Summary: This essay explores what the Buddha's teaching on dāna (generosity) asks of modern philanthropy. Drawing from the suttas, it examines why the tradition places the giver's mind before the gift's outcome, why modern philanthropic structures often reverse that order, and what it would mean for practitioners with significant wealth to realign their giving with the oldest teaching on generosity in the Buddhist canon. Part 1 of The Practice of Giving series on Giving Without Grasping.
There is a moment in the suttas I keep returning to. King Pasenadi of Kosala comes to the Buddha with a practical question, the kind a wealthy person still asks today: where should a gift be given?
The Buddha's answer is startling in its simplicity. Wherever the mind feels inspired.
Pasenadi, being a king and therefore practical, follows up. But where does a gift bear great fruit? And the Buddha, notably, treats this as a different question. A gift bears great fruit, he says, when given to the virtuous. Two questions, two answers, in a particular order. First, the freedom of the giving mind. Second, and only second, the question of where the gift will do the most good.
Note: This exchange appears in SN 3.24, the Issattasutta, from the Saṁyutta Nikāya. You can read the full sutta in Bhikkhu Sujato's translation at SuttaCentral or in Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu's translation at dhammatalks.org.
Two Questions in a Particular Order
I have been thinking about that ordering for a long time because I believe modern philanthropy has it exactly reversed, and I believe a growing number of Buddhist practitioners in North America feel that reversal in their bodies every time they sit in a wealth-planning meeting.
The Practitioner in the Planning Meeting
Let me describe a person. Perhaps you know them. Perhaps you are them.
They have practiced for years. They keep the precepts, imperfectly and sincerely, the way most of us do. Through work, often in technology, sometimes through a sale, an inheritance, or years of restraint, they have arrived at a strange and quietly uncomfortable fact: they have more than they need. Not abstractly more. Concretely, mathematically more, the kind of more that will outlive them.
They want to give. The wish is real, and it comes from practice. And so they raise it tentatively with the professionals who manage their financial lives, and the machinery engages. Do you have charitable intent this year? Have you considered a donor-advised fund? Appreciated assets are the most tax-efficient gift. What are your giving priorities, and shall we put a strategy around them?
Every one of those questions is competent. None of them is wrong. And the practitioner leaves the meeting with the odd, hard-to-name feeling that the thing they came in carrying was never touched. They were asked about vehicles when they wanted to talk about the mind. They were asked to optimize before they were asked what inspired them. Some conclude, quietly and without drama, that organized philanthropy is simply not built for people like them. They are more right than they know, and the conclusion is worth challenging anyway.
Why Dāna Comes First
The Buddha taught giving before he taught almost anything else. In the gradual training, dana comes first, before virtue, before the breath, before insight. This is not because generosity is elementary. It is because generosity is foundational, and the tradition understands something about it that the modern giving industry has largely forgotten: the primary field of a gift is the mind of the giver.
Consider what the suttas say happens in an act of true giving. The mind, in the moment of release, experiences its own abundance. You cannot give what you do not have, so the gift itself is proof, concrete and internal, that you have enough. Held over a lifetime, this practice erodes the deepest poverty there is: not the absence of money, but the anxious conviction that there is never enough, that the walls must be maintained, that security lies in accumulation. The tradition offers giving as its cure, not its consequence.
Note: The ideas in this passage draw from several sources in the Pali Canon and from Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu's essay "No Strings Attached" (accesstoinsight.org). The concept of generosity as a form of noble wealth appears in AN 7.6, the Dhana Sutta (SuttaCentral). The psychology of the miser appears across the Saṁyutta Nikāya, including SN 1.32.
Three Moments of Gladness
The suttas also describe a gift as having three moments of gladness: before giving, in anticipation; while giving, in the act; and after giving, in recollection. That third moment matters more than we tend to notice. The recollection of one's own generosity is itself a formal meditation practice, food for the mind on dry days. A gift given freely keeps nourishing the giver for years. A gift given under pressure, or for appearances, or primarily to reduce a tax bill, offers nothing to recollect. It was a transaction, and the mind knows the difference, whatever the receipt says. Transactions are practical for laypeople, but not generosity.
