The Principle of Cultivating Merit and Depleting Merit

The merit used for cultivating the Path is never sufficient for sentient beings, so on the one hand one must constantly cultivate and create merit, and on the other hand one must also conserve merit as much as possible. Merit disappears very quickly: once merit is enjoyed, it is extinguished; if one boasts of oneself and destroys others, or receives praise from others, the merit is consumed; if one commits evil karma—harboring anger, jealousy, slander, divisive speech, and harsh speech—the merit vanishes. Of course, doing wholesome karma increases merit: benefiting others and the community increases merit; elevating one's own moral character and keeping a kind heart increases merit; meditative concentration (dhyāna) can increase merit; extensive learning can increase merit; keeping precepts can increase merit; forbearance can increase merit; and of course, various kinds of generosity (dāna) can increase merit even more. Some people, however, prefer to practice generosity extensively; although they originally had quite a lot of merit, they always feel they have none, and nothing goes smoothly for them no matter what they do. Why is this? In fact, it is because this person's afflictions are heavy, they are habituated to committing evil karma, they frequently lose their temper and give rise to anger, they love to be jealous of others, and at work they always squeeze others out and compete to be the best. Those who compete to be the best find it difficult to accumulate merit and will even deplete it; being jealous and squeezing others out, harming others' interests—all of these are things that damage one's own merit. 

When the mind is wholesome, speech is wholesome, and bodily actions are wholesome, this is the way to accumulate merit. Conversely, when afflictive habits are heavy, the mind is narrow, speech is unwholesome and one loves to stir up gossip and disputes, bodily actions are unwholesome and one loves to commit evil deeds, and the mind is unwholesome and thinks only of benefiting oneself—this is conduct that depletes merit. Afflictions are also called outflows (āsrava), the outflow of afflictions. With this outflow, wholesome karma is hard to accumulate and merit is hard to build up; whatever little merit one has will leak away because of afflictions. Therefore merit is always insufficient, things go wrong at every turn, the mind is uneasy, and resolve for the Path is not firm. When people encounter the suffering of illness, trouble, and disaster, they always assume these happen naturally, that everyone experiences such things, and they become accustomed to it. They never reflect on why illness, pain, setbacks, and all kinds of unsatisfactory things have arisen, and therefore they do not learn the lessons and change themselves. As a result, suffering and distress will continue to accompany them, and nothing goes smoothly for them no matter what they do.