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Venerable Ajahn Sucitto -
Puñña
Tonight I'd like to talk about merit or puñña, something that
isn't often very clearly understood. Now making merit, principally through acts
of generosity, kindness and virtue is a very strong point in Theravada Buddhist
culture in South East Asia. Unfortunately, this can be interpreted as rather
like buying your place in heaven. You do something now and by that ensure a
fortunate rebirth in the future. I'm sure that many people do consider merit in
that way. But it's important to consider what merit really means in the Buddha's
teaching.
The very English word `merit' sounds like something from boy scout days when you
got badges and stars for being very good. I never got one. The Pali word is
puñña and the English words that derive from puñña are the odd word `boon' or
the word `bounty', which is still in use. `Bounty' gives the feeling of inner
wealth or fullness, a certain store, an auspiciousness or a quality of
blessedness. To cultivate puñña is therefore to cultivate inner wealth or a
reservoir of spiritual wealth.
We can develop spiritual strength, fortitude or courage, but here we are not
talking in terms of self or in terms of attainment or grasping. The natural
result of good gractice is that, over time, you do develop a certain clarity of
mind, a certain dispassion, a certain lightheartedness. This is just the result
of good practice. We can see this in another way, that the puñña or merit born
of good practice are these good results. All Dhamma practice is about abandoning
selfishness. Of course, if we come from self-view, saying `Well, how do I make
more merit so that I can have a better time and a better life?', then there's no
merit attained at all because we've started the whole thing off on the wrong
premise. It has to come from genuine selflessness which, in brief, is what
Dhamma practice is about. Whether we like to meditate or cultivate good
qualities, the uniting factor in this is the cultivation of selflessness. If we
meditate from self-view, there's no merit. Instead, we tend to get into very
repressive mind states, becoming obsessive, neurotic, fanatical or conceited.
There is no richness of heart cultivated in that, only another narrow-minded
attitude.
It is important to consider this reflection on merit in order to see that our
practice should lead, skilfully induced, to a fullness of life. That's something
tangible that we can recognize - a fullness of heart, a feeling that arises when
we notice that, actually, we're not bothered by things that would have bothered
us enormously a few years ago; we have a certain stability or centredness. Of
course, we're not considering Dhamma practice to be meditation alone. We want to
cultivate the Eightfold Path, the complete meditation course if you like - all
these things: Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action - and to cultivate puñña
or blessings in our daily lives. We don't want a life of constant entropy,
gradually wearing us out, leaving us just with some wages and a house and
nothing that really stores up goodness or fullness in us. We want to cultivate
our lives in such a way that we feel more uplifted, confident and strong within
ourselves.
Now the world of materialism is not a place of merit because it doesn't tend
towards selflessness. The materialist ethos encourages us to value possessing,
owning and getting more for ourselves. Whatever our personal views are, the line
that comes across in many different ways is that to have more is important - to
have the latest or the newest or the fastest or the strongest; and that what we
have is more important than what we are.
One easy way of developing merit is to use the material world as a place of
sharing and giving. This is a very straightforward utilisation of material
resources for our own welfare, the welfare of the inner person, the spirit or
the heart. If we are acting in a genuinely generous and sharing way, for our own
understanding and from the right intention, there is a beautiful quality left in
the mind. We're not just looking at life as being about `me' and `mine'; we are
seeing things at a much broader level.
I remember reading in one of the Buddhist Suttas about some of the great lay
disciples like Anæthapindika and Visækha. They were very wealthy and yet they
gave a lot of their own free will; they realised one thing that rich people
often get stuck with and cannot over come: not only does the amassing of wealth
fail to bring happiness but it actually brings a state of extreme fear and
anxiety, an enslavement to one's possessions. If you use your time primarily to
accumulate wealth, then you will be caught up in the fear of losing it. Your
will be unable to trust anybody, thinking `Maybe they're just close to me
because of my riches.' Dealing with a lot of money that people want and crave
and which produces such unwholesome responses is living in a state that is not
conducive to spiritual uplift.
