What riding the subway to work every day taught me about generosity.
A meditation teacher's guide to transforming your morning commute.
It’s easy to hate the subway — the crowds, the heat, the variety of unique aromas — but taking the train doesn’t have to suck.
In fact, all the things that make the subway insufferable also make it a weirdly perfect place for meditation practice. I know, I know. Just go with me for a second.
If only your morning commute looked this uncrowded... Photo via iStock.
By playing with some simple meditative exercises, you can turn your commute into something you enjoy and even look forward to.
Step 1: Practice generosity.
You’re pressed up against a bunch of strangers in a rattling metal tube. Comfort is a limited resource, to put it mildly. The situation is rife with opportunities to pursue your own comfort at the expense of others — or to do something different and open a path for someone else’s comfort and happiness.
One of the main causes of our suffering is a fixation on our “self” and its petty concerns: Am I comfortable enough? Do I have all the things I want? Do people like me? It may seem like we’re looking out for our interests, but we’re actually suffocating ourselves, choking off our ability to enjoy the present moment.
And one of the best antidotes to this claustrophobic fixation on self is — surprise, surprise — cultivating concern for others. You may not associate generosity, which we all learned about in kindergarten, with the “exotic” practice of meditation, but meditation is simply a practice of cultivating healthy habits of mind, and generosity is one of those habits. It makes the mind spacious and joyful — which is nice — and obviously the people around you benefit as well.
It’s the purest win-win there is. Maybe that’s why the Buddha traditionally taught generosity as his first lesson to new students.
“If you want to be selfish, be wisely selfish: care for others!" — The Dalai Lama
Step 2: Stand up.
Here’s the simplest, most powerful generosity practice you can do on the subway: Decide to stand whenever there aren’t enough seats. Every time you sit on a crowded train, there’s someone else who has to stand. What if you choose to be the one who stands, to make that other person’s comfort a priority? If that seems like a little too much, you can give up your seat for seniors, pregnant women, or people with disabilities.
Photo via iStock.
You give up so little by standing instead of sitting, and it’s such an easy way to make other people feel good. In addition to the physical ease of sitting, they also get the warm feeling of having a stranger do something nice for them, and you get the warm feeling of doing something nice for a stranger. The Buddha called this feeling "mudita," or “sympathetic joy.” You might find that this joy for a stranger’s well-being beats the physical comfort of taking a seat yourself.
Step 3: Share your stuff.
Here’s another easy generosity practice: When someone boards your train and asks for help, give something. I’ve definitely sat there, uncomfortable and vaguely ashamed, trying to ignore someone begging on the subway. Sharing what you have feels much nicer. This is another instance, like offering your seat, where giving something away brings more happiness than enjoying the thing yourself.
I prefer to offer food rather than money, so I order 12-packs of Clif Bars online and make sure to always keep two bars in my shoulder bag. I’ve also seen people give metro cards. When I give, I try not to let the act become rote or automatic. I focus on the person, acknowledge that this is a fellow human being who needs help, and form the wish that whatever I’m giving will bring the person some relief.
“If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way." — The Buddha
Don’t limit yourself.
There are many ways to practice generosity on the subway while you’re surrounded by train delays, loud headphones, and mysterious puddles. If you look, you can find dozens of opportunities to choose someone else’s comfort over your own.
Photo via iStock.
Let’s get to it.