Dedicating Merit. By Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.

Dedicating Merit. By Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.

So at the beginning of the meditation, at the end of the meditation, after a chanting session—anytime when you’ve done something good—you might want to stop and think,  “Who are your dead ancestors? 

Can you dedicate the merit to them?”

When I first went to practice with Ajaan Fuang, it was shortly after my mother’s death. And one of the first things he said was, “At the end of every meditation, dedicate the merit of your meditation to your mother.” 

It’s an integral part of the practice to remind you that you shouldn’t be the only one benefitting from this. 

The benefits should go all around.

That brahman then asked the Buddha, “What if you don’t have any dead ancestors who are hungry ghosts?” And the Buddha said, “Don’t worry, everybody has dead ancestors who are hungry ghosts”—back in those days, they counted their ancestors back seven generations.

That’s a lot of people. There are bound to be some hungry ghosts in all those many branches of your family tree. And, of course, you don’t have to limit it to your ancestors. You can spread goodness to anybody with whom you’ve had contact. 

There’s a concept they have in Thailand of chao kam nai wen, literally, your karmic debt collectors. 

They’re the people or animals you’ve wronged in the past and who are really fixated on making you pay for what you did. You’ve got to repay them. These are people we don’t like to think about, the people we’ve wronged. We like to think that we’ve gone through our many lives just being very helpful and good and kind.

But who knows what we’ve got hidden away in our past? When you look at a person in the present moment, it’s not the case that you see the running balance in his or her kamma account. All you see are the past actions that are sprouting right now, that are giving fruit right now. As for other actions, they’re still dormant in that person’s kamma field. The seeds are there in the field and they may sprout some other time. You don’t know what they are.

Our memory, for the most part, extends back just into this lifetime. But when you think about all the many lives you’ve been around, there were probably some times when you did something that was not all that skillful. And there may be some beings who are really fixated on having been the victim of what you did. 

So dedicate merit to them.

Now the problem, as I said, with some hungry ghosts is that their kamma may be so strong that they’re not yet in a position where they can be aware of the fact that merit’s been dedicated to them. And there are also those that just hold a grudge.

There was a woman who came to meditate at the monastery several years back when Ajaan Fuang was still alive. She was a friend of one of the women who cooked in the kitchen. And the woman in the kitchen told Ajaan Fuang that this friend had a particular problem. Every time she tried to meditate, her body would start shaking uncontrollably.

So the night she meditated with us in the chedi, sure enough, she started shaking. Ajaan Fuang had a student who was quite psychic and he told her to look into what was happening. She saw two beings behind the woman, shaking her. And to make a very long story short, she found out these had been the parents of this woman in a previous lifetime. She had killed them in that lifetime—this was a very long time ago—and they didn’t like the idea that by meditating she might get out of their grasp.

So Ajaan Fuang’s student asked them, “What do you want? What could she do that would satisfy you?” 

And then they said, “If she could help build a Buddha image and dedicate the merit to us, that would satisfy us.” 

It so happened that we were building a Buddha image at the monastery at the time. So Ajaan Fuang told the student, “You can’t say anything to her about this. Otherwise, it’ll look like we’re trying to squeeze money out of her.” But a couple of years later, someone else was building a Buddha image and she participated in that—and the shaking stopped.

We don’t know who we’ve got in our past or what we’ve done in our past. So it’s always a good idea to dedicate merit just in case, to pay off some old debts.

And as an act of kindness. Especially here in a place like America, where there hasn’t been that much dedication of merit to anybody, we have a lot of hungry ghosts. You don’t have to look very far—just look at the human beings around us. Lots of them are like hungry ghosts.  They never seem to have enough. 

Everything is lacking, lacking, lacking in their lives.

In the murals in Thailand, they portray hungry ghosts with huge stomachs and little tiny, tiny mouths. 

They can never get enough. In fact, in Southern Thailand they actually make a sweet from very, very thin noodles, with the idea that they’re so thin that they’re thin enough for a hungry ghost to eat. You give those noodles to the monks, and then the merit goes to the  hungry ghost. Maybe the hungry ghost can eat the very thin noodles.

But again, you don’t have to look at murals in Thailand. Look around you. There are a lot of people who just never get enough, no matter how much they get. And so what’s going to happen to them when they die? That’s pretty much where they’re headed.

And because there hasn’t been that much merit-making in America and very little  dedication of merit, there are lots of these hungry ghosts out there who could benefit from our sharing the merit with them. If they’re in the position where they can accept it and are willing to accept it, they’re going to benefit.

At the same time, the dedication of merit reminds you that you also want to take the  goodness of your meditation and bring it not only into the lives of those who’ve passed away, but also into the lives of people around you.

Ajaan Fuang had another student whose powers of concentration were extremely strong. After practicing with him for a while, she complained to him, “I don’t see that concentration is having any impact on the rest of my life.” She tended to have a very strong temper and her temper wasn’t going away.

And he explained to her, “It’s not the case that simply doing concentration is going to have some sort of magic-wand effect on the rest of your life. You have to take the lessons you’ve  learned in the meditation, the qualities of mind you’ve developed in the meditation, and consciously bring them to bear on the rest of your life.” This is one of the ways you bring out the merit of your meditation and spread it around.

So when you leave meditation, don’t really leave it. Try to think of the attitudes you’ve  developed. 

You’ve had to develop some patience, some equanimity, some kindness for yourself. You’ve had to develop the ability to hold your thoughts in check, to exercise some restraint.  

Well, try to bring these qualities into your day-to-day interactions with other people. Learn some restraint. 

Learn some equanimity when dealing with them.

If you’ve been meditating properly, you’ve developed these skills. But don’t just leave them on the meditation cushion. Take them along with you. See your interactions at work, your interactions at home, as part of the practice, as your opportunity to spread some of the goodness of the meditation around.

What this comes down to is that goodness should not be just for one individual. And if it’s really good, it’s not. The effects spread around. Even though each of us has to work on his or her own kamma, work on straightening out his or her own mind, dealing with his or her own defilements, still the results, when they come, don’t just stay within the confines of your own mind or your own body. They should come out in your actions.

And when they do, other people will benefit. At the very least, they’ll receive the goodness you’ve developed. Some people are very sensitive to that. It’s even better if they see that you’re a good example for them to follow.

Take the case of Ajaan Mun. Many people in Thailand during his time were saying that the noble paths and fruitions were impossible, that nobody could do them anymore. But then he, by his own example, proved that what they were saying was wrong. As the word got out, more and more people came to practice with him, and they found that they, too, could develop the  noble attainments—after many of them had almost given up, believing that this was not  possible anymore.

So the example of one person can be inspiring to other people, reminding them that there are aspects of the human mind, qualities of the human mind, dimensions and capabilities of the human mind, that are a lot more than we tend to imagine. And when these possibilities are opened up to us, they’re a great gift.

So if you can act as a good example to others, showing a level of patience and equanimity and kindness and restraint in your actions beyond the ordinary, that’s going to be a real gift to others. And it might inspire them to try to develop the same qualities within them. This is another way in which goodness gets spread around.

~•~•~•~

Excerpted from Dedicating Merit. By Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.

https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/Transcripts/160101_Dedicating_Merit.pdf

Photo: Santi Forest Monastery

https://santiforestmonastery.org/lineage/phra-ajaan-thanissaro/

12 May 2023