Before you say 'it's for your sake'── Giving your all: is it for the other person, or for yourself? The more you let go of a return, the more you grow

Tuesday morning, a piece I had sent back the week before came back to me, rewritten. Not cut to order, but fixed by someone who had made the reason his own. Nice, I said out loud. Yet beneath that gladness another voice mixed in — the me who wants to be useful, who wants to be thanked. For the other person, or for myself? I want to loosen this question gently, without cutting it in two.

01The morning of a sent-back piece — just before I said "it's for your sake"

Last time, I wrote about caring for the other person and finishing the work together. Stepping down from the seat of the one who grades the author, and moving around to the same side of the desk. This entry is the sequel. To give my all, trusting the other person to grow — and having said that plainly, a small question stirred in my chest. Is this really for the other person? Or is it for the me who wants to be useful?

Tuesday morning, one piece came back to my hands. I had sent it back the week before. In the way the efficacy was written, one sentence had edged past the approved scope (= the range of efficacy and use that the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has authorized), and I did not write "delete this sentence" — I wrote just three lines in the margin about why it looked as if it overreached. The author is young. In our first exchange, he simply cut, mechanically, wherever he was told to. This morning was different. Not cut, but rewritten. He set the range of the data first, and then said only what could be said on top of it. The sentences had been reordered into the sequence a reading physician could apply to the patient in front of them. He had not followed an instruction; he had made the reason his own and fixed it. Nice, I said, out loud, before I knew it.

The sense of it was real. Yet beneath the gladness, I noticed another voice mixed in. I want to be useful. I want to be thanked. I want to be a good reviewer. He grew because of those three lines — there is, for sure, a me who wants to think that. Was the red ink of the sent-back piece for the other person? Or was it to confirm a me who can write like that? Try to draw the line, and it can be drawn nowhere.

This question, which looks like a detour, is one the old teachings met head-on. Helping others is, at the same time, your own gain. When you hold something out to someone, if no attachment remains to any of the three — the self who gives, the other who receives, the thing handed over — the act comes clear. To split it in two and agonize, for the other or for myself, itself dissolves when you change how you look — that is what I want to look at next.

I want to loosen this either-or slowly. To say it in advance: there is no need to split it. But the moment you set "the me who wants to be thanked" at the center of your aim, the giving turns cloudy. When you truly trust the other person's growth and give your all, for myself and for the other person become one, and that, just as it is, becomes my own path. The more you let go of a return, the more, in fact, you grow. I want to trace that paradox from a single piece sent back one morning.

02The cloudiness of a return — why "I want to be thanked" dims the giving

I once sent a piece back three times. When it finally passed on the third, the author said, "thanks to you I saw how loose my own explanation was." I was glad. But that night it caught on me a little. Was I glad the piece had gotten better, or glad at the me who had been told "thank you"? I couldn't tell them apart.

I'll write it honestly. When the words of thanks are thin, I get a little irritated. I put in all that fine red ink, checked the very text of the rules on my day off — a voice like that sounds in the back of my chest. When a piece I raised goes out and is well received, somewhere I feel it as my own credit. Not the person who made it, but me, who made them fix it. The moment this feeling — wanting to be thanked, wanting to feel I was useful — mixes in, the lead of the giving switches from the other person to myself.

Dogen, in his Shobogenzo, has a line on giving to others. To give to others is not to be greedy, it says. To hold something out is not the fine act of handing over a thing; it is, first, that you yourself do not crave a return. Before giving, do not clench. Thanks, praise, the feeling of being a good person — the instant you go to grasp them, it is no longer giving but a trade.

The more I bank on a return, the more my heart starts grading not the other person's piece but my own satisfaction. Rather than whether it grew clearer for the healthcare professional or the patient (= the most important recipient, waiting beyond the piece), whether I was thanked becomes the measuring stick. This is a quiet reversal. Meaning to give my all, I am in fact using the other person as a tool for my own satisfaction.

Let me set down one axis here. There are two kinds of giving: the cloudy and the clear. Giving with a return slipped into its aim turns cloudy. Giving that looks only at the other person's growth itself stays clear. So how does it come clear? In the next chapter I trace how to loosen this cloudiness, starting from what happens when you let go of attachment to all three — the self who gives, the other who receives, and the piece handed over.

03When you let go of the three attachments — the self who gives, the other who receives, the gift

Writing the sticky note that says why I sent it back, my hand sometimes stops. "Fix this, and this person can make a better piece (= the explanatory material that carries a drug's information to healthcare professionals and patients)." Believing that, I write the note. Finished, I peer into the back of my chest. Is this note really for the other person? Or is it for me — "I want to be a good senior," "I want to be thanked"? The old teaching answers this question in an unexpected way. It loosens the question itself, once and for all.

The clue is to let go of attachment to all three at once — the self who gives, the other who receives, and the thing handed over. A commentary written by Nagarjuna, an Indian monk of the second to third century, teaches that the condition for truly completing the act of giving to others is that none of these three can be fixed and grasped. Do not take pride in "the me who gave," do not look down on "the other who received," do not count the return on "the thing handed over." When the heart catches on none of the three, the giving, for the first time, comes clear.

