Mugo White, Rev. Master

This article is based on a talk given by Rev. Master Mugō on the 5^th April at Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey. It was transcribed by Rev. Alina and edited by Julius Welby.

We have just completed a ceremony which I think is probably new to the Abbey, called the Dedication of Merit Ceremony, for which I had the honour of being the celebrant. For many, the idea of transferring merit, that is spiritual merit, for those who are in extremity, those who have died, or are suffering, and for their families, raises real questions.

I received an email recently in which a chap asked “Why do we offer merit for those who are dead? How would they benefit?” This question has helped me to focus on the ceremony and also on this talk. His question points to a fundamental issue for all Buddhists which is, as I see it, a deep call to examine our understanding of the fundamental nature of existence, of life and death. This is a question begging to be answered and many a young child has wrangled with this enquiry and has then lost sight of it in the face of the imperative to get on with life and live it, and rightly so. I for one returned later in life to continue this enquiry. My path was a calling to be a monk. For others that is not their calling, and I feel that they are different yet equal paths.

At the beginning of the ceremony today there was an incense offering and dedication when I, as celebrant, voiced a wish on behalf of everybody. In the dedication, I said that the merit of this ceremony is offered wholeheartedly to all those who have died, all those who are dying and all those who will die throughout all time and all space. So that covers it, I would have thought. It includes all those who have lived, are living and will be born.

We did a new chant today, which I thought went well, called Dedication of Merit. Essentially it is similar in intention to the offertory at the end of all our ceremonies, although we did have a short offertory after the chant. It is, I think, the most uplifting of our chants. It ends with the word joy; in the midst of flux, or change, joy. This is for me the nub of merit and the offering of merit, where the seeming opposites – birth and death, joy and sorrow, right and wrong – collide within dedicated practice and training.

Practice, which many people have many ideas about, isn’t quite what we think it is. I’ll try and explain what I understand practice and training to be, in short form. I’ll probably use different words at different times, so please think for yourselves, which I am sure you do.

Practice is directing ourselves to our simple and open heart, unstintingly – that would be the short form. That’s within the heart of meditation, both in formal sitting, and during the rest of our day, which makes up most of our lives. Meditation embraces seated meditation, working meditation, talking meditation, cooking meditation, cleaning, listening, watching the news meditation. In other words, practice is the wellspring of an intention; that which underpins our lives, to do that which is good, and refrain from harmful habitual actions – which are largely outside of our conscious minds. Often these habits are subtle and come to light in the process of practice, which is to do, and be, good for others. Many of you will recognise that this is the Three Pure Precepts.

We practice kindness, keeping to the Precepts, wholeheartedly present to the task at hand, and generally to be the best person we can be. Perfection is not on the cards, nor is judgement of oneself nor the multitude of others. In the process, forgiveness is the watchword and our companion into wise action – and we humans are wired for action.

So, is it worth it? Is it worth doing ceremonies like this? Is it worth our efforts to offer the merits of our practice, for example? Yes. There is merit embedded in our sincerity of purpose to train ourselves. Good things come from doing good.

So how do we ‘do’ the offering of merit? Practically speaking, the ceremony today is an example of doing this, and the ‘how it works’ takes us to the very heart of Buddhism and the Buddha’s teaching. In the time of the Buddha in India, Hinduism taught the concept of atman, which is the idea of an enduring, eternal soul. The Buddha taught anatta, which was a divergence from Hinduism – anatta meaning no separate abiding individual self.

So, having established that acting from a clear baseline intention to train oneself is good, and also that putting this intention into action, including the practice of seated meditation, has merit and a positive impact on others – the questions are:

“How does merit work?” Well, we have just answered that, pretty much.

“Does it make a difference? How does it work?” I think these questions are best answered by entrusting oneself to the process of practice and meditation, the process of daily practice, day in, day out.

Some answers come from people who have experienced and received merit when in extremity. I have had reports of receiving merit through my mother, who knew that merit was being transferred to her when she was dying. She called them her revelations, or visionary dreams. That’s interesting.

Answers may come from talking to other trainees about what they understand and how their practice of transferring merit takes form. It is very individual, there is no fixed form as far as I am concerned. Personally, I don’t deliberately offer merit, though I do ask for the full names of people who I hear are in extremity. I keep a private list of names on my altar, and during the day, names come in and out of my mind. I regard this as giving a deliberate ‘push’ in their direction, – or it may be a pull, to be honest, I don’t know, a resonance with the person. They are included in some way in my day and if someone comes to mind very frequently, I will drop them an email.

There has been what I regard as a great call in recent weeks for people to join with others, on-line and to sit together, and many are engaging with this and benefiting, as several people have reported to us. And in response to this great call, we at Throssel have posted videos of a couple of our ceremonies on the Throssel website, and started, for want of a better word, a blog. People have joined in, reading and commenting on the blog, and joining in the ceremonies, which is really great.

We normally encourage people to sit, if they can, with a meditation group, priory or the like because doing so has a positive impact on the meditation of all there. And I will take a side thought here for those who are, for various reasons, not able to sit with others, or for those who sitting with others raises so much difficulty that they find it emotionally or practically intolerable. My heart goes out to those people.

