What this concept is saying
等利 (*dengli*, “benefiting all equally” or “impartial beneficence”) means working for the welfare of every sentient being without allowing closeness and distance, affection and aversion, status, species, or perceived moral worth to determine who deserves one’s care.
The point is not simply that “everyone is equal.” The character 利 means concrete benefit: giving, protecting, teaching, relieving suffering, creating conditions for wholesome development, and ultimately helping beings move toward liberation. 等利 is equality made active.
In the *Dazhidu lun* (《大智度論》, *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*), it appears in two related settings.
First, it describes a virtue of the Buddha:
「凡人行惠為己利，求報以財而給施；佛大慈仁無此事，怨親憎愛以等利。」
Ordinary generosity is often mixed with self-interest: the hope for repayment, merit, gratitude, reputation, emotional reassurance, or future reward. The Buddha’s beneficence, by contrast, proceeds from great compassion and does not divide its recipients into enemy and friend, hated and loved. This does not mean that every intervention takes the same form. It means that the wish and commitment to benefit are not withdrawn from anyone.
Second, 等利 is one of the four aspects of 眾生等 (*zhongsheng deng*, “equality toward sentient beings”):
1. 等心 (*dengxin*, an impartial mind): the basic orientation is not tilted by attachment or hostility. 2. 等念 (*dengnian*, impartial mindfulness or regard): beings are held in awareness without some being mentally erased as unworthy of concern. 3. 等愛 (*deng’ai*, impartial benevolent care): goodwill is not restricted to those one likes or identifies with. 4. 等利 (*dengli*, impartial beneficence): that equal concern becomes actual help.
These four are not synonyms. One may speak warmly about universal compassion while continually remembering only one’s own group; this lacks 等念. One may remember another’s suffering but feel no benevolent concern; this lacks 等愛. One may feel concern but never accept inconvenience or act; this lacks 等利. Conversely, one may distribute resources according to an abstract formula while inwardly despising the recipients; the external act resembles equal treatment, but the complete “equality toward sentient beings” has not yet been realized.
The classical hierarchy matters. 等利 belongs to 眾生等, equality toward beings. 眾生等 is paired with 法等 (*fa deng*, “equality of dharmas”), the insight that phenomena do not possess fixed, independent natures by which our conceptual divisions could become absolute. These dimensions belong to the discussion of 等忍 (*dengren*, “receptivity or patient realization of equality”), which includes both receptivity toward beings and receptivity to the nature of phenomena. Thus 等利 is not an isolated rule of philanthropy. It is compassionate conduct grounded in wisdom.
This grounding answers an obvious objection. If a kind person and a cruel person, an adult and a child, a human and an animal are regarded equally, does moral discernment disappear?
No. The *Dazhidu lun* does not say that their conduct, capacities, needs, or conventional identities are identical. Nor does it mix human and animal characteristics into one indistinct category. It challenges our habit of treating such distinctions as fixed essences that decide whose suffering matters. Wholesome and unwholesome actions still differ in causes and consequences. A dangerous person may need to be restrained; an injured animal may need a different form of help from an injured human. Equality lies in the absence of exclusion from compassionate concern, not in the mechanical sameness of treatment.
A doctor does not prescribe the same medicine to every patient. Impartial care requires attention to differences. In the same way, 等利 means equal commitment to welfare expressed through appropriately different responses.
The deeper basis is emptiness, not sentimentality. When the bodhisattva does not cling to labels such as “my people,” “bad person,” “useful person,” or even “a being possessing an unchanging essence,” compassionate activity becomes less captive to attraction and aversion. Yet emptiness does not make suffering irrelevant. It shows that sufferers, helpers, harms, and remedies arise through conditions—and therefore can be transformed through conditions.
This is the place of 等利 on the path of liberation. It carries practice beyond self-centered merit-making, beyond compassion restricted to one’s circle, and beyond the subtle conceit of “I am the benefactor who saves those people.” Wisdom loosens fixation; compassion refuses abandonment; skillful means determines the fitting response. 等利 is where these become conduct.