But Anæthapindika and Visækha wanted to use their financial resources to bring
them joy, to feel that they had done enormous good deeds. Visækha herself asked
the Buddha if he would grant her eight boons, eight favours. His reply was `Buddhas
don't make deals. Perfect Ones are beyond bargaining, Visækha.' She said `But
these are blameless, Blessed One, these are blameless favours.' So he said
`Well, say what you want.' Visækha replied `I would like to be able to offer
bathing cloths to the nuns so that they are not naked when they go down to the
riverside, rice gruel for all the sick monks and nuns, and rain cloths for the
monks in the rains season so that they have something to wear when it is raining
and their robes get wet.' She said `I would like to do this so that I will have
the great joy of recollecting how many good, worthy people I have helped. This
will calm and uplift my mind and act as a basis for other factors of
enlightenment to arise in me.' Visækha was very wise. She had hundreds of
children and grandchildren and she was a very important woman in her time. In
those days, as now, Indian women could command quite a lot of power on the
financial and home fronts. Visækha really knew how best to use her wealth.
Most people never really see their lives in those terms, do they? We don't think
`What would give me joy, energy, and calm, what will support the foundations of
mindfulness and inner composure?' because somehow that seems remote. Also the
Buddha recommended that we consider soemthing else that seems remote: our own
death. In Buddhist reflections, we consider that our life, within a social
convention, is a progression from birth to death. This is what it is, and we
fill in the time doing things to keep ourselves alive and to make ourselves
happy. But what we really do is we're born and then we die. The human quest is
how to make this brief, transitory passage one that somehow steps beyond and is
made the most significant or the most fulfilling for us. Where will it really
uplift us or take us out of the mere despair of mortality? These trancendantal
virtues or paramitas, of which generosity is the first, are ways of developing
bounty or beauty in the heart. The time of death is the time when consciousness
will be reborn dependent upon the person's state of mind at the moment of death.
But even while we are alive we can see that the rebirth process just goes on.
What we feel like today is the result of our attitudes and deeds in past months
or years. If we live joyously, guiltlessly and can feel good about what we are
doing, then at this time and in this life, we know happiness and contentment.
So puñña can also be realised in this life. We don't have to wait until we die
to see if it works. Certainly, giving and generous people, if they know where to
look into their heart, can experience great happiness through this feeling of
blamelessness and contentment. For a Samana, one of the great advantages is the
attainment of discipline or virtue. A monk who has trained himself well is said
to have attained to the discipline. This doesn't mean that he simply remembers
all the rules but that through training himself, his mind has become very sweet
and malleable: no longer blustering, angry, brutal, forceful and aggressive; it
is a trained mind. And such a mind is said to have the fragrance of virtue or
sølagandho. There is something almost tangibly sweet about a mind that's not
cantankerous, obstreperous or aggressive; so this is another kind of puñña or
merit that can be realised.
Generosity and morality are two of the ten paramitas. Renunciation is another.
There's a delightful result in renunciation or nekhamma. It is something that
tangibly develops great merit, but not in the sense that if we do good, then
when we die, we'll get some good marks on the score card. The great boon or
blessing of renunciation is this sense of contenment with little, with
simplicity. A mind that is happy or in a good state, a mind that has learned to
be content with little, is a tangible, discernable blessing that we can realise
in our lives. The other paramitas are patience, understanding, energy,
resolution, loving kindness, equanimity or serenity, and honesty. None of these
is really remote from any of us in our daily lives. We're not necessarily averse
to, but are often not focussed upon, how to live today in a way that is perhaps
more patient, more honest with ourselves and others; or in a way in which we put
aside things that are not really necessary. They may not be harmful but they
just fill up the space. Instead of just filling up time and space, we can use
that time to look at the mind, to cultivate and develop ourselves in some way.
These are not remote possibilities. The world, in fact, is something that almost
requires you to have paramitas, trancendental qualities, just to stay fairly
sane and cheerful. If we have no patience or equanimity, then the world is a
very despairing place, isn't it? If we cannot recognise, accept and embrace the
dark and the gloomy, the promises and the hope as one and the same with some
serene and unshakeable quality, then the mind will always be torn apart by hope
and grief.
In Buddhist countries, the dæna paramita or merit through generosity, is perhaps
the simplest and most straightforward - it's just the use of material things.
