Somewhat a wall of text, but this article by Bikkhu Bodhi is
helpful for understanding how accumulation of merit is important
for "propelling" one towards enlightenment. It however
reminds us that there is no intrinsic sanctity in rites, rituals
and acts of charity in and of themselves, but that merit-making is
for channeling the current of mental activity in a spiritually
beneficial direction.
From: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel259.html#merit
The performance of deeds of merit forms one of the most
essential elements of Buddhist practice. Its various modes provide
in their totality a compendium of applied Buddhism, showing
Buddhism not as a system of ideas but as a complete way of life.
Buddhist popular belief has often emphasized merit as a productive
source of worldly blessings — of health, wealth, long life, beauty
and friends. As a result of this emphasis, meritorious activity has
come to be conceived rather in terms of a financial investment, as
a religious business venture yielding returns to the satisfaction
of the agent's mundane desires. While such a conception no doubt
contains an element of truth, its popularization has tended to
eclipse the more important function merit plays in the context of
Buddhist practice. Seen in correct perspective, merit is an
essential ingredient in the harmony and completeness of the
spiritual life, a means of self-cultivation, and an indispensable
stepping-stone to spiritual progress.
The accumulation of a "stock of merit" is a primary requisite
for acquiring all the fruits of the Buddhist religious life, from a
pleasant abiding here and now to a favorable rebirth in the life to
come, from the initial stages of meditative progress to the
realization of the states of sanctity that come as the fruits of
entering upon the noble path. The highest fruition of merit is
identical with the culmination of the Buddhist holy life itself —
that is, emancipation from the shackles of samsaric existence and
the realization of Nibbana, the unconditioned state beyond the
insubstantial phenomena of the world. The mere piling up of merit,
to be sure, is not in itself sufficient to guarantee the attainment
of this goal. Merit is only one requisite, and it must be balanced
by its counterpart to secure the breakthrough from bondage to final
freedom. The counterpart of merit is knowledge (ñana), the
direct confrontation with the basic truths of existence through the
eye of intuitive wisdom.
Merit and knowledge together constitute the two sets of
equipment the spiritual aspirant requires in the quest for
deliverance, the equipment of merit (puññasambhara) and
the equipment of knowledge (ñanasambhara), respectively.
Each set of equipment has its own contribution to make to the
fulfillment of the spiritual life. The equipment of merit
facilitates progress in the course of samsaric wandering: it brings
a favorable rebirth, the encounter with good friends to guide one's
footsteps along the path, the meeting with opportunities for
spiritual growth, the flowering of the lofty qualities of
character, and the maturation of the spiritual faculties required
for the higher attainments. The equipment of knowledge brings the
factor directly necessary for cutting the bonds of samsaric
existence: the penetration of truth, enlightenment, the undistorted
comprehension of the nature of actuality.
Either set of equipment, functioning in isolation, is
insufficient to the attainment of the goal; either pursued alone
leads to a deviant, one-sided development that departs from the
straight path to deliverance taught by the Buddha. Merit without
knowledge produces pleasant fruit and a blissful rebirth, but
cannot issue in the transcendence of the mundane order and entrance
upon the supramundane path. And knowledge without the factors of
merit deteriorates into dry intellectualism, mere erudition or
scholasticism, impotent when confronted with the task of grasping a
truth outside the pale of intellection. But when they function
together in unison in the life of the aspirant, the two sets of
equipment acquire a potency capable of propelling him to the
heights of realization. When each set of equipment complements the
other, polishes the other, and perfects the other, then they
undergo a graduated course of mutual purification culminating at
the crest in the twin endowments of the Emancipated One — in that
clear knowledge (vijja) and flawless conduct
(carana) which make him, in the words of the Buddha,
"supreme among gods and humans."
But while merit and knowledge thus occupy coordinate positions,
it is merit that claims priority from the standpoint of spiritual
dynamics. The reason is that works of merit come first in the
process of inner growth. If knowledge be the flower that gives
birth to the fruit of liberation, and faith (saddha) the
seed out of which the flower unfolds, then merit is the soil, water
and fertilizer all in one — the indispensable nutriment for every
stage of growth. Merit paves the way for knowledge, and finds in
knowledge the sanction for its own claim to a place in the system
of Buddhist training.
