“In building a stupa, we hope to acquire merit and good-
ness – not bricks and mortar. The value you obtain from build-
ing a stupa is the merit that you gain from this action – merit
which results from your efforts and which rightly belongs to you.
You shouldn’t worry about gross material things like bricks and
mortar that can never fulfill your desires anyway. People every-
where who gain merit by doing good deeds take with them only
the merit they’ve thus acquired, not the material things they gave
away as donations. For example, contributing to the construc-
tion of a monastery, a monk’s residence, an assembly hall, a road,
a water tank, a public building, or any other offering of material
goods, are simply the outward manifestations of the good inten-
tions of those wishing to be generous. They are not the actual
rewards of generosity, meaning that material offerings themselves
are not merit or goodness or heaven or Nibbãna, nor are they the
recipient of such rewards. For, over time, all material things dis-
integrate and fall apart.
“The spiritual qualities that are gained from the effort and
the generosity required to do charitable works are experienced
internally as merit and goodness. The inspiration behind the good
intentions to make such donations is the heart of each individual
donor. The heart itself is virtuous. The heart itself is meritorious. It
is the heart that exists as heaven or magga, phala and Nibbãna, and
the heart that achieves these attainments. Nothing else could possibly
achieve them.
“The unfinished stupa that you two were building lacked the
conscious capacity to have good intentions for its own spiritual
improvement. Your concern for it stems from a covetous mental-
ity that is a hindrance to you even though it is directed at holding
jacob rumans
(Jacob Rumans)
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