Today you have to understand charity if you want to understand Buddhism.

[Charities in the event-network style] emphasize not staying to talk… so you’re not creating more karmic entanglement… whereas the Cherish Children Fund… created long-term sustained relationships… as a form of collective karma.

People are doing very different types of projects for very different reasons… [But] feelings of care, feelings of selflessness were key ways that people demonstrated themselves as good people… ensuring that they were making merit.

A shinbyu is a religious donation in the full sense of the term, crucial in the lives of the Buddhist Burmese. While the shinbyu has been studied for its symbolic and ritual aspects by various anthropologists, this article proposes to analyse it through the social scenes in which different types of transfers intertwine with the religious donation. It focuses especially on “The Plate Scene”, an ambiguous moment where uncertainty about the meaning of the staging reveals the political work at play in interpreting transfers when an elderly lady refuses to be caught in the game.

An anthropological analysis of a single gesture at a community meal offering.

Why not
tend to your own horse

A poem in response to Auden’s poem about Bruegel’s painting about the fall of Icarus asking what it is that we owe one another and what is the correct response to the tragedy of craft.

Therefore, since it is extremely incongruous to kill and offer up sentient beings to pure gods who are kind and caring, it is only right and proper that you renounce such practices and worship these deities with abundant clean offerings instead.

In addressing Hindu worshippers who engage in animal sacrifice, Jamyang Khyentse highlights the karmic repercussions of taking life and challenges the notion that compassionate deities would ever endorse such a practice.

Here, take this palmful of raspberries…

One river gives
Its journey to the next.

A poem celebrating generosity in all its forms.

One gives a gift for the purpose of ornamenting the mind

Eight ways of giving a gift.

He gives what is pure and excellent…

The heart’s wish of one who is virtuous succeeds because of his purity.

When giving with a certain wish in mind, you can get it.

This sutta provides a canonical basis for the ubiquitous Buddhist practice of “dedicating the merit” of an offering.

Giving food you give strength.
Giving clothes you give beauty.

A few verses on the results of giving particularly praising the giving of shelter.

Neither behavioral nor imaging analyses supported the hypothesis that altruists’ reduced social discounting reflects effortfully overcoming selfishness. Instead, group differences emerged in [brain regions corresponding to] the subjective valuation of others’ welfare

Loving Kindness Meditation training did not result in more generous behavioral or neural patterns, but only greater perceived difficulty during social discounting. Our results indicate extraordinary altruists’ generosity results from the way regions involved in social decision-making encode the subjective value of others’ welfare.

one acquires merit even if one throws away dishwashing water in a refuse dump or cesspit with the thought: ‘May the living beings here sustain themselves with this!’

The Buddha is falsely accused of preventing gifts to other communities, but agrees that gifts to the Noble Ones are the most fruitful karmically.

Wherever the mind feels confidence, great king.

“Where should I give” and “Where is a gift very fruitful” are two different questions.

No matter how many stories one reads in which the bodhisattva agrees to give his body away, one still holds one’s breath every time the momentous decision is made. One still feels a shudder run up the spine whenever the bodhisattva cuts open his flesh, and the text dwells almost lovingly on the pain and agony endured. It is only the story that engages us to such an extent…

It is possible to care without helping. It is also possible to help without caring. Given these two options, most people would choose the second, especially in difficult moments. Dear reader, this is an honest book.

Help requires the establishment of an interpretive context or system of meaning — a relationship, in several senses — in which help does not threaten the creativity, autonomy, or personhood of the helpee and in which, instead, help facilitates development and strengthens the self. This is a creative act.

A true hero will be prepared to sacrifice much of himself or herself for others.

This brief essay discusses two similar Jataka stories that show how the Bodhisattva sacrificed himself to relieve the suffering of others. S. Dhammika muses on the purpose of such stories.

Many people in Silicon Valley and around the world now call themselves ‘Effective Altruists.’ Is there any way they might become ‘Responsible Adults?’

Of course, there will be instances where a stranger will not be amenable to your overtures (this isn’t permission to harass people on the street), but your intention should be to brighten someone’s day without worrying what they think about you.

The right view module enjoins adopting a correct basic attitude to karma, rebirth, as well as merit, giving and sacrifice that is informed by the Buddhist requalification strategy, so that it becomes integral to the Buddhist path and its emerging dāna ideology. The import of such an explicit promotion of a human recipient of worship or sacrifice can hardly be overestimated. This is a world apart from the ontological and cosmogonical yajña of the Ṛgveda

Wisdom doesn’t get itself entangled, bogged down…

A small collection of three Dhamma talks on how to orient our thoughts and practice in the right direction.