And this is why the Buddha's first answer to Pasenadi was what it was. Wherever the mind feels inspired. Not where the need is greatest, not where the return is highest, not where the metrics are strongest. The teaching is that giving must be free to do its work, and freedom means the inspiration belongs to the giver. There is, in this tradition, no obligation to give at all, outside the singular debt owed to one's parents. That absence of obligation is not a loophole. It is the whole point. A gift given because one should is not fully a gift. A gift given because the mind moved toward it proves something to the giver about their own agency that no amount of instruction could.
Note: The three moments of gladness in giving appear in AN 6.37, the Chaḷaṅgadāna Sutta (A Gift With Six Factors), (SuttaCentral). The recollection of one's own generosity (cāgānussati) as a formal meditation practice appears in AN 6.10 and AN 11.12.
Does Discernment Still Matter?
Now, I can hear the practical objection, because I have spent more than twenty years in and around philanthropy, and I have made it myself. Does this mean outcomes do not matter? That we give wherever we feel warm feelings and let the consequences sort themselves out? Surely a serious person, particularly one trained to measure things, should care whether a gift helps.
Yes. Of course. This is Pasenadi's second question, and the Buddha did not dismiss it. He answered it. A gift bears great fruit when it lands with the virtuous, which is to say that discernment about where a gift goes is part of the tradition, not a betrayal of it. And in lay life, in our world, that discernment must include material honesty. Gifts land in real conditions. They feed people, or they do not. They strengthen the organizations that receive them, or they strain them. Wealth itself has a history, and some of that history touches harm, and a practitioner keeping the precepts cannot pretend otherwise. Non-harming does not stop at the point of donation.
So the teaching is not that outcomes are unimportant. The teaching is about order. The mind first, the fruit second. Hold your values closely; hold outcomes with open hands. Begin with what inspires you, then bring all your discernment to serve that inspiration. What the tradition refuses is the reversal: starting with the outcome, the metric, the strategy, the vehicle, and hoping the meaning shows up somewhere downstream. It rarely does. Anyone who has watched a family foundation grind through its own strategic plan while the family's love for anything slowly leaves the room has seen what the reversal produces.
The Structures Were Built from the Wrong Question
Here is where I want to say something hopeful, and something honest about how much work stands between here and there.
The structures of American philanthropy were not built by people asking Pasenadi's first question. They were built, mostly in the last century, around tax law, around institutional continuity, around measurement. Donor-advised funds, private foundations, planned giving instruments, impact frameworks: these are not bad things. Many of them are genuinely useful, and I have spent much of my working life inside them. But they were designed from the second question, and a practitioner who walks into them carrying the first question will feel the mismatch immediately. The forms ask what you want to accomplish. Nothing in the paperwork asks what you love, what you feel responsible to, what your practice has taught you about holding and releasing, or what it would mean to give in a way you could recollect with gladness for the rest of your life.
Realigning the Structures with the Practice
That mismatch is not permanent. Structures are made of decisions, and decisions can be remade. A donor-advised fund can be operated in the spirit of dana: funded freely, granted from inspiration, held with open hands rather than managed like a portfolio. A foundation can practice its values in how it treats grantees, not just in what it funds: trusting the people doing the work the way the tradition trusts, giving without strings, receiving the responsibility of wealth with the same care a recipient in the old culture of giving was expected to show a gift. The precepts have real implications for how money moves, not just where it lands. Truthfulness in how a foundation describes itself and how collaboration works with partners. Non-harming in what its assets are invested in while they wait to be given. Renunciation practiced not as deprivation but as the ongoing, joyful release the tradition always said it was.
This is uphill work. The defaults all point the other way, and the professionals a wealthy practitioner encounters have mostly been trained inside the reversal. But it can be done, and I believe practitioners with resources are precisely the people positioned to do it, because they arrive with the one thing the system cannot supply: a mind that already understands what giving is for.
Questions Worth Sitting With
If you are such a person, I will not tell you what to give or where to give it. The tradition itself refuses to, and the refusal is the teaching. I can offer my experience and knowledge. And I can offer a few questions worth sitting with, in the same spirit the tradition offers recollection:
-Where does your mind feel inspired? Not where you believe it should feel inspired. Where does it, in fact, move?
-What would you give if no one would ever know? What does the difference between that answer and your current giving tell you?
-Call to mind a gift you gave freely, however small or big, however long ago. Notice what the memory does. That feeling is data. It is telling you what kind of giving your mind can live on.
