What is generosity from a Buddhist perspective?
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 – it can be accumulated – and the objective becomes accumulating more than others (like the annual Forbes’ list). This understanding of merit can lead to a sense that people who are in “better” conditions in life have more merits than the poor and marginalised, and also that we can use our merits like credit cards. Merit is interpreted this way because of our closeness to a capitalist/neoliberal, and also a consumerist, mindset. We expect that our good deeds will give us something good in return. This expectation of being repaid indicates that good actions are not sola gratia, as Christians would say, a free gift.
If merit were to be analysed through the amount of material objects one possesses, how could we make sense of the Buddha and his disciples? They lived in what people commonly consider poor conditions and had to roam asking for alms in order to have something to eat. Therefore, merit cannot and should not be measured by wealth or material conditions.
In our present world, everything and everyone is judged according to material conditions, which demand immediate action and attention if we are to be accepted or to fit in. If people do not align with expectations, the logic of the system says that they should be discarded. Relationships become disposable, in the same manner people shop and discard items compulsively. Furthermore, those who don’t fit in are stigmatised and marginalised. According to Kathy Charmaz, those who do not fit into the system through no fault of their own – such as people with disabilities – are also stigmatized and marginalised. She writes:
Neoliberalism assumes the value of individual responsibility, self-sufficiency, competition, efficiency, and profit…Moreover, neoliberalism brings the victim-blaming of impoverished ill and disabled people into the foreground.
Kathy Charmaz, “Experiencing Stigma and Exclusion: The Influence of Neoliberal Perspectives, Practices, and Policies on Living with Chronic Illness and Disability,” Symbolic Interaction 43, no. 1 (2022): 22.
The neoliberal mindset and its victim-blaming takes an enormous toll on people’s mental health, since happiness is said to depend solely on our own efforts.
Happiness then is transformed into the immediate satisfaction of our cravings, and in a consumerist way can be bought, but also discarded when it no longer serves us. The idea of accumulating merits is shaped in a neoliberal way, so that people become more concerned with obtaining wealth so they can afford “happiness.” As an ultimate goal, happiness is accumulating more wealth and buying more products with the hope of quenching our infinite thirst. And when buying is not enough, one can shift to giving material possessions (that no longer suit them) in hopes of having more (satisfaction or wealth) in return.
Neoliberal generosity implies helping oneself prior to helping others, because it is focused on what will be obtained later on. It is like doing a favour and expecting that favour to be returned. This is ultimately a selfish way of seeing, thinking, and living reality, and is not what Buddhist traditions propose nor teach on generosity.
Within Buddhism, generosity is understood as an action devoid of expectations. It should be a free gift, or else it is not generosity, but a selfish action based on one’s own interests. Je Tsongkhapa, founder of the Geluk tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, describes generosity in his Lam rim Chen mo (Tib. ལམ་རིམ་ཆེན་མོ་):
…you perfect generosity after you destroy your stingy clinging to all that you own—your body, resources, and roots of virtue—and you completely condition your mind to giving them away to living beings from the depths of your heart and, not only that, but also to giving to others the effects of this giving as well
Je Tsongkhapa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path, vol. 2 (Snow Lion, 2004), 115.
Tsongkhapa asserts that even the merits we have accumulated should be given to others. Hence, the mental aspect is more important than the action itself, and this opens more possibilities of understanding generosity.
According to Tsongkhapa generosity can be divided into three giving actions: the giving of teachings, the giving of fearlessness, and the giving of material objects.[1] Giving food, clothes, hygiene items, medicine is part of the giving of material objects. They are important, but not principal since these alleviate temporarily the ailments of the body and mind.
The main practice (and goal as well) is to help in more than a temporary way, which implies being more present in people’s lives. This is why giving teachings and fearlessness are more important (and also more demanding). Giving teachings does not mean seeking the conversion of people to Buddhism but giving them what they need according to their own systems, such as advice, antidotes for their emotional and mental afflictions (Skt. tri-akuśala-mūla, Tib. ཉོན་མོངས་པ་དུག་གསུམ་)[2] whilst respecting their beliefs and understanding their limitations. As for giving fearlessness it can mean literally offering protection from fears, but also offering a helping hand to the person so they can overcome fear and recover self-confidence. Both categories are not immediate, they demand time to construct a healthy relationship based on learning, reflecting, and applying antidotes. It involves being present in the other person’s life and creating a bond in a way that makes change possible.
Given all this, generosity at its best – from a Buddhist perspective – comes from education. First educating oneself, reflecting and applying antidotes and only then educating others through the practice of a generosity that involves time – time to listen to the other, to be there for him/her, to offer advice and consolation. Simultaneously, the other should know that there is no immediate solution to be offered – it takes time to apply antidotes.
Education became a profitable business, as it transformed to offer knowledge for obtaining jobs and status, but left the cultivation of proper emotions out. In a Buddhist sense, education should be understood as the development of hearts and minds in compassion and wisdom. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama stated that:
These days everyone appreciates the importance of education, but education should include instruction about the role warm-heartedness plays in an individual’s good health, as well as in peace within families, communities and the world at large. I’m committed to telling as many people as possible that we are the same in being human. Because that makes us brothers and sisters, there’s no point in accumulating weapons and fighting among ourselves.
Conversation with the Dalai Lama, Educating the Heart for the New Millennium (https://www.dalailama.com/news/2021/educating-the-heart-for-the-new-millennium) (24/11/2021).
For the practice of generosity (Skt. dāna-pāramitā, Tib. སྦྱིན་པའི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པ་) to take place, it is important to understand that it is not based on one single action, but rather on an interdependent array of actions, from studying and practising to applying antidotes and giving (teachings, fearlessness, and/or material objects). As the Dalai Lama often mentions, merit and wisdom should always come together, as they can be visualised as two wings of a bird – a bird cannot fly with one wing alone. In other words, merit (Skt. puṇya, Tib. བསོད་ནམས་) and wisdom (Skt. jn͂āna, Tib. ཡེ་ཤེས་) are inseparable.
It is in hopes of effecting a change in our societies’ mindsets that the Buddhist concept of generosity (and even education) can be understood. Moreover, analysing the concept of generosity through the lens of a neoliberal system threatens to transform Buddhism into a new form of prosperity theology in which the self becomes more important than the world.
References
[1] Je Tsongkhapa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path, vol. 2 (Snow Lion, 2004), 122.
[2] The three poisons or kleśas (also known as tri-akuśala-mūla) are described in many Buddhist texts, being ignorance the root from which attachment and hatred are born. See: Plinio Tsai, Sermão do Grande Fundamento (BUDA, 2020), 75; Je Tsongkhapa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path, vol. 3, (Snow Lion, 2004), 75.
© Patricia Palazzo Tsai, 2022.
This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Cover Image: “Buddha teaching Mother” by bwaters23 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Patricia Palazzo Tsai teaches at the Buddhist Theology undergraduate program from Instituto Pramāṇa, in Valinhos, and is also Legal Director of the Buddha-Dharma Association in Brazil (http://buda.org.br). She is a Buddhist practitioner from Mahāyāna Geluk tradition. She is a member of the Scholars at The Peripheries research group from University of St. Andrews (coordinated by Prof. Mario I. Aguilar), and also a member of Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women (and also member of the Sakyadhita Sao Paulo chapter). She researches Mahāyāna Buddhism, Buddhist Ethics, and Interreligious Dialogue. She tweets as @PalazzoTsai.
