Dana · Pāli/Skt: dāna

Dāna is giving. The Access to Insight Pali glossary defines it as “Giving, liberality; offering, alms”, and more broadly as “the inclination to give, without expecting any form of repayment from the recipient”. It is where the path begins: the same glossary notes that “Dana is the first theme in the Buddha’s system of gradual training”, and Bhikkhu Bodhi observes that the practice of giving “figures as the first of the three bases of meritorious deeds (punnakiriyavatthu), as the first of the four means of benefiting others (sangahavatthu), and as the first of the ten paramis”, the perfections. In the Pali suttas, he adds, “talk on giving” (danakatha) was “invariably the first topic to be discussed by the Buddha” in his “graduated exposition” of the Dhamma; only once his listeners had come to appreciate it would he move on to morality (see the five precepts), the law of kamma and the benefits of renunciation, and only then to the Four Noble Truths.

What is given matters less than the mind behind it. Susan Elbaum Jootla writes: “The volition of the donor before, during and after the act of generosity is the most important of the three factors involved in the practice of giving.” Lily de Silva explains why giving comes first at all: it “is the best weapon against greed (lobha), the first of the three unwholesome motivational roots”.

Mahayana keeps dāna at the head of the list, as the first of the six perfections, and adds “the threefold purity”, in which the bodhisattva does not regard “herself, the action being performed, or the object of that action as being a real, objectively existing thing”. The Dhammapada ranks one gift highest of all: “A gift of Dhamma conquers all gifts.”