, usually the host family or organizer of the event, places various items, often ones that are handmade, such as woven or skin pouches, beaded key chains, articles of jewelry, on that blanket. Then everyone is invited to come and take one thing from the blanket. Elders come up first, then veterans, women, little children, older children, and finally men. As James David Auden (Distant Eagle) points out in his book Circle of Life, it is not the central participants in the event who are given these gifts, but everyone attending. And the proper way to choose what you accept as a gift is to quietly let the spirit guide you. “Make your choice quickly and step back so that others can come forward.” Further, you do not call attention to what you’ve been given, or show displeasure if someone seems to have gotten something better than you. It is not the gift, but the gestures of giving and receiving that count.

It is a very different sort of giving and receiving from that practiced in majority culture, where the giver is often calling attention to his or her generosity, and the gift is often followed by effusive thanks from the receiver. The strengthening of community is much more important in the American Indian practice, a gifting more akin to prayer than self-aggrandizement and acquisition.

Wopila is another of the Lakota words that means a Giveaway. Dovie Thomason, the well-known Lakota ­storyteller, once made the mistake of titling a recorded collection of her stories “Wopila.” She took the first hundred or so copies to an event attended by many Lakotas. She arranged her recordings on the table and waited for people to buy them. However, one after another, Lakota people came up, read the title and said “Wopila, oh it is a giveaway. Wopila, good, my sister. Look, our sister is giving away her recording!“ By the end of the event, all of the copies had been given away. Although Dovie did not make any money from selling her tapes that day, she came away from the experience with a smile and a good story.

Giving things away informally is also common in American Indian communities when one has enjoyed good fortune—such as winning the lottery. In most of our American Indian communities such behavior is expected. My favorite story by one of the best-loved American Indian authors, Simon Ortiz of Acoma Pueblo, is called “Howbah Indians.” Howbah means “welcome” in Acoma. The story is about a Pueblo man who manages to purchase a store and then writes on the wall of that store, “Howbah Indians,” to welcome other Indians and let them know the new owner is himself an Indian. It attracts many native customers right away, but none of them pay for the things they get. Soon, the man is forced out of business and the store stands empty. But for many years after, whenever Indians pass by that store they point out those fading words on the wall with pride. It was proof that the man who ran that store, even though he had become “rich,” remained honorable and true to his culture.

I could tell a hundred stories about Giveaways. One of my favorites, and I will not mention the name of the Arapaho family involved because I know they would not want attention called to them, took place not that many years ago. The oldest son of that family had, as many young native people do, joined the United States military and was sent overseas into a dangerous combat zone. As soon as he left, his family began making and collecting star quilts and Pendleton blankets. Star quilts and Pendletons are often used in honoring ceremonies. When someone is being acknowledged for a good deed, one of those blankets is ceremoniously placed around his or her shoulders.

The family of that young man also collected other items of all sorts, spending an immense amount of time and money in the process. Their intention was to have a Giveaway when their son returned home safely. Their acquisition of all those goods was a sort of promise to the Creator that they would honor the gift of their son’s return through the ceremony. Sure enough, when their son did return, the Giveaway was held. Everyone in the community, hundreds of people, came. The family gave away all those blankets, all those goods. Then they gave away their radio, their television, their personal computer, and their truck. Finally, they gave away their house. Everyone was moved by this proof of how much they loved their son, how much they honored the Creator and the community through this giving. And though they had nothing material at the end, they had the satisfaction of having done something truly sacred. And they were cared for by others in the community, as the gift “moved in their direction” in the months that followed, and things were given to them that replaced what they had given.

Wealth, among American Indian people, is not seen as the accumulation and keeping of money or goods or land. The Sacred, by Peggy Beck, Anna Lee Walters (Pawnee), and Nia Francisco (Navajo), contains a wonderfully direct and clear description of what wealth meant (and still means) to native nations.