The reason for this particular sequential structure is closely
linked to the Buddhist conception of noetic realization. From the
Buddhist standpoint the comprehension of spiritual truth is not a
matter of mere intellectual cogitation but of existential
actualization. That is, it is a matter of grasping with our whole
being the truth towards which we aspire, and of inwardly
appropriating that truth in a manner so total and complete that our
being becomes transformed into a very reflex and effusion of the
truth upon which we stand. The understanding of truth in the
context of the spiritual life, in other words, is no affair of
accumulating bits and pieces of information publicly accessible and
subjectively indifferent; it is, rather, a process of uncovering
the deepest truths about ourselves and about the world, and of
working the understanding that emerges into the entire complex of
the inner life. Hence the use of the words "actualization" and
"realization," which bring into the open the ontological backdrop
underlying the noetic process.
In order to grasp truth in this totalistic manner at any
particular stage of spiritual development, the tenor of our inner
being must be raised to a pitch where it is fit for the reception
of some new disclosure of the truth. Wisdom and character, though
not identical, are at any rate parallel terms, which in most cases
mature in a delicately balanced ratio. We can grasp only what we
are fit to grasp, and our fitness is largely a function of our
character. The existential comprehension of truth thus becomes a
matter of inward worth, of deservingness, or of merit. The way to
effect this inward worthiness is by the performance of works of
merit, not merely outwardly, but backed by the proper attitudes and
disposition of mind. For the capacity to comprehend truths
pertaining to the spiritual order is always proportional to the
store and quality of accumulated merit. The greater and finer the
merit, the larger and deeper the capacity for understanding. This
principle holds at each level of maturation in the ascent towards
full realization, and applies with special force to the
comprehension of ultimate truth.
Ultimate truth, in the Buddha's Teaching, is Nibbana, the
unconditioned element (asankhata dhatu), and realization
of ultimate truth the realization of Nibbana. Nibbana is the
perfection of purity: the destruction of all passions, the
eradication of clinging, the abolition of every impulse towards
self-affirmation. The final thrust to the realization of Nibbana is
the special province of wisdom, since wisdom alone is adequate to
the task of comprehending all conditioned phenomena in their
essential nature as impermanent, suffering and not-self, and of
turning away from them to penetrate the unconditioned, where alone
permanent freedom from suffering is to be found. But that this
penetration may take place, our interior must be made commensurate
in purity with the truth it would grasp, and this requires in the
first instance that it be purged of all those elements obstructive
to the florescence of a higher light and knowledge. The
apprehension of Nibbana, this perfect purity secluded from the dust
of passion, is only possible when a corresponding purity has been
set up within ourselves. For only a pure mind can discern, through
the dark mist of ignorance and defilement, the spotless purity of
Nibbana, abiding in absolute solitude beyond the turmoil of the
phenomenal procession.
The achievement of such a purification of our inward being is
the work of merit. Merit scours the mind of the coarser
defilements, attenuates the grip of the unwholesome roots, and
fortifies the productive power of the wholesome, beneficial states.
Through its cumulative force it provides the foundation for
wisdom's final breakthrough to the unconditioned. It is the fuel,
so to speak, for the ascent of wisdom from the mundane to the
supramundane. Just as the initial stages of a lunar rocket work up
the momentum that enables the uppermost stage to break the
gravitational pull of the earth and reach the moon, so does merit
give to the spiritual life that forward thrust that will propel the
wisdom-faculty past the gravitational pull of the mundane order and
permit it to penetrate the transcendental truth.
The classical Buddhist commentators underscore this preparatory
purgative function of merit when they define merit (puñña)
etymologically as "that which purges and purifies the mental
continuum" (santanam punati visodheti). Merit performs its
purgative function in the context of a complex process involving an
agent and object of purification, and a mode of operation by which
the purification takes place. The agent of purification is the mind
itself, in its creative, formative role as the source and matrix of
action. Deeds of merit are, as we have already seen, instances of
wholesome kamma, and kamma ultimately reduces to volition.
Therefore, at the fundamental level of analysis, a deed of merit
consists in a volition, a determinative act of will belonging to
the righteous order (puññabhisankhara). Since volition is
a mode of mental activity, this means that merit turns out, under
scrutiny, to be a mode of mental activity. It is, at the core of
the behavior-pattern which serves as its vehicle, a particular
application of thought by which the mind marshalls its components
for the achievement of a chosen end.
