Someone asked the teacher whether sitting in meditation together over a livestream — for example, joining together on Zoom — brings more merit than sitting alone, and whether it makes a difference if we simply play the teacher's voice from YouTube but sit by ourselves.

A Group's Backdrop Carries More Power Than an Individual's At any given time and place, when a group of people comes together with sincere intent to purify their minds at once, it undoubtedly carries more power than sitting alone. The elder monk once explained that each of us has our own individual "backdrop," and beyond that there is also a group backdrop, and layers upon layers of backdrop belonging to society — village, subdistrict, district, province, country, and the world. This is exactly why the great teacher built the enormous Dhammakaya hall — to gather people together to meditate at the monthly merit-making ceremonies, because the larger the crowd that gathers, the more powerful the group's backdrop becomes, whether for good or for ill.

The strength of a crowd is the strength of collective will, and that matters enormously. Consider the difference in power between a gathering of 1 person versus 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000: the energy is entirely different in each case. When a group gathers to do good together, their combined merit is pooled, multiplied, purified, and then returned to each individual member. That's why practicing together produces such powerful results — and why sitting in meditation together as a large assembly always seems to go especially well: the larger the group, the finer its collective backdrop becomes, drawing together everyone's merit, purifying it, and channeling the greatest possible benefit back to the group. This is simply the nature of wholesome collective energy; a group driven by unwholesome intent works the same way, but in the opposite direction.

The Underlying Principle: Matter, Wave, and Energy Our lives are bound up continuously with matter, wave, and energy. The Dhamma is like a wave — a kind of "software" — that draws in the energy we call merit. Merit arises to refine and purify the elements within us, making matter and form more subtle, more powerful, and of higher quality, which in turn develops the quality of mind and its mental factors. Matter, wave, and energy support one another at all times. When a group's activity is powered by wholesome energy, that energy refines the group's behavior — making it courteous, composed, and peaceful. But when a group's activity is driven by unwholesome states, the coarser energy that flows in roughens behavior and intensifies it, and thoughts and feelings become correspondingly distorted.