The merit that is generated through communal activity is greater than the solo efforts of an individual alone, and for those who sit with others for any length of time this is unmistakeable. They will often report that they find it ‘easier’ to sit in a group than to sit alone at home. So unseen and unacknowledged, the merit of the meditation circulates and supports all present, circulating no less for those now, of necessity, sitting on-line, together with others.

One of the reasons that we ask people to follow the same tradition, our tradition of Serene Reflection Meditation, is that there is a common, unified baseline – to just sit; no add-ons like visualisations, repetitions of a koan or mantra, for example. These are all fine within the tradition they come from, but that is not our tradition. Sitting together, reciting a scripture together, in unison, points to the truth of non-separation, non-division. We talk about reciting scriptures as being with one voice, and to recite a scripture or to sing with one voice means you need to be listening to your own voice and everyone else’s voice. This is the bane of anybody who has directed a choir – to encourage everyone to listen to what is going on around them and mesh in, sing with one voice. Joining with others in this way alleviates the very real sense of being separate, individual, isolated, different and fundamentally alone.

You could say that a kind of resonance is set up when people practice together in the same place, much like when a bell is struck next to another bell, but not touching it. The vibration passes unseen between them and the second bell rings. An experiment to try if you happen to have two bells handy.

The ‘great call’ I mentioned earlier is that fundamental yearning of the heart to share in, connect with, and be verified by, that deep resonance shared between those with a common purpose, especially when that is formed in the deepest part of our consciousness.

Yes, people are joining together to sing and dance and exercise and practice yoga and check in with family and friends. And yes, there is joy in a bond which alleviates the isolation and basic loneliness many will suffer. So those acts are of benefit, both for self and others when you join in, and that’s how I see it myself, because I do, will do, check in with my family this evening. The great call, the calling of the heart, is however of a different order, although that may not be clearly apparent, given the social aspect to connecting with fellow sitters, which is a reward in itself. For short, I am calling this resonance effect a merit field, which is unseen and unknowable with the ordinary mind, yet nonetheless real. This resonance cannot in truth be hindered by physical distance, as is clearly confirmed and reinforced currently by on-line connections.

Thus it is that trainees act as spiritual anchors and touchstones for one another; to make that connection, I would like to say, in emptiness. As I see it, the monastery, priories and individual monks function in this way too, as anchors. It should be understood however that while such anchors are encouraging, they are not essential to our practice, which is just as well, since our trusted internet can fail us at any moment. And if it does, well then what? We are thrown back on our own resources.

As in other times of difficulty, we are constantly being thrown back on our own resources. I am glad to be here in the monastery and to walk through my days with others, following the same schedule of activity including formal meditation and the daily round of ceremonies and getting on with my responsibilities, best I can. However well-intentioned it might be, it is a mistake to set up the lives of monks and the monastery as a kind of ‘gold standard’. Each of us, within the physical setting and form we find ourselves in, share equally within the life of the trusting heart of practice. I will repeat – share equally within the life of the trusting heart of practice. We have an equal capacity to engage fully with what is being asked of us, moment to moment. Indeed, different forms, different lives – same heart, same mind.

Some of the religious forms can be adapted and used wherever you are, and many of you will be doing that already. For example, before eating you can say the mealtime recitation, the text of which recently was posted to our blog along with a recording. If you are in circumstances where saying the whole recitation is not going to work for you, you can say just the Five Thoughts which come at the end of that long recitation, or you can say it silently to yourself – and that does include if you are eating with your non-Buddhist family, please don’t burden them! You can recite or think it at the start of the meal and end with the blessing verse at the end. This can re-anchor us to the baseline intention, running in the background of one’s being, and really that doesn’t hurt to be reinforced. Our religious forms generally, I believe, serve as a re-anchoring to that baseline. In certain settings, a café for example, I will just mentally lift my plate of food and think ‘thank you’; that is the minimum. There are many such ways to re-anchor and the sangha is likely to come up with many brilliant ideas. It does. You do.

So, I have done my best to explain spiritual merit as I have practiced and understood it, so you now perhaps have a deeper perspective, a wider one, a more informed one and an appreciation of the Buddhist teaching that underpins merit.

At the risk of being tiresome, I will recap:

The Buddhist truth embedded in anatta, no separate individual selves, means merit can’t help but circulated freely because there are no ‘gaps’, no gaps between what we like to think of as ourselves and others. Indeed, no gaps between any THING. And merit is generated through enlightened action informed by the Three Pure Precepts. If you like, ‘good’ comes from doing ‘good’. Like it or not, believe it or not. So there are no individual selves involved in the deepest level of our appreciation of … life actually. While at the same time, and this is very important, our individual lives and expressions are deeply important, deeply significant.

“Out beyond right and wrong, birth and death, joy and sorrow, there is a field, I will meet you there.”

Paraphrase of Rumi

This article is available only as part of the Summer 2020 Journal of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives.  

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