"To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance"
About this Quote
The line points to the heart of Buddhist practice: freedom from clinging. To count nothing as one's own is not a call to destitution but to a transformation of attitude. Ownership is treated as a useful convention, not an ultimate truth. Bodies, talents, and possessions arise from countless causes and conditions and pass on. Seeing that fluidity loosens the grip of possessiveness. When the hand is open, generosity and compassion flow more easily.
The setting of abundance matters. Plenty tends to make the sense of mine thicken. Security breeds subtle fear of loss; pleasure invites grasping. True purity, in this view, is tested not in scarcity but amid surplus, where one can enjoy what appears yet refuses to be owned by it. One can use, steward, and share without the inner reflex of clinging. That is the difference between having and being had.
Buddhist ethics calls this dana, the perfection of giving. In the monastic ideal, renunciants live with almost nothing to train the mind away from grasping. For lay people, the teaching becomes a middle way: neither indulgence nor harsh denial, but intimacy without attachment. The fruit is an unselfish life because the ego shrinks when its fences shrink. Seeing that nothing is ultimately owned, one stops treating others as rivals and starts seeing resources as circulating supports for many lives.
This stance does not erase responsibility. Counting nothing as one's own turns possession into stewardship. Care becomes more meticulous, not less, because things are held in trust for the benefit of all, including future beings. In a consumer age that equates self with property and status, the saying is quietly radical. It suggests that genuine abundance is the freedom to let go. What one refuses to clutch cannot corrupt the heart, and what one shares multiplies its meaning.
The setting of abundance matters. Plenty tends to make the sense of mine thicken. Security breeds subtle fear of loss; pleasure invites grasping. True purity, in this view, is tested not in scarcity but amid surplus, where one can enjoy what appears yet refuses to be owned by it. One can use, steward, and share without the inner reflex of clinging. That is the difference between having and being had.
Buddhist ethics calls this dana, the perfection of giving. In the monastic ideal, renunciants live with almost nothing to train the mind away from grasping. For lay people, the teaching becomes a middle way: neither indulgence nor harsh denial, but intimacy without attachment. The fruit is an unselfish life because the ego shrinks when its fences shrink. Seeing that nothing is ultimately owned, one stops treating others as rivals and starts seeing resources as circulating supports for many lives.
This stance does not erase responsibility. Counting nothing as one's own turns possession into stewardship. Care becomes more meticulous, not less, because things are held in trust for the benefit of all, including future beings. In a consumer age that equates self with property and status, the saying is quietly radical. It suggests that genuine abundance is the freedom to let go. What one refuses to clutch cannot corrupt the heart, and what one shares multiplies its meaning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Humility |
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