DW's Blog

The Practice of Unveiling: How Giving Reveals Our Inexhaustible Nature

by DW Green — September 17, 2025

“This practice of giving as unveiling directly challenges one of the most persistent illusions of human experience: scarcity.”

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A single act of giving has a value beyond what we can imagine. So much of the spiritual path is expressed and realized in giving: love, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity; letting go of grasping, aversion, and delusion… that is why the Buddha said that if we know, as he did, the power of giving, we would not let a single meal pass without sharing some of it.

I hadn’t ever thought about the deeper mechanics of this teaching before. What if the Buddha’s emphasis on constant sharing wasn’t really about the food at all? What if it was about something far more profound—the practice of discovering our own inexhaustible nature?

THE PARADOX OF POSSESSION

There’s an ancient spiritual paradox worth exploring: only what one possesses can one give away. On the surface, this seems obvious. You can’t hand over money you don’t have or share food from an empty cupboard. But when we move beyond the material realm, this truth reveals layers of meaning that can transform how we understand both giving and spiritual development.

Can you offer patience if you don’t possess it? Can you give genuine compassion without having first cultivated it within yourself? This suggests that giving functions as a kind of spiritual inventory—it reveals what we’ve actually developed inside ourselves, not just what we think we have.

But here’s where it gets interesting: sometimes the act of giving itself creates what we’re offering. When we extend kindness to someone difficult, we might discover reserves of grace we didn’t know existed. When we share our time despite feeling rushed, we often find ourselves moving with unexpected calm. The giving becomes both the expression and the cultivation of the quality we’re sharing.

UNVEILING WHAT ALREADY IS

Perhaps this points to an even deeper truth: we have within us all we will ever need. It’s only a matter of uncovering that which already IS, lifting what mystics have called “the veil of unknowing.” If this is true, then giving becomes something revolutionary—not a depletion of our resources, but a practice of unveiling our own abundance.

Each generous act peels back another layer of the illusion that we lack what others need from us. The person who thinks they have nothing to offer discovers they have everything. The one who gives from apparent emptiness finds inexhaustible fullness. This isn’t magical thinking; it’s the recognition of what spiritual traditions have long taught: our deepest nature is already complete.

THE SINGLE ACT AS REVELATION

This is why a single act of giving carries such transformative power. It forces us past the ego’s careful accounting system that insists, “I don’t have enough patience/love/wisdom/energy to give away.” When we give anyway— especially when we feel we don’t have enough—we often discover wellsprings we never knew existed.

The Buddha’s teaching about not letting a meal pass without sharing takes on new meaning here. It’s not about the food; it’s about the constant practice of discovering our own inexhaustible nature. Each small act becomes both revelation and practice—seeing what IS while simultaneously becoming more of what we already are

THE SIMPLICITY OF AN OPEN MIND

In a way, it all seems so simple, and perhaps it is. The practice requires only an open mind, a blank slate—a willingness to discover rather than defend, to unveil rather than accumulate. When we approach giving from this space of openness, we move beyond the transactional and into the transformational.

The person who shares their lunch isn’t just feeding someone; they’re practicing abundance. The one who offers a listening ear isn’t just being helpful; they’re discovering the depth of their own capacity for presence. The individual who gives a genuine compliment isn’t just being nice; they’re unveiling their ability to see and celebrate the good in others.

BEYOND THE ILLUSION OF SCARCITY

This practice of giving as unveiling directly challenges one of the most persistent illusions of human experience: scarcity. Our ego-mind operates from the assumption that we have limited resources—limited love, limited patience, limited compassion. But what if this is simply untrue? What if these qualities aren’t finite resources to be hoarded but infinite capacities to be discovered through use?

When we give from this understanding, we’re not depleting ourselves; we’re revealing ourselves. Each act becomes an experiment in abundance, a small rebellion against the scarcity mindset that keeps us contracted and fearful.

THE ENDLESS PRACTICE

Perhaps this is why spiritual traditions emphasize consistent practice over grand gestures. The Buddha’s suggestion to share something with every meal wasn’t about achieving sainthood through a single magnificent act of charity. It was about the daily, gentle work of peeling back the veils that obscure our true nature.