I've just arrived home to Brooklyn after two weeks in Bylakuppe, India--where fellow KarmaTuber Silas Hagerty and I had the privilege of interviewing some eighteen Tibetan elders living in exile there, at the invitation of Tashi Chodron--co-founder The Tibet Oral History Project. I interviewed, Tashi translated, Silas videotaped.

And in the midst of it all, I found myself on the receiving end of one of the most extraordinary acts of generosity in my life.

Following an hour-long interview just outside the entryway of Bylakuppe's Tsogye Shedrupling Nunnery, an 81 year-old nun by the name of Yunsto--bearing an impish grin and mostly-missing teeth--signaled to Tashi that she had a gift for me. Yuntso reached into her saffron-colored robes and between two turquoise buttons struggled to pull out a pale yellow khatag--the ceremonial scarf signaling goodwill and "auspiciousness" that Tibetans use to honor others. She placed the khatag over my shoulders, then from around her wrist removed a strand of brown prayer beads nestled together on a red string--which she joyfully put into the palm of one of my hands.

As Tashi remarked later, of the objects and the act, "They were all she had to give, so she gave them to you."

Not "but she gave them to [me]" but "so she gave them to [me]."

How can I possibly now un-know this? If such a gesture can exist in this world, who am I to ever worry that I don't have "enough"? Indeed, could it be that the sum total of all that we "own," be they qualities, experience or possessions, are granted their full expression only in the course of freely offering them up to another?

And so it is that I will keep Yuntso's khatag and prayer beads close, to remind me of these notions. Or better yet, perhaps I will give them away.