Acting with the hope of being rewarded undermines the merit (Chai mai?)

Veena Thoopkrajae’s musings on karma remind me of a story.  Upon arriving in southern China in 527 CE, Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch, visited Emperor Wu of Liang at his capital in Nanjing.  This monarch was proud of his many great acts of charity: building temples, copying sutras, feeding monks.  When he asked Bodhidharma how much merit all this had earned him, he was crestfallen when the monk bluntly told him, “None at all.”

Bodhidharma was trying to make a point (you can probably find it by googling him), but there’s another point that people ought to think about.  I understand that many Thai Buddhists perform acts of charity – donating money to temples, etc – with the intention of earning merit.Such merit-making sounds praiseworthy, but is not entirely altruistic: they expect that the merit thus earned will guarantee them good fortune in this or some future life.

I understand that the Buddha taught that karma is produced, not by specific actions, but by the underlying motivation for those actions.  (Correct me if I’m wrong.)  He also taught that craving is the cause of suffering.  Is it not reasonable to assume that if you perform good works with the motive of gaining good fortune in the future, that craving will undermine and nullify the effects of those good works?

Merit-making with no desire for reward is admirable; but the craving for reward poisons it.  As the late Buddhadasa Bhikkhu remarked, “That’s not religion; that’s just a business deal.”

William Page

Samut Prakan