Merit

With the means available today, we still cannot fully prove the law of karma through tight logic and precise experiments with instruments. We can only point to the reality of karma and reason about it with spiritual intuition. In the end, though, the law of karma remains a truth, a truth hidden deep within the Absolute Reality, silently governing everything in the universe and the destiny of every human life. Many people have witnessed karma at work even in modern times and have firm confidence in its fairness. They have seen that evildoers, however much they swagger in power, end up suffering, and that good people, however hard their struggles, are eventually repaid. The exceptions are those cases where the result does not arrive in this life but must wait for later lives, which cannot be explained otherwise.

Here we speak of the benefit of believing in and understanding the law of karma.

A person who has firm belief in and understanding of the law of karma will certainly never be an evildoer. They always consider the karmic result of every action and do not allow themselves to make mistakes that plant bad causes. If they want happiness, they know to bring joy to others first, and the law of karma will repay them many times over in the future. It is different for someone who does not believe in or understand karma. Such a person seeks their own happiness by seizing what belongs to others, taking another's joy and making it their own. Simply comparing the attitudes of these two kinds of people makes the importance of believing in and understanding the law of karma plain.

If, in a society, those who believe in and understand the law of karma are the majority, that society will be ethical, virtuous, developed and civilised. Conversely, a society in which few people believe in and understand the law of karma will decay into depravity, chaos and decline.

So spreading belief in and understanding of the law of karma is not a superfluous concern of religious workers alone. It is truly a core issue, a matter of survival, a matter of great consequence for the whole of society.

When people's morality improves through education in the law of karma, criminal cases will naturally fall sharply, because people will restrain themselves and know on their own to avoid wrongdoing and to create merit. The cost of security will be saved.

When people deeply understand the law of karma, the national economy will naturally surge forward, because everyone will be aware that working for the benefit of society is already a great good deed. They will work not for a wage but for the common good of the whole of society. It is precisely these people, with their strong community spirit, who will carry society into the new form of civilisation that so many thinkers have longed for: a society with very little private seizure of property, in which everyone yields to one another willingly and voluntarily, not because a mechanism forces them to.

The freedom to own private property is a sacred human right, but sharing one's possessions for charity and contributing one's wealth to the community voluntarily is the lofty morality of human beings. This morality is formed only through education, not through a mechanism.

Only when the morality of the whole society has been raised to the highest degree will there be no need to struggle: socialism will suddenly appear, perfect and wonderfully beautiful.

What we must struggle for is education that raises everyone's morality many times above its present level, and within that education, spreading belief in and understanding of the law of karma is the most important element.

The Buddha praised the merit of spreading belief in and understanding of the law of karma through the following story.

A Brahmin asked the Buddha:

- Has anyone who is not a Buddhist ever been reborn in a heavenly realm?

The Buddha replied:

- In ninety-one kalpas I have never seen a single follower of another path reborn in a heavenly realm, except one, because that person often taught about karma.

In this exchange, the Buddha confirmed that the merit of spreading belief in and understanding of the law of karma is immensely great. If we give money to a poor person, it may help them scrape by for a few days or months. But once we help them believe in and understand the law of karma FIRMLY AND DEEPLY, their life will change at its very roots. They will know to avoid wrongdoing and create merit, and happiness will come to them from one life to the next. The benefit of passing on belief in and understanding of the law of karma simply cannot be compared with the benefit of giving material goods. The benefit of giving lasts only a few days, whereas the benefit of education in karma lasts without limit. The moral inclination in their mind will continue from one life to the next and grow ever stronger. However GREAT and LASTING their benefit is, the merit of the person who passed on that belief and understanding is just as vast and everlasting.

If, after coming to believe in and understand karma, that person performs one meritorious, good deed, the one who passed it on naturally enjoys one third of that merit. This does not mean the doer is left with only two thirds. They still enjoy the full merit of their charitable act, but the person who educated them naturally also receives a share of merit for the work of educating. Merit is not like money. Money is diminished when it is shared. Merit is not diminished by sharing. It is like fire: however many torches are lit from one torch, the original flame is not reduced in the slightest.

So even if we cannot do charitable work ourselves, if we have encouraged others to do charity and avoid wrongdoing, our merit is also very great.

When a person begins to believe in and understand the law of karma, goodness begins to appear in their life and spreads to everyone around them. The merit of the one who educated them to that belief and understanding is truly immense.

If we already believe in and understand the law of karma, we should make a strong vow to pass this belief and understanding on to everyone in the world, so that all may come to share it. Even if that vow is not fulfilled in this life, we will carry it on in the lives that follow, as long as in the end this world becomes a virtuous, kind and ethical place. Let us cherish with deep longing the aspiration to spread the law of karma everywhere. Let us take it as the ideal of our lives. Let us take it as the joy of our lives.

