What is generosity? We commonly think of generosity as an action – we give food to someone who asks, we give money to someone on the streets – but generosity can involve many aspects that can be taken for granted. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, generosity (Skt. dāna-pāramitā, Tib. སྦྱིན་པའི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པ་) is one of the pāramitās (a word that is commonly translated as “perfection,” but actually means something closer to “something that goes beyond”), and the practice of this perfection is important for the accumulation of merit (Skt. puṇya, Tib. བསོད་ནམས་). But what is merit? In some popular understandings, merit can be explained using the analogy of money in a bank account –…