The practice of giving is universally recognized as one of the most basic human virtues, a quality that testifies to the depth of one’s humanity and one’s capacity for self-transcendence. In the teaching of the Buddha, too, the practice of giving claims “a place of special eminence, one which singles it out as being in a sense the foundation and seed of spiritual development. In the Pali suttas (discourses) we read time and again that “talk on giving” (danakatha) was invariably the first topic to be discussed by Buddha in his “graduated exposition” of the Dhamma.
Strictly speaking, giving does not appear in its own right among the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path, nor does it enter among the other requisites of enlightenment (bodhipakkhiya dhamma). Most probably it has been excluded from these groupings because the practice of giving does not by its own nature conduce directly and immediately to the arising of insight and the realization of the Four Noble Truths.
[pdf]http://www.dhammikaweb.com/pdfs/DANA_VenBhikkhuBodhi.pdf[/pdf]
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