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How is it different from the idea of “De” (virtue) in the daodejing?
Merit in fact isn’t differnt from the idea of “De”. Your born with a set amount of merit. you can waste it or cultivate more of it just like Lao tzu said.
Lao zi does not seem to stress doing “good deeds” to accumulate merit in the daodejing, but seems to talk only about cultivating it in ones self, family, community and the world.
these are true “good deeds” and he does stress this. But i think your refering to the fact that if your doing something good and expecting to get something else (for instance merit) from your actions your not accumulating merit. merit also isnt the same as altruism, which is a big misconception in many religons.
It is easy to say its great and we should have it, but could you give us an idea of how it functions?
it functions like the idea of “muscle memory”. some of us are born with a predispostion to being good at golf (or whatever skill it doesnt matter) for instance. because of our genetics or whatever golf is easier for us than most people. maybe its because our ancestors used to practice golf everyday and the best golf players got the most love and had the most childern etc. and started pass on the best golf traits right. this is how “muscle memory” accumlates over geneterations.
but also that doesnt really matter. some people dont have a gentic predispotion to golf they just wanna play a lot of golf all the time, so they practice all the time and create “muscle memory” so that golf then becomes easier for them, thus continuing to motivate them to play. but also some practices are going to be more conducive to creating the specific kind of “muslce memory” for golf and with the help of a golf master you can find these techiques and his merit (development of “muslce memory” to create his stroke) can help you achive greater merit than you could discovering this stuff on your own right. but also while your learning you might discover something even more meritous (than what your taught and maybe know one else knows about) about mastering golf and then your merit accumalates to even greater levels.
but just really wanting to be good a golf will only hurt you. you look at your master and see his merit and think golly i can never achive such greatness. thus wanting to receive alot of merit is bad because you’ll constantly be telling yourself i dont have enough merit to achive this merit. (i dont have enough golf skill to be a pro) ok im done i think everyone should be able to understand the pardox here and understand that they really already understood this paradox before i even wrote this. so go out and accumalate merit. if you do so in a way that causes the greast good for all (or at least everyone one you know) you realise your a master with great merit (at least relative some everyone you know about). so you need merit to achive high levels of cultivation, just like you sort of need a master to help you discover this stuff. peace
Wow thank you guys so much for this information. the previous disscutions on Nan and Bodri had me confused. i’ve thought that the giving away the flesh joyfully of the skeleton meditation was the same thing as the inner smile. its just that on the outside it appears your forming an attachment to your flesh by loving it using the inner smile and your “repaying” karmic debts and over coming your fears of death using the skeleton mediation. but in fact when i think about it really neither of those statements are true. Thanks again guys this was really helpful. has anyone figure out a way to combine hand seals with the six healing sounds? it seems this could help beginners get good at really smiling.
You guys are getting this all little garbled. Merit in its most easy to understand sense refers to an idea called utilitarianism. you dont have to read any eastern stuff to figure this out. utilitarianism is the idea that the just or most virtueous (meritous) action is that which does the greatest good for all. you dont need to beleave in anything to understand that. of course this is a vary deep concept someone will always have better merit than you in any situation. like you said giving your money or food to a junkie or bum will just recreate more junkies and bums (because your tell them its ok to beg to survive like that). but the idea of killing all the bums off doesnt work either (but thats pretty much what we’re mostly doing anyways right). indeed maybe in that situation what may do the greastest good is to do either continue doing nothing or figure out a way to get rid our societies need to create bums. the key is wisdom. if you dont know how to help the bum problem (if it is indeed a problem in the first place) why would anything you do for them give you merit. merit is really magical its making the best possible result from the worst possible situations and shouldn’t be confused with fairness or morality. if you are not wise enough to understand why there are bums in the first place you have not yet accumlated the merit to help this situation. the idea in of merit in cultivation is that if you achive merit you can advance everyone, inclueding yourself with your wisdom. get it. its really simple but really deep. you dont have to waste time reading “ancient” scriptures to figure it out this kind of thing and trust if you dont understand the word merit you might want to start with something a little more easy. The more i read Michaels posts the more i realise how quick he is to bring up his distrust of religous control. I dont hear anyone asking if their being controlled by dogma do you? its a question of merit not demrit right? come on fella. i just started reading this message board yesterday to kill time between my classes and love it keep the question coming guys.