There is one more. An old sutra on wisdom free of attachment says it plainly: give without being caught by the images that rise in the heart — the return, or your own goodness — simply give. Reading it with the help of the annotated translation by Hajime Nakamura and Kazuyoshi Kino (Iwanami Bunko), this is not a cold, dismissive teaching. Rather, the story is that giving flies lighter and reaches farther by exactly the weight of the return you take off. "For the other, or for myself?" This question arises only from setting up the three — the self who gives, the other who receives, the thing handed over — as sharply separate. When the borders between the three loosen, the question itself dissolves.

Let me bring it close to the review floor. The three attachments I tend to carry line up like this. Pride in "the me who instructs," a top-down eye toward "the author who is instructed," and the expectation of a return on "the gift of my comments." To let go of these three is not to stop commenting. Just the opposite — I write the sticky notes as carefully as ever. Only, after writing, I quietly stop counting in my chest, "did they understand?" "a word of thanks would be nice." If the other person fixes it in silence and moves on, that is fine. If it reaches the third person the piece finally arrives at — the healthcare professional or patient who reads the drug's explanation (= the real recipient, beyond the other person) — correctly, then my part is done.

The me in the left column is forever keeping books in the heart. A "credit" piles up with every sticky note, and with no thanks I feel I "lost out." Move to the right column, and I let go of the whole ledger. Strangely, closing the books makes the work lighter, and the other person's growth becomes plainly glad. Not seeking a return is not casting the other person off; it is wiping away the film of attachment and returning the giving to its original, clear form. When the three attachments come clear, "for the other" and "for myself" have already melted into one, just before either name.

04Rejoicing in another's growth as your own, and letting go of the result

One author carried to my desk the piece that had finally passed on the third try. Where the grounds and the wording had drifted apart before, this time they lined up cleanly. Before I knew it I said, "this got better here." In that instant I felt my chest go lightly loose. I had not fixed it. He had grown. And there I was, glad about it as if it were my own. Buddhism has a name ready for this feeling.

Buddhism has sorted the heart turned toward all people into four. The wish to give the other person ease, the wish to remove the other person's suffering, the heart that rejoices in another's happiness as its own, and keeping the heart level — letting go of favoritism and attachment to a return. A treatise compiled by Vasubandhu, a scholar-monk of fifth-century India, sets down these four, and the Buddhist scholar Hajime Nakamura's Jihi (Compassion) also arranges them along the standard understanding of Japanese Buddhism. What works on the me of today is the latter two — the heart that rejoices in another's growth as its own, and keeping the heart level, letting go of attachment to the result.

To rejoice means: can you, without counting the other's growth as your own achievement, be glad of it as that person's own happiness? The moment you puff up with "I raised them," that gladness turns a little cloudy. Because the owner of the achievement has, before you notice, switched from the other person to you. He grew — I am simply glad of that — can you keep from mixing your own credit into it? The difference is slight, but for the recipient (= the healthcare professional or patient beyond the piece) it is large. When the author grows not "to be praised" but "to be conveyed correctly," the quality of the piece rises in the quietest way.

And keeping the heart level. This is not coldness. It is not hanging your heart on the result — the thanks, the achievement. Cheerful on the day I'm told thank you, sour on the day I'm passed in silence — that would make my kindness an unstable thing, swinging with the other person's reaction. Letting go of that swing: a levelness that can give the same all to anyone. Not slacking off. Only not entering a return into the reckoning. So it is not the resigned "throwing away," but closer to the stillness of clear water.

Rejoicing in another's happiness as your own, and letting go of attachment to a return. When these two mesh, "the joy of trusting and raising someone" turns from my self-satisfaction into clear work for the other person. What keeps the joy from clouding is the heart's levelness, and what warms that levelness so it does not turn cold is the joy. With only one of them, both go crooked.

05Where the either-or of "for the other / for myself" dissolves

Having finished writing the reason for sending it back, my finger sometimes stops before I hit send. I truly wish this person to grow. At the same time, there is surely a me who wants to see the fixed piece and breathe out, "I was of use." For the other, or for myself? For a long time I weighed these two on the scales and agonized. One day it struck me — maybe the scales themselves are not needed.

In an old sutra of the Pure Land teaching there is a vow like this. One practitioner, not yet a Buddha, vows: "I will not awaken alone; only when all people are saved will I too become a Buddha." His own completion and the saving of others do not stand side by side as separate goals. Unless one is full, the other is not full either — it becomes a single, unified wish. This sits at the core of the idea that helping others is, at the same time, your own gain.

Go one step further back, and you arrive at a view: there is, originally, no fixed content called "this is myself." And then it reaches all the way to this — self and other, pushed to the end, cannot be cleanly split; they are one. The author and I do sit at different desks and wear different name tags. But on the single point of wanting to deliver a good piece to healthcare professionals and patients, the border blurs. His growing is also my work moving forward, and the one saved down the line is the third person the piece reaches — the physician who reads the drug's explanation, and the patient handed that drug. The act of giving arises from a place not yet divided, before it is parceled out to either the other or the self.

