A Year of Dana

Last October, I went to a powerfully intuitive reiki practitioner, looking for a cleanse and realignment of the energy centers in my body. I needed her help to deal with my divorce grief. I had no idea what to expect, but walked away feeling upright, lighter, and energetic. Days after my second reiki, while sitting in meditation, I experienced an intimate moment of gratitude for someone I love deeply. Within minutes, I felt a rush of clarity and energy in my body. Just like that, the idea of living A Year of Dana came to me.

After a few months of feeling the continuous energy of this idea in my heart and body, I finally decided to give notice to my employer. I am leaving my job of five years on April 3, 2020. Over the next year, I will be living A Year of Dana, focused on the practice of generosity towards myself and others. I will practice generosity through cultivating a heartset and mindset of abundance and dismantling my own mental conditioning around scarcity. My hope is to make the act of giving and receiving a natural, effortless flow, just like my breath… in and out. Practicing generosity will be the foundation to my healing journey.

What's Dana? My inspiration.

Dana, is a Sanskrit Pali word for generosity. Dana is one of the six perfections or paramitas of the Bodhisattva path. Generosity is the foundation upon which the other perfections build. Lion Roar says, "In training in generosity, we focus on giving and receiving our life and our practice wholeheartedly, and on offering our life and practice as a gift." When we give openly and fully, we become grounded in the way things truly are, free from a deluded mind.  Practicing generosity will open my heart widely, keep my mind spacious, and help my body stay alive and awake. Through non-aggression and courage, this effort will ultimately develop my skills to hear, touch, and be with the suffering of others.

Why Dana? My intentions.

• Personal: In my longtime partnership, generosity was difficult for me to practice authentically. Its importance to me was not fully accepted in the relationship for many reasons. I lost sight of generosity as a core part of my regular practice. I felt guilty for it, but was unable to address it in a meaningful way in that state of conditioning. This is me taking ownership again of this value.
• Family: From an early age, my parents instilled the value of generosity into my heart. Giving in all the ways - money, time, energy, and compassion. It's something I've always admired about my family, in how they treat and care for others from a place of generosity. This is me honoring what I've learned from my family.
• Society: Our brains are wired to believe that all resources are limited. Whether it be money, housing, material things, as well as happiness and love. We're made to believe there's not enough to go around and so we limit our own ability to give and receive openly. This is me chiseling away the scarcity mindset reinforced by American culture and capitalism. 

How Dana? My practices.

• I will practice accepting myself in all my ways.
• I will practice compassion, gentleness, and tenderness with myself.
• I will practice deep attention and presence and work to fully accept others as they are.
• I will practice just being and resting, leaving spaciousness in time, heart, and mind.
• I will practice being present with the discomfort of ambiguity and uncertainty.
• I will practice disengaging from an achievement mindset, breaking old patterns of constant self-optimization.
• I will practice sharing and engaging in dharma with others.
• I will practice trusting in the inner voice and wisdom of my heart and body. 

My practices will explore the following questions:

• How do I continuously connect to a place of abundance?
• What does giving from a place of abundance instead of scarcity look like?
• What are the different positive and negative forms of generosity?
• How will I know the right form of generosity to offer to myself and to others?
• How do I relate to the experience of receiving generosity from others?
• How do I relate to the abundance of things I don't like?
• What role does death and impermanence have in shaping my generosity practice?
• What does the cultivation of joy through generosity feel like in my heart and body?
• How does practicing generosity help to relieve my own personal suffering and the suffering of others?

Where Dana? My practice areas. 

• Self-Discovery: Building my relationship with self. Deepening self-compassion, self-knowledge, and self-intimacy.  Seeing and getting underneath my fears by continuing therapy, reading, and reflection.
• Spiritual Growth: Expanding my spiritual learning through studying Buddhism, developing spiritual community, and furthering my mindful awareness with meditation retreats and volunteering at East Bay Meditation Center.
• Intimacy with Death: Becoming comfortable with impermanence, aging, and death through volunteering with palliative care and hospice care programs.
• Connecting with Mother Earth: Remembering that we are not so separate from each other and the earth's elements through being outside and in nature as often as possible (local hikes, urban walks, backpacking,  traveling).
• Cultivating Creativity: Exploring meaningful work through personal writing, photography, and creative project work in diversity and inclusion, community health, and coaching/mentorship.

Each of these buckets will bring countless opportunities to practice giving to myself and to others - whether it be in the form of  attention, mindfulness, creative thinking, money, space, experience, learning, service, art, time, wisdom, and/or love.

Dana practice considerations?

• These intentions and practices are not set in stone and will emerge naturally however they do. Life is a mystery and things can change within seconds. I am open to readjusting and being flexible and fluid with where the river flow of life takes me.
• It takes tremendous privilege to make this leap into the unknown. I am grateful to my former partner, who cared deeply about living and designing a meaningful life, for setting up a financial foundation that allows these brave decisions to happen.
• I am grateful to my friends and family who have supported my wellbeing as the highest priority, and offered non-judgment and trust in my choices and encouragement to take risks to be my truest self.
• So, when A Year of Dana ends, does generosity stop? Not at all! This year will lay the groundwork for a lifetime of generous action and living.