A seed sown in a field that possesses these eight factors brings forth abundant fruits, its fruits are delectable, and it yields a profit.

A strange simile for the Eightfold Path, illuminating something of how we might think about each aṅga.

… the Saṅgha may, if it wishes, turn the bowl upside down for a lay follower on eight grounds.

The Buddha allowed the monks to protest in a peculiar way which has actually been used, for example by the Burmese.

I do not recall any mental exultation arising because deities come to me

Ugga the Householder roars his lion’s roar and the Buddha confirms him as a non-returner.

What kind of person, bhikkhus, is like a rainless cloud?

Three types of people: one like a cloud without rain, one who rains locally, and one who rains everywhere.

But Mahākassapa refused those deities…

A deva-king disguises himself to give alms to Ven. Mahā Kassapa.

Here, monastics, for the donor there are three factors, and for the receivers there are three factors.

… together with its commentary interleaved, […] it should give the student an idea of how the word commentaries work

These are the five gifts of a bad person.

Good and bad ways of offering gifts.

I recollect ninety eons back but I’m not aware of any family that’s been ruined merely by offering some cooked almsfood.

Mahāvīra asks Asibandhakaputta to refute the Buddha on behalf of the Jains. He suggests to try to trap the Buddha with a dilemma: he claims to have compassion for householders, yet visits them with a large Saṅgha in a time of scarcity. But the Buddha claims no family is harmed by this.

… can you point out a fruit of giving that’s apparent in the present life?

The Buddha teaches General Sīha the benefits of giving.

When one’s house is ablaze
The vessel taken out
Is the one that is useful,
Not the one left burnt inside.

A deity recites some verses to the Buddha.

Once upon a time, householder, there was a brahmin named Velāma…

[…but] it would be more fruitful to develop the perception of impermanence—even for as long as a finger-snap—than to do all of these things

The wealthy and devoted lay supporter Anāthapiṇḍika rather curiously says that only poor alms are given in his home. The Buddha praises gracious and bounteous generosity, but meditation surpasses even the greatest offering.

… there is no way a personal offering can be more fruitful than one bestowed on a Saṅgha

When his step-mother Mahāpajāpatī wishes to offer him a robe for his personal use, the Buddha encourages her to offer it to the entire Saṅgha instead. He goes on to explain that the best kind of offering to the Saṅgha is one given to the dual community of monks and nuns.

Giving is always great.

A deva explains…

But I offered them much more food than you did! Yet, I have been born in a lower heavenly world. Having offered very little, how did you receive more happiness than me?

Devas discuss the importance of thinking about the whole Noble Sangha when giving alms instead of individual monks.

I did not have valuable things to offer. But still, I offered some

Even a small offering of sesame seeds to the Buddha brought much merit.

Visiting a family with nine factors is worthwhile

Nine factors in how a family should relate to the Saṅgha.

… if sentient beings only knew, as I do, the fruit of giving and sharing, they would not eat without first giving

I found him on the porch that morning…

… there are these two kinds of gifts: a gift of material things & a gift of the Dhamma

And so too with sharing and assistance.

… the sudden wealth generated during Taiwan’s period of rapid economic development created a need to give that wealth meaning […] Ciji provided a way of adapting traditional Buddhist rhetoric and imagery to facilitate the move from traditional “almsgiving” to “modern scientific charity.”

I can have more economic opportunity and can therefore cultivate this generosity

The role that remittances play in international development—spiritual as well as economic.

Bodhisattvas who genuinely take the bodhisattva vow of ethical discipline do nothing but act for the benefit of beings, either directly or indirectly, but unless one is skilful in benefiting these beings, no matter how much one does, it might not benefit beings, but could actually be a direct or indirect cause of harm.

An excellent summary of what to take into account in ethical decisions: useful for any serious practitioner.

… the vast majority of Americans (97 percent) are forfeiting the chance to enhance their well-being by practicing real generosity with their money.

But does this gift really aid departed relatives and family? Do they actually partake of it?

The Buddha informs a brahmin that gifts offered to dead ancestors can only go to ancestors reborn in the ghost realm, but assures him that the gift yields a reward for the donor no matter where they are reborn.

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