If so, the question "for the other, or for myself?" stands only on the premise that the two can be cleanly split. Let the premise collapse, and the question no longer stands. It is not that the worry is solved. The ground the worry stood on disappears. In the table below, I set two ways of seeing side by side.

Let me add this so there's no misreading. That the two are one does not mean you may set "for myself" (= wanting thanks, wanting to be a good person) as your aim. The moment you make it the aim, the giving turns cloudy. That belongs to the next chapter. Only, when I am truly trusting the other person's growth and giving my all, I am not counting "which one is it for." In that gesture of having stopped counting, I see that my gain and the other's gain were one from the start.

06Forget the self and benefit others — Saicho's words, and support from our own time

Writing the red ink of a sent-back piece, I sometimes ask myself again. This feeling of wishing this person to grow well — how far is it for the other person, and from where is it for the "me who wants to be useful"? The more I try to split them, the less the line can be drawn. An old saying, and new research, taught me there is no need to draw it.

Saicho, the monk who founded the Japanese Tendai school in the early Heian period, wrote this in the rules for training monks on Mount Hiei. "To forget the self and benefit others is the height of compassion." To see the other's suffering before your own, and to wish for their good — that is the deepest place of the heart. To set your own credit and return aside for a moment and give your all to others. Saicho's other line, "light up your one corner (= be someone who quietly lights the small corner where you stand)," also teaches lighting not a great stage but the one person in front of you. My work, facing each material author one at a time, is close to this labor of lighting a corner.

"Forget the self" does not mean sacrifice yourself and wear yourself down. Here a modern word builds a bridge. The psychologist Erich Fromm (= the thinker who wrote The Art of Loving) said that giving is neither sacrifice nor loss, but an expression of one's own abundance. The poor cannot give, for fear of losing. Only the full can give without stint. Raising and giving does not diminish the self; rather it becomes proof of one's abundance — a restatement, from the side of the heart, of the old idea that helping others is, at the same time, your own gain, is how I read it.

The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (= the doctor who recorded his concentration-camp experience in Man's Search for Meaning) took this a step further. A person is fulfilled not when chasing their own happiness directly, but when giving to something, or someone, beyond themselves. Happiness is not something to be seized by aiming at it; it follows later, as the result of throwing yourself into something. As long as "the me who wants to be thanked" sits at the center of the aim, it stays away. Move the aim onto the other's growth itself, and the fulfillment comes along afterward. This reversal of order gently loosens my question.

And there is empirical research. The organizational psychologist Adam Grant (= author of Give and Take) followed givers, takers, and matchers over a long stretch. Those who stall the most are the givers who keep giving at their own expense — but those who rise the most are also givers. What divided them was whether, while wishing for the other's benefit, they kept from wearing themselves out. The person who gives with the return let go grows, in the end, the farthest. Saicho's words, crossing twelve hundred years, seem to have won the backing of statistics, and it makes me smile a little.

07The more you let go of a return, the more you grow — no splitting, just giving your all

Tomorrow, again, I will send a piece back. The maker will surely slump. Even so, I already half-see the figure of that person, one step better after the fix. Having written this far, to the first question — for the other, or for myself? — I want to answer like this. There is, probably, no need to split it and agonize.

But there is one thing to watch. The moment you make a return your aim — "I want to be thanked," "I want to be a useful self" — giving your all turns cloudy. Because how you look becomes the lead, rather than the other person's growth. Dogen wrote that the substance of giving to others is not to crave a return (Shobogenzo). Raising people is the same: the hand that does not try to take something back from the other is the clearer one.

Conversely, when you truly trust the other's room to grow and give your all, your gain and the other's gain become one. Benefiting others fills up as one with benefiting yourself. Saicho taught, "to forget the self and benefit others is the height of compassion" (Sange Gakushoshiki). The more you step down from the lead role, the deeper the heart that thinks of the other. Erich Fromm stands in a near place. Giving, he said, is not a sacrifice that wears you down but "an expression of one's own abundance" (The Art of Loving).

There lies the quietest paradox of this entry. The more you let go of a return, the more, in fact, you grow. Adam Grant showed, from vast research, that it is not the giver who burns out at their own expense but the giver who keeps both the other and themselves in view who rises the longest (Give and Take). Not aiming for thanks is what, in the end, grows both your work and your breadth as a person. Because you don't go to take, it comes back. It overlaps with Frankl's insight that a person is fulfilled, for the first time, when giving to someone or something beyond their own gain and loss.

So what will tomorrow's me ask before sending a piece back? Not answers — I keep three questions to hand.

And last is to let go of attachment to the result and the return. If a quiet, accurate page reaches the third person — the healthcare professional who receives the piece, and the patient beyond them — that is enough. Whose credit it is, is not needed there. By just as much as you let go, the giving comes clear. And by just as much as it comes clear, I too, probably, have grown.

When you give your all to someone's growth, who is the lead in your heart? Don't rush the answer; in one scene tomorrow, quietly check.