“For most Native American cultures, to be wealthy meant that one had lived well—carefully, with knowledge which had enabled the individual to hunt well, sew well, bring up children well, and if necessary, to fight well, depending on one’s responsibilities. To be wealthy meant that one had much good, enough to give away, to gain respect as a generous person in the eyes of one’s family, kin, and tribe. . . . Most important, to have wealth and power meant that one knew the source of these. One was aware of the equal balance of power and wealth in the things of the universe, and that wealth and power were gifts acquired in one’s lifetime—a lifetime that is very short compared with a lifetime of the world, of a tree, of a river.”

American Indian giveaway practices have often been viewed as a threat by government officials, both in the United States and Canada. Government policies in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century were designed to suppress such activities. In a letter sent to all of the superintendents of the ?U.S. Indian reservations in 1922, Charles H. Burke, the Federal Indian Commissioner, stated that in order to “foster a competitive, individualistic economic mentality and a Christian faith, using missionaries as aides in this effort” certain practices needed to be eliminated. He ordered that “the Indian form of gambling and lottery known as the ‘iturnapi’ be prohibited.” In an accompanying letter Burke addressed “To All Indians,” he wrote that “you should not do evil or foolish things or take so much time for these occasions. No good comes from your ‘give away’ custom at dances and it should be stopped.”

In Canada, similar rules and regulations were designed to stomp out the potlatch, a complex ceremony that was the main institution for assuming and maintaining social status by the distribution of wealth. Among the Kwakiutl, no person could obtain social status without doing a potlatch. Guests Never Leave Hungry, the autobiography of James Sewid, a Kwakiutl Indian chief who was born in 1910 and lived in British Columbia, talks with great passion and clarity about the difficulty of living in both the white and Indian worlds at a time when such sacred giving was forbidden by the authorities. One of the triumphs of his story is his success in bringing back the custom that had been “outlawed and lost.” “Always Giving Away Wealth” is, in fact, the title of one of his book’s chapters.

In 1992, I was involved in putting together a gathering of American Indian authors that attracted more than three hundred native writers from all over the American continent. When those of us on the planning committee were seeking a name for the event, the choice we ended up making was “Returning the Gift.” It was a title inspired in part by Tom Porter, a Mohawk elder who came to one of our meetings and opened it with the traditional Thanksgiving Address, in which every aspect of Creation, from the Mother Earth, through the Waters, the Plants and Animals, the Winds, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the People, and the Creator, are greeted and thanked. It reminded us of all the gifts we have been given, including the ability to express ourselves with words. Our gathering, which took place over a four-day period at the University of Oklahoma, in the heart of Indian Country, would truly be a way to return the gift—to remind ourselves, as native writers, of our responsibility to our communities and to each other. To use our gifts in something other than a selfish way. We needed to not just talk about our work, but to give thanks. When the late Chief Jake Swamp, another well-loved Mohawk elder, wrote a picture book a few years ago that was based on the Thanksgiving address, he chose the title Giving Thanks.

I’ve also heard it said that we need to think of all the gifts we receive as having come from the Creator of all things. Thus it is to the Creator, the Great Mystery, that thanks should be given—not to any human being. We say “Please” to each other and “Thank You” to Ktsi Nwaskw, Gitchee Manitou, Wakan Tanka, or whatever name we have in our many languages for the Great Mystery, the Creator. This may help ensure that those who give do so with humility, with an awareness of the sacred nature of all gifts.

Thus the giver is not calling attention to himself or herself, but to the spiritual power behind it all. Thus both giving and receiving remain sacred.

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This article was reprinted with permission from Parabola Magazine, a publication that explores human existence relating to the myths, symbols, rituals, and art of the world’s religious and cultural traditions.

This is where many lovers go wrong. Having been so long without love, they understand love only as a need. They see their hearts as empty places that will be filled by love, and they begin to look at love as something that flows to them rather than from them.

The first blush of new love is filled to overflowing, but as their love cools, they revert to seeing their love as a need. They cease to be someone who generates love and instead become someone who seeks love. They forget that the secret of love is that it is a gift, and that it can be made to grow only by giving it away.

Remember this and keep it to your heart. Love has its time, its own season, its own reason for coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it, or reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you. [...] Love always has been and always will be a mystery. Be glad that it came to live for a moment in your life.

–Kent Nerburn