This is part two of an ongoing series on the six paramitas; principles for living with wisdom and wholeness. If you missed part one on patience, you can find it here.
I just returned from several days on the land at Menla, a retreat center nestled in the Catskills, working with the qualities of the Great Mother.
Her qualities are many. And one of them lined up with the paramita I’ve been sitting with in a whole new way.
Generosity.
Not generosity as a concept. Generosity as a spiritual practice — living, breathing, embodied.
The Most Generous Being I Know
The most generous being I know doesn’t ask for anything in return.
The earth gives endlessly.
She offers food, water, shelter, beauty, oxygen, medicine. She sustains every living thing on this planet without a single contract or condition attached to her giving. She is the ultimate model of generosity as a spiritual practice — one of the six paramitas, or qualities, that Buddhist teachings invite us to cultivate as a path toward wisdom and wholeness.
And yet what I keep coming back to is… even she has seasons.
Winter. Fallow periods. Times of drawing inward, of going quiet, of letting the soil rest before it gives again. We don’t call that scarcity. We call it nature. We trust that spring will come precisely because she took that time.
She is generous. And she also receives.
That reciprocity — that rhythm of giving and receiving — is the teaching I want to sit with today.
What My Father Taught Me About Generosity
My father was one of the most generous people I’ve ever known.
He believed in education. Deeply, practically, without question.
Over the course of his life, he quietly paid for many people — friends and family alike — to go to college or trade school. Not because he was asked. Not because he expected anything back. But because he understood, in his bones, that investing in someone’s potential was one of the most meaningful things a person could do.
That generosity shaped me. I watched him give freely, joyfully, without keeping score. I learned something about what it means to move through the world with an open hand.
But here’s what I’ve been sitting with lately — especially after my time at Menla:
My father was extraordinarily generous with others. And I wonder sometimes how generous he was with himself.
The Part of Generosity We Don’t Talk About
This is where I want to turn the lens.
Because most of us who are drawn to giving — to helping, to healing, to holding space for others — have a complicated relationship with receiving.
We pile on. We say yes when we mean maybe. We give from a depleted place and then wonder why we feel empty. We treat our own needs as the last item on a very long list — something to get to when everything else is handled.
Which, as you know, means we rarely get to it at all.
What happens when the earth never rests? When the soil is asked to produce season after season without any fallow period?
It depletes. It loses its nutrients. Eventually, it stops being able to give at all.
We are no different.
Why Boundaries Are an Act of Generosity
Generosity as a spiritual practice doesn’t look like endless output. It looks like boundaries.
I know that might feel counterintuitive. How is saying no an act of generosity? But stay with me.
When you protect your energy, your time, your inner resources — when you create space for nourishment and for the things that fill you back up — you are ensuring that what you give to others comes from overflow rather than depletion. That is a generous act. For yourself and for everyone around you.
True generosity — the kind the earth models, the kind my father embodied at his best — flows from abundance. And abundance isn’t something that happens to us. It’s something we cultivate. Through the quality of attention we bring to our own lives. Through the willingness to receive as openly as we give.
Life can feel full and alive on every level — time, energy, resources, connection — but only when we allow the flow to move in both directions. To be reciprocal.
Questions to Sit With This Week
Where in your life are you giving from depletion rather than overflow?
What is one genuinely generous act you could offer yourself — not someday, but this week?
And where might a boundary actually be the most loving thing you could offer — to yourself and to the people around you?
The earth doesn’t apologize for winter.
Neither should you.
If this resonates and you’re ready to explore what generosity toward yourself might actually look like, this is exactly the kind of work we do together. You can learn more or reach out at The Well Grounded Soul.
And if you want to go deeper into these themes through conversation, Bert, Courtney, and I explore them regularly on Inner Threads — find us wherever you listen to podcasts.
