The first of [the] two kinds of generosity is “worldly giving.” Worldly giving encompasses a wide range of generous acts, from a grudging, stingy gift given for essentially selfish motives all the way to magnanimous gifts of enormous generosity. In fact, one may give everything away, including one’s life, and still be within the domain of worldly giving. So what constitutes its worldliness? The answer is: the conception that structures the act itself. Worldly generosity occurs when, having given, the bodhisattva thinks: “I give, that one receives, this is the gift.” Even if the bodhisattva also goes so far as to think: “I renounce all that I have without any niggardliness; I act as the Buddha commands. I practice the perfection of giving. I, having made this gift into the common property of all beings, dedicate it to supreme enlightenment, and that without basing myself on anything. By means of this gift and its fruit, may all beings in this very life be at their ease, and may they without any further clinging enter final Nirvana.”

Even that is still worldly giving, due to the character of the understanding out of which it arises. According to the Large Sutra, the problem with this way of being generous is: “The notion of self, the notion of others, the notion of a gift. To give a gift tied by these three ties, that is called worldly giving.” By contrast, the sutra describes the perfection of an act of generosity by way of a “threefold purity”: “Here a Bodhisattva gives a gift, and he does not apprehend a self, a recipient, or a gift; also no reward of his giving. He surrenders that gift to all beings, but does not apprehend those beings, or himself either. And, although he dedicates that gift to supreme enlightenment, he does not apprehend any enlightenment. This is called the supermundane perfection of giving.”