A walkthrough in everyday life
Imagine an exhausted evening commute. The train is crowded. A colleague has just praised someone you dislike, your partner has sent an irritated message, and an older passenger is struggling to remain upright. Meanwhile, your phone shows a fundraising request for victims of a distant disaster.
Begin with 等心, the impartial mind. You notice the immediate hierarchy produced by habit: “my fatigue” feels overwhelmingly important; the disliked colleague’s well-being feels unimportant; your partner’s displeasure feels threatening; the stranger is background scenery; distant victims are nearly unreal. 等心 does not demand that these reactions instantly vanish. It means recognizing that attachment and aversion are conditioning your field of concern, and declining to treat that conditioning as a moral verdict.
Then comes 等念, impartial regard. You deliberately allow each relevant being to appear in awareness: your tired body, the standing passenger, your irritated partner, the colleague you resent, and people beyond your direct sight. This is not obsessive responsibility for everyone. It is the refusal to make someone disappear merely because attending to them is uncomfortable.
Then 等愛, impartial benevolent care. You recall that each person seeks well-being and recoils from suffering, although each expresses this through different histories, confusions, and habits. You do not have to feel equal emotional warmth. Classical equality is not the manufacture of identical feelings. The practice is that goodwill does not stop at the border of preference: “May this person too be free from suffering and from the causes of suffering.”
Finally comes 等利, actual benefit. You offer your seat to the passenger if that is the most fitting response. You postpone answering your partner until you can reply without retaliation. You refrain from undermining the colleague merely because you dislike them. You examine the fundraiser before donating, so that compassionate intent is joined to practical judgment. You also attend to your own exhaustion, because destroying your capacity to help is not wisdom.
The actions are different because the conditions are different. Equal benefit does not mean giving the passenger, partner, colleague, distant victims, and yourself the same object or the same amount of time. It means that none is excluded in principle and that each is met according to actual need, probable consequences, your responsibilities, and your available capacity.
Now consider a harder case: a team member repeatedly humiliates others at work. 等利 does not mean smiling, remaining silent, or giving aggressor and victim identical treatment. Protecting those being harmed may require documentation, firm boundaries, formal reporting, or removing the aggressor’s power. But one can do this without turning the aggressor into an essentially evil being whose suffering is gratifying. Restraint may itself be beneficial: it protects others and interrupts the person’s continued production of harmful consequences.
The common mapping error is to equate “equal” with “the same.” In parenting, giving a toddler and a teenager identical freedom is not equality. In intimate relationships, treating a trustworthy partner and an abusive partner identically is not compassion. Online, giving reliable information and deliberate disinformation equal amplification is not impartiality. 等利 preserves equal concern while requiring discrimination between helpful and harmful causes.
Algorithmic life makes the practice especially revealing. Recommendation systems continually rank whose face, pain, opinion, and purchase will enter our awareness. They may amplify familiarity, outrage, beauty, wealth, or similarity because these hold attention. Practising 等念 means noticing this engineered narrowing; 等愛 means resisting the conclusion that visibility determines worth; 等利 means extending concrete concern beyond the people selected for us by proximity and engagement metrics. This comparison is only an analogy. It neither identifies the Buddhist analysis of mind with computer science nor suggests that contemporary technology proves Buddhist doctrine.
Why contemporary people need it
Much contemporary moral life is rich in declared universality but poor in equal application. We condemn cruelty by opponents while excusing it in allies. We care intensely about visible suffering and overlook ordinary suffering outside the camera frame. We may be generous when generosity confirms our identity, then become indifferent when recipients are ungrateful, unfamiliar, morally compromised, or politically inconvenient.
等利 exposes the hidden contract inside such kindness: “I will care for you while you make me feel like a good person.” The Buddhist path does not condemn this as worthless—mixed motives can still produce real help—but it asks practice to mature beyond dependence on reward.
The concept also corrects two opposite tendencies.
One is tribal compassion: deep care for “our own,” purchased at the cost of hostility toward outsiders. The other is abstract universalism: professing love for all beings while neglecting the person in the next room. 等利 requires both breadth and embodiment. “All beings” includes the stranger, the disliked person, the animal, the difficult family member, and the person presently asking for one’s attention.
