Tricycle | Awake in the World

“Stingy” —it’s a funny word. Scrooge comes to mind. We usually think of “stingy” in terms of possessions and possessiveness —not sharing what we own, being tight with money. Notice that the word “tight” describes what it actually feels like to be stingy.

There are many ways of being stingy. For example, a friend of mine, someone I dearly love, is very stingy with the servings she gives to people whenever she is the hostess. It’s noticeable to her guests—everything on their plates is very small. Rumi describes stinginess perfectly in his poem “Dervish at the Door”:

A dervish knocked at a house
to ask for a piece of dry bread.
or moist, it didn’t matter.

“This is not a bakery,” said the owner.

“Might I have a bit of gristle, then?”

“Does this look like a butcher shop?”

“A little flour?”

“Do you hear a grinding stone?”

“Some water?”

“This is not a well.”

Whatever the dervish asked for,
the man made some tired joke
and refused to give him anything.

Finally the dervish ran into the house,
lifted his robe and squatted
as though to take a shit.

“Hey, hey!”

“Quiet, you sad man. A deserted place
is a fine spot to relieve oneself.
and since there’s no living thing here
or means of living, it needs fertilizing.”

The dervish began his own list
of questions and answers.

“What kind of bird are you? Not a falcon,
trained for the royal hand, Not a peacock,
painted with everyone’s eyes, Not a parrot,
that talks for sugar cubes, Not a nightingale,
that sings like someone in love.
Not a hoopoe that brings messages to Solomon.
Or a stork that builds on a cliffside.

What exactly do you do?
You are no known species.

You haggle and make jokes
to keep what you own for yourself.

You have forgotten about the One
who doesn’t care about ownership,
who doesn’t try to turn a profit
from every human exchange.”

(Translated by Coleman Barks, from “The Essential Rumi”)

The One, or Oneness, as we might say in Zen, never tries to turn a profit from anything at all. It wouldn’t even make sense. We, on the other hand, are always trying to turn a profit from every human exchange. We are always trying to get something— admiration, love, recognition, praise, acknowledgment, even just staying connected. Think how we manipulate and bargain and negotiate to turn a profit from every interaction. Much of this is subtle, unconscious habit. Even when we give, or serve, or love, or pay attention, we’re trying to get something. Sometimes it’s just to get back some of what we give.

So what are we stingy with in all these cases? One of the things we’re stingy with is one hundred percent. We’re stingy with the possibility of doing something one hundred percent. Imagine loving one hundred percent. Imagine acknowledging someone one hundred percent, with no thought of getting something in return, which would take part of it away and make it seventy percent, or even twenty percent. We’re also stingy with the truth, the truth of what’s really going on in us—what we really want. We hold onto the truth, hold it back, withhold it. We play our cards close to the chest, covering the heart.

We also try to turn a profit in practice—to get something from it. We try to get better. We try to get enlightenment. We try to get seen for doing it right. What are we being stingy with here? Wholehearted surrender to the present moment or to what is. Think how stingy we are with that. Think how tightly we hold on. We also imagine that in practicing, what we will “get” will be ours—which is, of course, the greatest delusion of all.

And then there is surrender/ In addition to treating it as a bargaining tool—“I’ll surrender to the present moment and then get something back”—we imagine that surrender is something we can do. If it were wholehearted surrender, there wouldn’t be anyone there to do the surrendering. So how do we surrender? How do we do this nondoing? We have to be taken, if you will. We can only prepare the conditions for being taken. Taken by what? By the present moment, by Ultimate Reality, by the Absolute, by God. And the way we prepare those conditions is by staying here now, by giving up all our negotiations, our bargaining, our “getting.” Bargaining is something stingy people do all the time: “I’ll do this if you do that”; “I’ll do this in order to get that.” It’s always a kind of tit for tat—conditional. Think of the notion of unconditional love. It’s interesting that we usually think about how nice it would be to receive it.