The Four Givings and Five Excellences

The “Four Givings” refer to giving others confidence, hope, convenience, and joy. Giving others confidence means guiding people to study and practice Dharma, helping them understand its benefits, and inspiring them with confidence. Giving others hope means helping those who suffer resolve their difficulties so that they may regain hope in life. Giving others convenience means employing various skillful means to serve beings and resolve their problems. Giving others joy means using the Buddhadharma to address the many troubles and afflictions of life, dispelling suffering and bringing happiness.

The “Four Givings” should be practiced together with the “Five Excellences”; in this way, our system of service can function smoothly and effectively. The “Five Excellences” are a mindset that is positive, proactive, optimistic, loving, and endowed with aspiration. These constitute the attitude through which we undertake the work of propagating Buddhadharma, cultivate the bodhisattva path, provide people with accumulations of merit and wisdom, and bring benefit and convenience to sentient beings through skillful means. Positivity means avoiding negativity: not bringing negativity into one’s family, society, or circle of friends; not dwelling merely on disputes, judgments of right and wrong, or criticism, which create tension in relationships and generate many problems. Instead, one should confront circumstances constructively, bringing encouragement and confidence to others. Proactvity means avoiding passivity: holding hope in all circumstances, trusting that effort leads to success, and advancing courageously. Optimism means avoiding pessimism: maintaining a positive outlook, refraining from assuming the worst, and not discouraging others.

However, without loving-kindness, none of this is meaningful. One’s actions become shallow and insincere; even virtuous deeds may be met with rejection, leading to personal unhappiness and poor relationships with others. Loving-kindness is the root of everything. Only through loving-kindness can compassion, empathy, and consideration for others arise, enabling one to bring happiness, hope, and joy to others and thereby establish harmonious relationships. Yet loving-kindness alone is insufficient; one must also engender aspirations. With aspirational resolve, loving-kindness does not become intermittent or unstable. Therefore, we must aspire so that loving-kindness remains continuous, empowering us to fulfill our responsibilities without falling into laziness or reluctance.

Aspiration is profoundly important; it is the wealth that enables progress along the bodhisattva path. Before engendering aspirations; learning and practicing the Buddhadharma, we do not understand what true wealth is. We assume that material prosperity alone constitutes a happy life, and we are carried along by desire and emotion, unable to manage our minds effectively, constantly caught between gain and loss, and continually revolve within samsara and the six realms. After learning, practicing the Buddhadharma, and generating aspirations—“May I attain Buddhahood and liberate sentient beings”—a transformative power emerges. One no longer fears samsara or entering any realm of existence. Instead, one plants seeds of awakening wherever one goes. Even within cyclic existence, one is no longer burdened by birth and death, afflictions, or karmic entanglements, moving freely without becoming trapped in samsara and realizing that the greatest wealth in life is loving-kindness.

The Buddhadharma serves as a guide for life, helping us discover its meaning. Only by having both loving-kindness and aspirational resolve, and by serving and contributing with positivity, proactivity, and optimism, can our lives bloom everywhere like flowers flourishing in spring.