A Good Line to Watch

When you make merit, it’s always a good idea to make sure that your merit is complete. We have the merit of generosity, the merit of virtue. Now it’s time to develop the merit of meditation, developing good qualities in the mind. After all, that’s what generosity and virtue are all about, preparing the mind to focus directly on its own well-being.

It’s also why, in the old days, when the Buddha received gifts, he would give a talk on the rewards of giving to lift the mind of the donor. All too often it’s easy to say, “I hope that through the force of karma that what I’ve given today will come back, with interest, sometime in the future.” But you don’t want to focus your mind exclusively on material rewards. You want to realize that there’s a goodness that comes simply in the act of giving, in and of itself.

As the Buddha says, a higher motivation for giving would be to say, “It’s not right that I have something and these other people don’t have it, when I am in a position to share.” It’s even higher to say simply, “Giving is good.” It lifts the mind. You realize that you’re not just a greedy, grubby person. You’re someone who has the virtue of generosity within you.

A higher motivation is to realize that it makes the mind serene. When the mind is serene, then it’s easy for the mind to get into concentration. When it’s in concentration, it can see itself more clearly. That’s the whole purpose of the meditation: to see what the mind is doing. As the Buddha said, we suffer because of our own actions. But we can learn how not to suffer, again, through our own actions.

But we first have to learn how to observe the mind. How is it creating suffering? The mind is a lot easier to observe when it’s doing good things. This is why the Buddha, when he taught his son Rahula, started out by saying: If you see that any action you plan to do is going to cause harm for yourself or other people, don’t do it. Act only on intentions that seem to be good. Then, as you’re acting on those intentions, watch for the results. If anything comes up while you’re doing the action that’s harmful, stop. If you don’t see any harm, continue. Then when the action is done, look at the long term. If you see that you actually did cause long-term harm, take that as a lesson. Learn from it and resolve not to repeat that harm.

At the same time, you go talk it over with someone else you trust, to show that you’re not embarrassed to admit your mistakes. It’s when you admit your mistakes that you can improve on yourself. But if you see that you didn’t cause any harm at all, then take joy in the fact that you’re actually succeeding in your training.

So we’re looking for a harmless happiness. That’s a wise motivation, a compassionate motivation.

But to be really pure, you have to be able to really carry through. So now you can take joy in the fact that you’re developing the purity in action in your thoughts, your words, and your deeds. That’s a source of well-being. When you can create a mind that’s acting on good intentions, then it’s a lot easier to observe where, even in a good intention, there is some stress, there’s something that needs to be corrected.

So you’re creating a mind that’s much easier to watch, happier to watch. If you act on bad intentions, you don’t want to watch your mind. You want to focus attention on what’s wrong with people outside. But when you’re doing good, you can say, “Even in the goodness I’m doing, there may still be some lessons I need to learn.” It’s a lot easier to learn those lessons. This is how we grow in the Dhamma.

So remember, as you give donations, there will be material rewards from the act of giving, but the greater rewards are those that come in the mind—training the mind to act on good intentions, training the mind to want to know itself so that it can see where it can still improve its actions. In this way, we grow and develop in the teachings. We grow and develop in our own search for true happiness. We grow and develop in what the Buddha called “the noble search” for happiness that doesn’t die at all.

These are the first steps: generosity, virtue, meditation. Follow them with confidence that you’re doing something good, and it’s going to lead to goodness not only now but also in the future. Take joy in the fact right now that you’re a generous person. Because a generous mind is one that feels much more spacious. It’s a wealthy mind, no matter how much money you actually have, no matter how much wealth you actually have. The fact that you feel you have enough to share is a sign of wealth inside. Make sure you develop that inner wealth. That’s the wealth that really matters.