The Relationship Between Merit and Dukkha

Many small animals are nocturnal beings, sleeping during the day and emerging to move about and forage for food late at night because they fear light and humans; when there is light, they try to stay hidden. This is determined by the mechanism of their physical bodies and also by their lack of merit, which forces them to steal food; in short, it is caused by their karmic retribution. Small creatures lack merit and virtue, so they must fear humans and beings with greater merit and virtue than themselves. Among beings of the same kind, it is also true that those with greater merit occupy positions of leadership and become the heads of their kind.

Therefore, if a person exhausts all their merit and virtue and possesses karmic causes for the three lower realms, they must inevitably go to the three lower realms to suffer. The three lower realms require very little merit to sustain existence; lacking merit inevitably brings suffering. Merit and suffering are like the two ends of a scale: when one rises, the other falls. If even Buddhists fail to understand the importance of cultivating more merit and consuming less of it, it is truly regrettable. Not knowing that merit can be exhausted, and that without merit one suffers greatly, is ignorance and folly. A person unwilling to cultivate merit, who will not even perform small acts benefiting others that require minimal effort, is certainly not a wise person. Those whose hearts are filled only with themselves are not intelligent or wise individuals.