-What does your wealth touch? Where it came from, where it sits, what it funds while it waits. What would honesty about that ask of you?
-Is there anyone, or any work, you can trust: fully, without strings, without requiring proof before the gift?
-And finally: what would your giving look like if it were part of your practice rather than part of your planning?
Giving Is the Path
That last question is the one I would leave you with. It’s one I ask myself. The tradition never treated generosity as an appendix to the path, something handled by professionals while the real work happened on the cushion. Giving is the path, the first foot of it, the ground the rest stands on. The mind that learns to open its hand around money is rehearsing the release that meditation will eventually ask of everything else. Practiced this way, philanthropy stops being a domain you manage and becomes a place where the teaching gets real, where your values and your resources sit in the same room.
The king asked where a gift should be given, and the answer has been waiting for us for twenty-five centuries. Wherever the mind feels inspired. Everything else, all the discernment and structure and care that giving well requires, comes after that, and works in its service.
Begin there. The rest can be figured out, and it is worth figuring out together.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is dāna in Buddhism?
Dāna is the Pali word for generosity or giving. It is the first practice in the Buddha's gradual training, taught before virtue and meditation. In the Theravada tradition, dāna is understood as a practice that transforms the giver's mind, cultivating a sense of abundance, free will, and release from attachment. The Buddha taught that a gift should be given "wherever the mind feels inspired," emphasizing the freedom and joy of the giver as the foundation of all generosity.
How does Buddhist generosity differ from modern philanthropy?
Modern philanthropy typically begins with strategy: identifying causes, choosing vehicles, measuring outcomes. The Buddhist teaching on dāna begins with the mind of the giver: what inspires you, what moves you, what you can give freely and recollect with gladness. The tradition does not dismiss outcomes; the Buddha acknowledged that gifts bear greater fruit when given to the virtuous, but it insists on a specific order: values first, strategy second. Giving Without Grasping is built on this principle.
Can Buddhist teachings on giving apply to donor-advised funds and foundations?
Yes. Philanthropic structures like donor-advised funds and private foundations are tools, and tools can be used in different spirits. A DAF operated in the spirit of dāna would be funded freely, granted from genuine inspiration rather than obligation, and held with open hands rather than managed like an investment portfolio. A foundation can practice the precepts in how it relates to grantees, what its assets are invested in, and how honestly it describes itself. The structures were not designed with dāna in mind, but they can be realigned.
What does "giving without grasping" mean?
Giving without grasping means holding your values closely while holding outcomes with open hands. It is a practice of deep commitment paired with deep trust; a commitment to what you believe is worth protecting, and trust in the people and organizations carrying the work forward. The phrase draws from the Buddhist understanding that attachment, even to good outcomes, can distort the act of giving. The most enduring generosity comes from a mind that gives freely and releases fully.
Who is a philanthropic advisor and how do they work with Buddhist practitioners?
A philanthropic advisor helps individuals, families, and foundations align their giving with their deepest values. For Buddhist practitioners with significant wealth, this means working with someone who understands both the tradition's teachings on generosity and the practical structures of modern philanthropy. The advisor works alongside existing financial and legal advisors, focused on the questions those professionals are not trained to hold: what the wealth is for, what the individual/family/foundation/fund wants it to express, and how giving can become a genuine practice rather than a planning exercise.
What is the TPI study on the philanthropic conversation?
The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI) has conducted studies since 2013 tracking how advisors and high-net-worth clients engage in conversations about philanthropy. The 2026 study found that a growing share of clients report their philanthropic needs exceed their advisors' knowledge, and most would welcome a referral to a specialist. The study also revealed significant gaps between what advisors believe motivates their clients' giving and what clients report as their true motivations.
Shanon Solava is a lay Buddhist practitioner and Certified Impact Philanthropy Advisor. She writes Giving Without Grasping, a newsletter on the thoughtful stewardship of wealth, values, and giving, and advises families and foundations from her home in Pennsylvania, where she tends five acres of native meadow and forest. If you would like to continue the conversation, explore more resources, or connect about your own journey with generosity, you are warmly invited to reach out. I welcome readers, practitioners, and fellow travelers into dialogue and learning together.
Photo Credit: Photo by jinzhe lan on Unsplash