“Can I give you a hand getting up?” The question came from my friend Lauren, and was certainly appropriate: I was flat on my back, exhausted after a difficult ascent of a 60-foot climbing wall. My response—quick and positive—closed the loop on an apparently simple interaction, nothing more than assistance offered and accepted.
In context, it was anything but simple. Lauren and I know each other through UpEnding Parkinson’s, an organization that serves people living with PD by helping us learn to climb the vertiginous walls of a local climbing gym. I’m an eager student, and Lauren is a volunteer belayer, whose job is to help me improve my climbing skills while holding the other end of the rope that will catch me if (when) I come off the wall.
People with Parkinson’s rely on a variety of caregivers, ranging from medical professionals to family and to volunteers like Lauren, who give generously of their own time to help us through the difficulties of our days.
Generosity is a considered an important virtue in most human cultures. In the Zen Buddhist tradition that I follow, it’s called dana and is one of the six paramitas (perfections) that a Zen practitioner cultivates in meditation and in daily life, by taking out into the world the habits of mind and body developed on the cushion.
Dana is commonly thought of in terms of material giving, and in that sense it’s an important element in the practice of non-attachment (not clinging to what we have). By benefitting others, it begins to realize our vow to liberate all beings, an ideal of Zen practice. Non-material expressions of dana are equally valuable: sharing our knowledge; encouraging our fellow spiritual seekers; even simply giving our complete attention, being fully present in our encounters with others.
Practice of dana isn’t limited to giving, though. In fact, receiving with complete acceptance is also dana. That’s where my interaction with Lauren got a little complicated. Like many of my friends in the Parkinson’s community, I’m often insistent on doing it myself. In that regard I can be as adamant as a toddler, though with a difference. The child is trying to develop skills that will give them more control of their life, while I’m clinging to those same skills, at risk of disappearing as my disorder progresses.
That petulance, however, marks a refusal to join my helper in the practice of dana, a failure to meet the generosity of giving with the generosity of receiving. I’m learning, slowly, to seek a balance in those exchanges. It starts with gratefully accepting help when it’s offered, and then letting my helpers know that I really will ask for assistance when I find that I really can’t do it myself.
Which, of course, is pretty much a lesson we all have to learn. In this interdependent world, none of us can do it all by ourselves—and connecting with each other in generous giving and receiving can ease the way for all.