Compassion and the imperative to be charitable to others are basic tenets of Buddhism. However, this does not mean that the act of giving was uniform throughout the Buddhist world or under all social and political conditions. As this chapter shows, the character of giving as well as who should give to whom varied according to the particular Buddhist school as well as the nature of the state or the zeitgeist of the era. In Theravāda Buddhism and in some Mahāyāna schools, charity went from laity to the Sangha. Philanthropy was much more common in the Ming than in prior dynasties or the Qing. And the nature of the state in the People’s Republic of China restrains charity while it thrives in the humanistic Buddhism practiced across the waters in Taiwan.