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right vision, and right conduct benefit only the practitioner but the quality of charity benefits both - the giver and the receiver. Especially the poor, the deprived, the miserable, the orphans, the sick, and the disabled, etc., are benefited by charity only. It is the charitable that create a good family and a good society. There are families in which such selfish persons are there that do not care for the comforts and pleasures of the other members of the family but always care about their own comforts and pleasures. Such families are always ridden with quarrels, conflicts, struggles and tensions. Such families live in veritable hells. On the other hand the families in which there are people who care about others' comforts and benefits overflow with love and affection and the pleasure that exists in such families is beyond all descriptions. A truly heavenly environment exists there.
Like this, the generous people only constitute a good society. Such people glorify the society. They are the ornaments of the society and the society develops because of such people. The development of the human beings and the human society depends on the noble quality of charity or benevolence.
"Tyāgo dānam' (Tattvārtha - Sarvārthasiddhiḥ) means that to give up own things meant for own enjoyment for the benefit of others is charity. Charity purifies the soul. Whatever purifies the soul is said to be pious and that is also said to be dharma. Among nine types of pieties the giving of food, water, clothes, pots, etc., are said to be pious activities. All this charity is done with a feeling of kindness. That kindness is dharma is an edict accepted by all. Therefore, charity is pious as well as dharma. It is a well-known principle of the doctrine of karma that pious activities also reduce the intensity and duration of sinful karmic bondages. Therefore, being an agency of karmic destruction, charity is dharma only. Thus, the prevalent belief that charity is only piety and not dharma is misplaced.
The fully detached Lords Jina are infinitely charitable, the monks are also charitable because they keep giving knowledge about dharma. Even for the householders the importance of charity is not any less. As has been said in the Padmanadi Pañcaviṁśatikā –
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