The Buddha taught ten perfections, which you are meant to strive for. Pursuing these is strongly recommended by the Buddha, because acquiring these perfections will free you from suffering. The first perfection is dana or generosity. The second perfection is sila or moral conduct.
Generosity
The thought that generosity can free you from suffering is difficult to imagine when you are constantly experiencing all kinds of shortages. It then seems more reasonable to assume that before you could give, you would first have to make up for your deficits.
Other way around
In reality, however, it is the other way around.
You think you have a shortage, and because you think so, you also experience these shortages.
If you start giving now (time, energy, money, attention) then you will teach yourself a completely different idea.
Every time you give, you teach yourself something new.
Educate yourself
Once you focus your mind on developing the perfection of generosity and begin to actually give, you will be forced to draw some completely new conclusions:
- You will discover everything you have received. That has to be the case, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to give it.
- You will have to conclude that you have enough. There is no other way, because you give and you survive.
- As you give away what you thought you couldn’t live without, you gradually dissolve your attachment.
Developing the perfection of generosity, therefore, is turning your mind toward inner health and peace of mind.
Easy
Generosity is the easiest perfection to learn, so it is the first perfection to develop if you want to free yourself from suffering. Of course, the fact that this perfection is the easiest does not mean that it has to be easy for you. Maybe you can’t imagine that generosity could be the solution to the shortages you experience. And maybe you believe it, but you think that generosity is a luxury that you cannot afford for the time being.
But here too the truth is reversed: you cannot afford not to be generous.
This idea is not exclusive to Buddhism, in a beautiful prayer St. Francis of Assisi says:
‘For we receive by giving’
Sila or moral conduct
Developing moral conduct, or purity of conduct, is necessary to ultimately develop purity of mind.
The five rules of life
To know what the Buddha considers moral behavior, you can look at the five rules of life for lay people (lay means non-monks and non-nuns).
- The resolve to abstain from taking life
- The resolve to refrain from taking what is not given
- The intention to refrain from sexual misconduct
- The intention to refrain from speaking untruths
- The intention to abstain from mind-drugs
Go inside
The development of moral behavior is a perfection that comes after the development of generosity.
There’s a reason for that.
- Generosity provides what the other person actually needs, moral behavior is aimed at preventing misery in others. Generosity provides a positive contribution to the environment, moral behavior ensures that a negative approach is prevented.
- Generosity is aimed at ‘outside’, moral behavior is not immediately visible, precisely because it prevents misery.
This second perfection is, as it were, a step within.
Effort
It means initially making an effort to achieve moral conduct , then it means making an effort to maintain moral conduct , and finally achieving virtuousness . But in its perfect form it means more than just moral behavior, it is a state of mind that ensures that other beings have no reason to fear.
For yourself, the development of moral behavior means that you will become calmer. That cannot be news, everyone can experience that, if the right thing is done, there is peace. Not a passive rest, but an active rest that comes from the certainty that the action was right.
But perhaps more importantly, moral behavior gives you protection against a relapse into miserable circumstances:
Buddhism says that the practitioner of the Dhamma (the Buddha’s teachings) is protected by the Dhamma.