Yet it also includes oneself. Equal concern does not require self-erasure. If “all beings” are worthy of care, the practitioner is not the sole exception. The issue is neither self-sacrifice nor self-prioritization as an absolute rule. It is freedom from偏黨—partiality that treats one center of experience as inherently more real or deserving than every other.
In liberation practice, this gradually weakens several bonds at once: attachment to praise and repayment, hostility toward enemies, identification with a favored group, pride in being a benefactor, and reification of moral labels. Compassion becomes steadier because it relies less on liking. Wisdom becomes humane because emptiness is expressed as responsiveness rather than detachment.
This also explains why 等利 is more demanding than fair distribution. A policy can be statistically even while ignoring radically unequal needs. Conversely, unequal allocation can serve impartial welfare: more medicine to the severely ill, more protection to the vulnerable, firmer limits for the dangerous, and more instruction for those ready to learn. 等利 asks not merely, “Did everyone receive the same?” but, “Were attachment, aversion, status, and self-interest allowed to decide whose welfare counted?”
Its culmination is suggested by the *Dazhidu lun*’s description of the bodhisattva who does not cling to the many imposed characteristics of beings, does not become angry or torment them, and receives them impartially like a loving mother caring for her child. The maternal image indicates steadfast non-abandonment, not indulgence. A wise parent does not approve every act; care remains even while harmful conduct is stopped.
Common misunderstandings and clarifications
“等利 means giving everyone exactly the same thing.” It does not. Sameness of goods, attention, punishment, or opportunity may ignore differences in need and consequence. The equality concerns the absence of partial exclusion; the benefit must be responsive to conditions.
“It means good and evil are indistinguishable.” It does not. Buddhism distinguishes wholesome and unwholesome intentions and their consequences. What it refuses to do is convert “this act is harmful” into “this being possesses a fixed evil essence and no longer matters.” Moral clarity and universal concern are mutually necessary.
“It means being equally affectionate toward everyone.” 等愛 is not identical emotional intimacy, and 等利 still less so. Emotional closeness naturally varies. Practice concerns the reach of goodwill and benefit, not the compulsory production of equal warmth.
“It requires helping everyone personally.” No finite practitioner can respond to every need. One must consider capacity, proximity, commitments, competence, and likely effects. Impartiality governs how choices are made; it does not abolish practical limits. A person may have special responsibility for a child, patient, student, or dependent without believing that others are intrinsically worth less.
“It forbids boundaries or punishment.” Boundaries can prevent harm; restraint can benefit victims, communities, and even the person being restrained. What 等利 challenges is punitive delight, dehumanization, revenge disguised as justice, and the permanent abandonment of a being from compassionate concern.
“It is just ordinary altruism.” Ordinary altruism can be selective and can remain organized around the giver’s identity, reward, or emotional preference. 等利 belongs to a larger discipline involving equal mind, equal regard, equal care, insight into the non-fixed nature of distinctions, and freedom from attachment to giver, recipient, and reward.
“Emptiness makes equal benefit unnecessary because no beings ultimately exist.” This is precisely the kind of nihilistic conclusion the bodhisattva path rejects. Emptiness means that beings and suffering do not exist as independent, immutable essences; it does not mean that pain is experientially absent or that actions lack consequences. Because suffering arises dependently, compassionate intervention is meaningful.
“Equal concern means moral neutrality.” Neutrality often preserves the advantage of the powerful. 等利 is not passivity between harm and the harmed. It seeks benefit for all, which can require taking a clear stand against harmful conduct while refusing hatred of the person who performs it.
Finally, 等利 should not be isolated from the other three aspects of 眾生等. Without 等心, aid is easily captured by bias. Without 等念, invisible beings are forgotten. Without 等愛, assistance becomes cold management. Without 等利, compassion remains a private feeling. Together they describe a movement from inward non-partiality to sustained awareness, from awareness to benevolent concern, and from concern to liberating action.
The mature question is therefore not merely, “Am I a kind person?” It is: “When preference, resentment, identity, and reward fall away, whose suffering do I still recognize—and what form of benefit can I responsibly offer?” 等利 is the discipline of allowing the answer to become: no being is excluded, though wisdom must decide what genuine help means here and now.