Is every gift a gift?

As with tapasya, all giving also is of an ignorant tamasic, an ostentatious rajasic or a disinterested and enlightened sattvic character. The tamasic gift is offered ignorantly with no consideration of the right conditions of time, place and object; it is a foolish, inconsiderate and, in reality, a self-regarding movement, an ungenerous and ignoble generosity, the gift offered without sympathy or true liberality, without regard for the feelings of the recipient and despised by him even in the acceptance.

The rajasic kind of giving is that which is done with regret, unwillingness or violence to oneself, or with a personal and egoistic object, or in the hope of a return of some kind from whatever quarter or a corresponding or greater benefit to oneself from the receiver.

The sattvic way of giving is to bestow with right reason and goodwill and sympathy in the right conditions of time and place, and on the right recipient who is worthy or to whom the gift can be really helpful. Its act is performed for the sake of the giving and the beneficence, without any view to a benefit.


The culmination of the sattvic way of dana will bring into the action an increasing element of that wide self-giving to others and to the world and to God, atma-dana, atma-samarpan, which is the high consecration of the sacrifice of works enjoined by the Gita.

And the transcendence in the divine nature will be the greatest completeness of self-offering founded on the largest meaning of existence.