But it is also the most corruptible. The Buddha himself said that there is
greater fortune in giving to people who are worthy and the highest kind of
giving is to give to a Buddha. Reading this you may, I suppose, be a bit
sceptical if you think that what he meant is `The highest kind of giving is to
give things to me.' Yet we note that whenever people did offer things to the
Buddha, he tended to distribute them to the Sangha rather than keeping them for
himself. Just to have given to a Buddha means that you have the feeling in your
heart that you have used resources in the most skillful way possible; you have
given them to a very wise and compassionate being who won't use them selfishly
or greedily or abuse your trust.
In this same talk, the Buddha also said that higher than giving alms to a Buddha
is being able to watch one inhalation of the breath come and then one exhalation
go. So there's a twist, as there often is in the Buddha's teaching. We have this
sequence of beings worthy of gifts, starting with an ordinary monk or nun, then
an attained one, then a complete saint, then the whole Sangha and then the
Buddha; but he says that to be able to watch one inhalation and one exhalation
is a much higher kind of merit.
Now consider, in your meditation practice, how many of you are content with one
inhalation and one exhalation? When you get an inhalation and an exhalation, do
you feel good about that? This last weekend a woman was saying to me `Oh, it's
very difficult to be completely conscious of the breath. Very few people can do
that.' I said `No, anybody can do that. Breathe in.' She breathed in. I said
`You're conscious of that. Now breathe out.' She breathed out. `You were
conscious of that. You've done it! You were completely conscious of the breath -
there you are, no problem!' Of course most people want to be able to do that for
hours and hours before they feel any good about it. Actually, all it ever is is
just one inhalation, one exhalation, then a repeat performance of the same
process. This is where our minds don't get into gear; they are not able to
remain that immediate and that's the difficulty.
Actually, its very easy to watch one inhalation and one exhalation; but to be
just that is somehow a development of all the paramitas in one moment because
the self instinct is to want something out of it. We think `If I really develop
this meditation, get the whole thing really moving away, get an hour of good
practice in, then this will propel me up to some sort of higher or calmer
state.' And we think `The longer I do it, the higher I'll get. If I do a ten-day
retreat, I'll get so high that I'll really have attained something!' That's
self-view, isn't it? It's a refined form of self-view but there is the belief in
a historical person who will extend forward in time, some being or some thing
that has to be sustained in time.
The more we observe, we realise that nothing is sustained through time except
kamma, rebirth, the process of cause and effect; this causes that. The cells in
this body are constantly dividing. Bits of it are flaking off every second. If I
had a sharp pair of eyes, I could probably see it happening. Even in the midst
of this talk, bits of my brain are burning out; fortunately, there are plenty so
I'm not going to end up completely moronic by 7.30! This whole process, what
seems to be a constant, permanent `me', is actually more like a fountain of new
stuff arising and old stuff passing away, a constant cascade. That's what our
life is, isn't it? I can say that I sat here from 6.30 until 7.30, a solid
chunk, but actually, what sits here from 6.30 til 7.30? Who? A body that's
constantly changing, mind states and emotional qualities that are constantly
changing, energy states that are going into flux, understanding and
non-understanding, interest and dullness, and so on. All constant change; but to
take that lesson, to understand it and abide in it, is a little difficult.
There's still something in us that feels `Yes, that's true, but I want to get
something out of this.'
It's true that we can do things that will give rise to fortunate rebirth, to
good consequences. To put it very simply, today I am able to speak to you
because of a number of things, one of which is the fact that I have been eating
fairly regualarly for the last thirty-nine years; this has been a cause for this
evening; this has been the effect of it. You owe this talk to beans, bread,
butter, rice and so forth. This talk is the rebirth of rice, beans and a few
potatoes; that's the energy that's producing this and the thoughts that go
through the mind are partly the consequence of just having eaten things. Of
course, if we hadn't done that, we wouldn't be alive at this time.
So we can certainly do things that affect kamma, the process and the way our
life runs, without really affecting our sense of identification with it or our
sense of liberation from it. On the level of what we do from the self-view, we
may only be able to affect the rhythm of our kamma. This body, however much I
feed it, is going to die. That's the way it is. It will feel pain, it will get
sick, tired and hungry. No matter how many times I eat, it still gets hungry. So
we can't really affect the basic nature of kamma. If there is no merit realised,
then this sense of `I am' is maintained throughout as `I am happy', `I am sad',
`I am progressing', `I am degenerating', and so on. The highest kind of merit is
that which liberates us from kamma, from that process of identification with
this kammic formation. This is where meditation is paramount and a source of
great merit.
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