| Welcome to From the Academy, a monthly newsletter for Premium subscribers offering a scholarly take on topics in Buddhist thought and practice. Each issue highlights a key theme and points to further readings and videos for exploration, developed in collaboration with the Ho Family Foundation Buddhism Public Scholar in residence at Tricycle. |
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 | Burmese nuns waiting for alms. | Staffan Scherz / flickr Creative Commons |
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The Buddha’s path takes a turn with an unexpected offering. A young woman named Sujata, believing Siddhartha to be a local tree spirit, presents him with milk-rice porridge after his years of asceticism. His acceptance of her gift marked an important shift toward the middle way and underscores a key fact of Buddhist life: Practitioners have always relied on the contributions of others.
This giving, or dāna, is the most fundamental form of merit-making in Buddhism. It can refer to an offered object, the act, or the intention behind it. From the earliest narratives onward, giving creates the relationships that allow Buddhist communities to flourish. |
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Dāna and the Sangha
Buddhist sanghas have long depended on lay generosity. The donation of alms food to monastics is a paradigmatic form of dāna, but it also includes monetary gifts, cloth, royal land grants, and temple construction. The monastic community is considered a field of merit (Skt.: puṇya-kṣetra) because of its conduct and vows; lay donors participate in this merit through their offerings.
Yet giving has never flowed in only one direction. Inscriptions and ledgers show that monastics themselves made significant contributions to communal projects. This circulation of material resources has long provided the framework through which Buddhist teachings continue and through which Buddhist institutions often become central to local economies. |
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The Practice
Dāna is ideally undertaken without attachment or expectation of reward, even as Buddhist literature highlights the exalted results of generosity. Giving aligns a donor’s intentions with the social realities they inhabit; it is both a personal discipline and a way to engage in a communal world. Generosity paradoxically transcends the self while also generating personal benefit.
Classified as the first perfection (Skt.: pāramitā; Pali: pāramī), dāna can be gradually strengthened through training. Small acts loosen attachment and cultivate the habit of giving, while larger acts extend one’s sense of responsibility to others. Generosity also includes nonmaterial forms of assistance: sharing attention, joy, and kindness, or offering caregiving and volunteer labor. Within Mahayana thought, giving is framed through emptiness, in which giver, gift, and recipient are interdependent and lack fixed essences. This understanding of dāna highlights the relational fabric on which Buddhism depends. |
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Dāna in the West
The Buddhist landscape in the West has shifted. Lay-centered practice and more egalitarian structures altered the traditional “merit economy,” in which dāna was directed toward monastic communities. Western temples and dharma centers often rely on membership and program fees, shaped by nonprofit norms and cultural reluctance to discuss financial needs. These patterns can obscure the importance of contributions in supporting teachers and institutions. Without a steady income, many communities—especially those led by aging or immigrant teachers—struggle to remain viable. These conditions invite renewed attention to how dāna might be applied within contemporary Buddhist life. |
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 | Theravada Buddhist monk Ajaan Geoff goes for alms round in Portland, Oregon. | Mary Reinard / Wikimedia Commons |
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Why It Still Matters
Rediscovering—and, in some cases, reformulating—the spirit of dāna can counter the hyperindividualism of contemporary life. Giving situates people in relationships, affirming interdependence and the possibility of mutual growth. Even small gestures can affect teachers, institutions, and the dharma.
Buddhist communities continue to explore ways to center generosity, whether through humanitarian aid, charitable projects, pop-up events, or food distribution. These efforts echo patterns visible from the tradition’s earliest narratives. When Sujata offered porridge to Siddhartha, she acted with sincerity and the means available to her. Such ordinary and relational gestures have long bolstered Buddhist life, and they remain essential today. |
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Additional Material- Bhikkhu Bodhi, ed., Dana: The Practice of Giving (Access to Insight, BCBS Edition, 2013). A collection of short essays drawing on canonical and commentarial sources, offering historical, doctrinal, and practical perspectives on dāna.
- Maria Heim, Theories of the Gift in South Asia: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Reflections on Dāna (New York: Routledge, 2004). A comparative study of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain scholastic analysis of dāna, offering a clear account of how South Asian traditions theorized giving beyond reciprocity.
- Āryadānapāramitā Nāmamāhāyana Sūtra (The Noble Great Vehicle Sutra “The Perfection of Generosity”), translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2019). A Mahayana sutra in which the Buddha explains how bodhisattvas practice the perfection of generosity, emphasizing compassionate motivation and detailing the different kinds of offerings and the qualities they cultivate.
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