There are many ways for us to help spread belief in and understanding of the law of karma. One is to contribute money and effort to print treatises on karma. We choose treatises that are valuable and profound, that can strongly influence readers, bring about a powerful change in them and awaken their faith in the law of karma. We choose treatises that are scientific in spirit, soundly reasoned and able to explore every aspect of karma, so that readers can understand clearly how karma travels. For the deeper the understanding, the firmer the faith. Faith without understanding is only superstition. A treatise on karma must give readers a great deal of knowledge and many sharp arguments so that they gain a thorough understanding of karma, and from that understanding their faith will not be shaken.

A printed book on karma may be read by five or seven people. If only five or seven of them awaken faith and understanding in karma, the merit of the person who funded the printing is already very great. How much more so when thousands of copies are printed and spread into every corner of life. Wherever those books reach, wrongdoing is pushed back and morality is lit up. And so the merit of the person who funded them cannot be counted. Because of this merit, in a later life they may attain high and honoured positions, with many people obeying and respecting them, since those people received their kindness and, thanks to them, became ethical and did many charitable deeds. Over many lives, the one who taught morality and those who were taught will gather together to enjoy merit together, and the teacher will always stand in the place of guide and leader.

Or those who have the opportunity to meet many people, such as classroom teachers or those with many friends and acquaintances, can also explain karma to others at convenient moments so that they believe and understand. Usually, to enter the subject of karma, begin with true stories that we have witnessed in our own lives. Such stories are strongly persuasive and prepare the ground for the abstract arguments that follow. To speak about karma without citing real accounts is a great shortcoming (see "A Treatise on Cause and Effect" by Chơn Quang).

For example, the story of a certain man who, when he was young and fairly well off, used to go to the hospital at Tết, personally caring for and cleaning up after patients who had no relatives to help them. This man was a solitary person, with no blood relatives. Later he went off to a plot of land in the countryside and built a hermitage to practise alone. A young monk happened to come and live with him, and just at Tết he fell gravely ill and was devotedly cared for and cleaned up after by the monk. After Tết, he passed away. The karmic result came to him in this very life, and repeated even the exact time, at Tết. Truly, what we have done is never lost. It remains and brings a result that matches it.

Or another story. A daughter-in-law, wanting to live apart from the household, shouted that her father-in-law had molested her. The village put the father-in-law on trial and had him bound in the middle of the village. Overcome with shame, he bit his tongue and killed himself. The young couple were able to live separately and received the inheritance. In old age the wife fell ill with a sickness that could not be cured, and had to lie in one place to relieve herself. Her children and grandchildren, disgusted, built a platform jutting out over the riverbank for her to lie on and relieve herself as she pleased. In this plight she sadly recalled her old karma and felt remorse. She called a friend to confess what had happened decades before, and she thought that the reason she was tormented and shunned by her children and grandchildren was the karmic result of having slandered her poor father-in-law.

Many real stories like these can gradually lead others to believe in and understand karma.

When we speak about karma, we must also adapt our reasoning to the listener. For people who already have a religious inclination it is very easy: they readily accept the silent influence of karma, just as they already accept invisible deities. People without a religious inclination like concrete proof. With such people, we tell many stories of karma and conclude:

"That is the natural fairness of the universe."

The nature of the universe is fairness, reasonable compensation. Energy and matter change from one form to another without ever being lost. It is absent in one place and appears in another. In the same way, one who creates a cause in one place will receive the result in another. Nothing disappears; the universe is by nature fair and reasonable.

In a family or clan, if the father often gives moral advice and reminds the children and grandchildren about karma, that family and that clan will surely grow more and more prosperous. Before he died, one elderly man said to his children and grandchildren:

"I have not much to leave you, only the word 'merit' written in the middle of the house as your inheritance!"

Sure enough, in later generations many of his descendants became distinguished.

So the first place where we must spread belief in and understanding of karma is our own family. Let us help our parents, brothers and sisters, spouses and children gain firm belief in the law of karma. In doing so we have fulfilled our duty of filial devotion to our family. However many delicacies we feed our parents, it is not equal to guiding them to believe in and understand karma. However much love and protection we lavish on our children, it is not equal to teaching them to believe in and understand karma. For only belief in and understanding of karma can build a lasting moral foundation in their hearts. Thanks to this moral foundation, our loved ones will be at peace and happy from one life to the next.

In short, if we have gained the blessing of deep belief in and understanding of the wondrous law of karma, what remains is to devote our whole lives, with heartfelt longing, to teaching karma to everyone, so that virtue shines clearly, wrongdoing is pushed back, and this world becomes for ever a peaceful, virtuous paradise.

Finished on the 20th day of the first lunar month of the year Nhâm Thân.

CHƠN QUANG