The Relationship Between Merit and Suffering

Many small animals are nocturnal beings: they sleep during the day and come out at midnight to move about and forage for food, because they fear light and fear people; when there is light, they try their best not to come out. This is determined by the mechanism of their physical bodies, and also determined by the fact that, lacking merit, they cannot sustain themselves and must steal food to eat—in short, it is all brought about by karmic power. Small animals have no merit, so they must fear people and fear beings whose merit is greater than their own. The same holds true among beings of the same kind: those with greater merit occupy the position of leadership and become the head of their kind.

Therefore, if a person has exhausted all of their merit and also has the karma of the three evil destinies, they must go to the three evil destinies to suffer. The three evil destinies require hardly any merit to survive in; where there is no merit there is necessarily suffering—merit and suffering are like the two ends of a scale: when one is low, the other is high, simultaneously and in equal measure. If a Buddhist practitioner does not know to cultivate more merit and consume less of it, that is truly a great pity. Not knowing that merit can be completely used up, and that without merit one must undergo great suffering—this is ignorance and foolishness. A person who refuses to cultivate merit, and is unwilling even to do the small favors that cost no more than a raised hand to benefit others, is absolutely not a wise person. Those whose hearts hold only themselves are none of them wise or intelligent people.