No seed ever sees its flower.
-Zen saying
The transformation of passion to compassion is one of the everyday miracles about which we occasionally hear or read. An old cleric lived an utterly modest life, invested his meager income, accumulated millions of dollars, and then gave it to an educational institution; a full-time secretary, who also has a large family to look after, spends one evening a week in a hospice as a volunteer; a retired teacher works as if he isn't retired, helping youngsters in a poor community-of course, unpaid; a woman opens a boutique with donated outfits to dress unemployed minority women, to coach them in self-presentation for job interviews. I am sure you could come up with dozens of such daily miracles.
Looking only after one's self-interest is the contemporary expression of the ethic of Sodom, and it is equally soulless. In his book Original Self, Thomas Moore says, "In order to have soul, we need to be taken from, and that necessary emptying requires some collusion on our part in the theft, some distraction that interferes with our intentions, some neglect in our defenses." He advises that one needs not only to keep the door ajar but also not to be so excessively preoccupied with defending the area that theft is not possible.
In one thirteenth century Turkish tale, the old and sick Nasreddin Hoca was trying to plant an orange tree. A passerby watched and said in pity: "Dear Hoca, why on earth do you even bother to plant a tree whose fruit you'll never live long enough to eat?" Hoca replied, "That is true. But it is truer still that I have eaten plenty of fruit from the trees that others planted." Mutual exchange-giving and receiving-is a basic law of nature. We live by such reciprocation, inhaling and exhaling, ingesting and expelling, being helped and helping, learning and teaching. It occurs on every level of existence, and serves as communal glue. Of course, we can do so maximally in universal interchange, like that of Hoca, or minimally in specific individual reciprocation, like that of Thomas Hobbes in the following story. In The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, the Dalai Lama gives an example of this controversial philosopher, whose dark view regarded the human species as violent, competitive, always in conflict, and concerned only with self-interest. Despite Hobbes's negation of fundamental good in human nature, he was once seen offering money to a beggar on the street. When questioned about this uncharacteristic generous act, he retorted, "I'm not doing this to help him. I'm just doing this to relieve my own distress at seeing the man's poverty."
Neither universal nor specific individual givings are totally altruistic acts; they are the source of our own well-being. Seeking and finding a way of serving others is a powerful source of happiness. Happiness is in the cultivation of one's garden, says Voltaire in Candide's voice. But the ultimate serenity comes from the cultivation of others' gardens.
T. Byram Karasu, MD is the author of The Art of Serenity
