The teacher continues teaching on the topic of the ten perfections that must be built while one has a human body.

Why Must Perfections Be Built While We Have a Human Body

The fullness of life can only arise through merit. Whenever we perform an act of merit — whether giving, keeping precepts, or meditating — we should measure it against the ten perfections: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, effort, patience, truthfulness, resolution, loving-kindness, and equanimity — then review which ones we still lack, so we can fill them in. Doing so benefits us both now and after we pass on, toward a realm of special merit.

Every human life consists of two parts: the eighteen bodies that form our self, and the guardian sovereign who nurtures and protects us. Each body has its own guardian sovereign, whose role is to allocate merit to nourish our growth. When we have a wish, the sovereign automatically responds to fulfill it. But when our desires grow excessive and unsatisfied, unwholesome forces seize the opportunity to guide us toward wrongdoing, drawing in the energy of demerit to push our inner elements downward — harming both ourselves and others.

Why Must Human Beings Perform the Duty of Accumulating Merit

The most essential duty of the human body is accumulating merit, because doing so yields subtle treasures, which draw in the coarser wealth of the world toward us. Even if new merit yields only a small result in this present life, it also draws in past merit along with it. Wholesome qualities act as the software that makes it easier for the sovereign within the sphere of merit to manage our desires. Without contentment, unwholesome forces will guide us toward ever-increasing desire until our merit can no longer keep pace, at which point they intervene with false, well-meaning guidance that leads us astray.

Why Are the Ten Perfections So Important

The ten perfections are essential resources for the cycle of rebirth and for progressing toward Nirvana. We need this pure energy to elevate our inner dimension, freeing us from a lesser life and bringing us into a better one. The more merit and perfection we have, the harder it is for unwholesome forces to push us downward; the less we have, the easier it is for them to do so. Freedom from defilement requires the sphere of liberation, which already exists within every body.

Why Is the Human Body Most Suitable for Building Perfections

The human body is a body of cause-making, unlike other bodies, which are bodies of experiencing results and are too fragile to withstand the power of greed, hatred, and delusion. Only the human body is sturdy enough to resist these forces without breaking apart. Because of this, unwholesome forces try to destroy the human body — misguiding us into harming ourselves and others, or through illness and accidents — so that we cannot successfully build merit and perfection.

Giving yields greater merit when accompanied by precepts and wisdom, because each dimension yields a different quality of merit. The more refined the dimension we elevate ourselves to through higher precepts — moving from the five precepts to the eight or ten — the greater the resulting merit becomes. As the late master once said: a monk giving merit the size of a thumb's width receives merit the size of a mountain; a layperson giving merit the size of a mountain receives merit the size of a thumb's width — because it all depends on the dimension of precepts involved.

The teacher had not yet finished this topic and said he would continue teaching it the following day.