accumulating merit

i get razzed sometimes from my zenny friends asking me if i’ve accumulated merit recently. that tibetan way of talking about karmic action makes them laugh. so for them i offer this more abstract definition of the tibetan buddhist concept, thanks to his eminence tai situ rinpoche in the book The Life of Tilopa on page 22:

the work of accumulation/purification brings about a gradual disappearance of mental definition-habits which formerly created artificial subject-object polarities; all the arbitrary splitting of mental experience into ‘me’ and ‘it’, ’self’ and ‘other’, ‘me’ and ‘my mind’ and so on. When these frozen standpoints go, all the ensuing rigidity they normally create goes too. Realisation of the inseparability of subject and object reveals their one essence or the ‘great union’. It is fresh and fluid.

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