| The early verse literature of the Pali suttas presents two distinct orientations to religious practice: mental purification and sacrifice. Mental purification consists in inwardly directed efforts to eliminate ignorance and desire, and is the means to attaining nirvana (nibbana). Sacrifice consists in acts of giving and worship directed toward the Buddha or his monks, and leads to the attainment of heaven after death. Buddhists appropriated donative practices, including the dedication of gifts (dakkhina, daksina) and observation of the Uposatha (upavasatha), and their interpretation as sacrifice, from Brahmanical practice. In the canonical verse literature, an act of giving (dana) may be informed by either sacrifice or purification, however, these two motivations give different meanings to the action. Sacrifice differs from mental purification both objectively, in that the worthiness of the recipient is believed to condition the effectiveness of sacrificial action, and subjectively, in that the sacrificial giver is to act with an attitude of devotion.;In contrast to the dual soteriology of the verses, the canonical prose presents a discourse in which the sole criterion of the goodness of actions is whether they conduce to mental purification. Theravadins have used this discourse of action (kamma, karma) to rethink all aspects of religious giving, including the merit (punna, punya) it produces, the destinies and worlds in which this merit is experienced, and the dedication of gifts for others. We can trace the growth of karmic interpretations in texts such as Vimanavatthu, Petavatthu, Paramatthadipani, and Sihalavatthuppakarana. However, these texts also show that descriptions of the act of giving have largely resisted reduction to the category of mental purification. In particular, they continue to emphasize that the worthiness of the recipient helps to determine the effects of a gift. |
