A Complete Gift of Merit

When you make merit for someone who’s passed away, you want to make sure that your merit is complete. In other words, there’s generosity, virtue, and meditation—and the important part is the meditation, because merit is the quality of the mind. You have the activities of giving things, taking the precepts, but they aim at the qualities you develop in the mind. You’re generous out of compassion. You’re virtuous out of heedfulness. These are the qualities you want to develop in your mind.

It’s through compassion and heedfulness that we learn how to be skillful. We realize that our actions have an influence on other people and on ourselves. We want that influence to be good. We don’t want to be careless. That requires a lot of mindfulness and a lot of alertness. So we have to develop these qualities through the meditation. Keep in mind that you don’t want to harm anybody and you want to be alert to what you’re doing, so that you can see clearly if you’re actually causing harm when you didn’t intend to. That way, you can change course in time.

So. This is why we focus on the breath: not to get the breath, but to develop the mind. We work with the breath energy in the body to make it comfortable so that it’s a good place to stay right here. But the mind is what we’re after, because the mind, when it’s trained, can bring happiness. When it’s not trained, it can bring a lot of misery.

As the Buddha pointed out, when we encounter things in the world and we suffer from them, they can be good or bad. Even when they’re good, we can still suffer. It all depends on—in the idiom we have in English—“what we bring to the table.” What you bring to every experience is going to determine what you’re going to get out of it. So make sure you’re bringing good things.

We train the mind, one, to get sensitive to what’s actually going on. In the beginning, when you’re meditating, you see there’s a lot of mess inside. That’s normal. But that’s what we’ve been bringing to the table all along. Think about it. When you bring a lot of messy thoughts and unclear thoughts to the world, of course you’re going to be confused by what happens. But if you’re really clear about what’s going on in the very beginning, at least it gives you a sense of, “Yeah, I’m bringing this mess to the world. I’ve got to change.” Then you make the changes.

Wherever there’s carelessness, you try to be heedful. Wherever you’re complacent or callous, you try to be compassionate. In so doing, you develop good qualities in the mind. Then those qualities become the means by which merit is dedicated to others. They receive the current of your mind. And because this merit is good all around, it’s something they’re happy to receive and then they benefit from it. They see that it’s a good thing. They approve of what you’re doing. That becomes their merit. It lifts their spirits, that there are people who are thinking of them, and that there’s still goodness in the world.

So many people are afraid that when they leave the world, the world’s going to fall apart. Well, it keeps falling apart anyhow. But then also there’s goodness in the world as well. This can be our contribution. The more goodness we bring to the world, the better the place is going to be. And we become better people as a result.

So this is the other way of thinking about people who’ve passed away. Think about the goodness they’ve done for us, have some gratitude for the things that they did for us, and make sure that that goodness passes on. That way, we keep their goodness alive in the world. Think about the Buddha on his deathbed. The devas were showering flowers and incense, music. But as he told the monks, that’s not the proper way to show respect to the Buddha. The proper way is to practice the Dhamma in line with the Dhamma. After all, he went to all that trouble to find the Dhamma, not so that he could have flowers and incense, but so that he could benefit, and other people could benefit as well. That’s the sort of tradition that should be kept alive.

So we think of those who passed away with gratitude. The,n based on that gratitude, we try to do what we can to make the world a better place. And in so doing, we become better people.

So these are the ways in which merit is shared.