[O]ver and over, the sutras recommend that “when the Bodhisattva is faced with a beggar, he should produce a thought thus: he who gives, he to whom he gives, what he gives,” in all of these “the own-being cannot be apprehended.” The Bodhisattvas’ “own-being” “cannot be apprehended” because they have no “own-being.” Their being – what they are – depends to a great extent on other beings, and they change over time. Nothing is self-established; nothing stands on its own. All of us who fail to understand this will, as donors, tend to be more self-concerned in giving than concerned about the other. Understanding ourselves and others as isolated entities, each on our own, in the act of giving we will likely be as much or more self-promoting as truly generous.

The gift may still be a good thing. The beggar will, for example, still get the food he so desperately needs. But he will not get the sense of human dignity and equality that he may need to recover his standing in the world, nor a glimpse of the open-hearted human love and concern that we all need to live well. Moreover, the one who gives will not get these either, and the deep sense of well-being that might have come in the act of giving is stifled, replaced tragically by more isolation, pride, and arrogance, and hence more future suffering for both the giver and others.

Unless we as donors can see clearly and unflinchingly that who we are as donors – secure in wealth and health – is completely dependent on numerous turns of good fortune, on the care and help of others, and on opportunities not available to everyone, our acts of giving will be less than fully generous. These acts will therefore not have the liberating effects that they might otherwise have had. When we are able to see that the homeless person’s parents did not do for him what ours did for us, that his teachers did not do for him what ours did for us, then we begin to understand the contingency of our fortune, and, looking more deeply, the thorough interdependency of all reality.