The True Reward of Giving

I actually missed 1 blog post last week because my workload has been crazy lately. I am determined not to miss another one this weekend. So here I am, typing these words on a Saturday night and probably by the time I finish, it is already Sunday morning.

I had lunch today with Myra and Paul and we had a good time catching up. Meeting up with friends, exercising and updating this blog, makes a perfect Saturday. I was talking to Myra today about my golden rule on helping others: give and expect nothing in return.

The best form of charity is one that's done anonymously. That way, you have no expectation of any form of return at all. You simply give and forget. It is not something that's easy to do because as humans, we always expect gratitude. We expect someone to be at least appreciative of what we have done for them. 

That problem is, when you give with an expectation, you are setting yourself up for a fall. It might not come in the form that you want or you might not think that you are getting back a good return. You are in effect imposing a debt on the recipient.

You spend the rest of the time, unconsciously being an emotional debt collector, keeping tab on all those whom you expect a favour in return. This is not good karmic management. You make life complicated that way. 

When you give, you are actually making a karmic action, which has consequences. But you want the consequences of your action to just bring about whatever good it can to the recipient.  To expect something in return is put an entry into the accounts receivable of your mind. You've sent an emotional invoice to the person you are trying to help.

But isn't that a naturally thing in all human interactions? True. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  That's the law of karma. When you give without expecting anything in return, you are not trying to stop the effects of karma (which is impossible) but in actual fact, allowing karma to find its best reaction.

You see, every good deed does bring you some form of karmic return. Just that it does not necessarily need to come directly from the person that you just helped. The goodwill that you inject into the universe will always pay dividend in unexpected ways. You have cleared many emotional obstacles for yourself in that one moment of selflessness. You have worked out the karma of the situation by not constraining it to react in a specific way.

Trust karma to find its best course of action. And by giving without expecting anything in return, you are a karma yogi par excellence. By freeing your mind from any expectations of return, you have greatly unburdened your mind. That in itself is already a great reward.