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Good News

grantcart

(53,061 posts)

1. This speaks to the Thai understanding of "merit".

Reply to NYC_SKP (Original post)

Tue Oct 1, 2013, 10:41 PM

Oct 2013

Do good and it will be returned to you. If it misses you this lifetime it accumulates for the next.

There is a general misunderstanding of what is meant when Thais go to the temple and "make merit" (by freeing a bird or giving food to a monk). They dedicate the merit they are making to a love one that has passed on, they are not accumulating merit for yourself. The merit you make for yourself is in the ordinary way that you "paddle the boat down the canal" as you go about your daily life.

It captures perfectly Thai cosmology, it is not something that they believe "in" but that they absolutely understand to be true, kind of like the way we "believe" in gravity.

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Highlight:

How A Single Act Of Kindness Could Change Your Life (Thai w subtitles) [View all] NYC_SKP Oct 2013 OP

This speaks to the Thai understanding of "merit". grantcart Oct 2013 #1

Thanks for providing more context than I could have. NYC_SKP Oct 2013 #2

Sometimes those YouTube sidebar picks turn out to be better than what you clicked on... MiddleFingerMom Oct 2013 #3

Thanks for sharing that memory! NYC_SKP Oct 2013 #5

Huge K&R! n/t OneGrassRoot Oct 2013 #4