First, congratulations and rejoicing in the merit of everyone who has successfully completed ordination. From the very first second of ordination, a stream of merit begins flowing through us, day and night.

The stream of merit: like bubbles rising from a straw dipped in water

The stream of merit flowing through us is like dipping a drinking straw into water and blowing through it — bubbles rise continuously, very fast and unbroken, forming the stream of merit. Within each sphere of merit are pure, sacred Dhamma-elements with power and potency, able to dispel the defilement of sin. Each sphere of merit brims with the purity that clears defilement, and with happiness that supports us in living well within the cycle of existence.

Refined treasures at the center of the merit-sphere draw in the world's coarse treasures

Within the sphere of merit are also refined treasures — of form, wealth, virtue, retinue, gain, honor, praise, happiness, and the path, fruit, and Nibbāna — all complete within the merit-sphere. As merit flows through us, these refined treasures flow too, drawing in the coarse worldly treasures. Fresh from our parents' womb, we depend on our parents' merit and our own; once we graduate, we depend only on our own. This is where we see the difference between siblings raised in the same household, studying together, yet earning different salaries after graduating — because the refined treasures at the center of each person's merit-sphere draw in different amounts of coarse treasure. If the merit within isn't enough to clear defilement, many obstacles remain and happiness is scarce. We must therefore accumulate merit — without it, we couldn't even sustain this sitting posture; we'd be lying flat instead. Our ability to sustain this posture is because merit nourishes us.

Merit is the energy that drives life: the wholesome and unwholesome software of the heart

Merit resides within the Dhamma-sphere at the center of the body, storing merit as energy. Everything that functions needs energy — this microphone wouldn't work without electrical energy. Energy drives every system to function; our life is the same — merit-energy drives the system toward happiness, sin-energy drives it toward suffering. Even suffering itself requires sin-energy to drive it. Throughout our life, day and night, energy flows through us constantly — sometimes merit-energy, sometimes sin-energy. The heart is like a generator that, besides perceiving feelings, can also induce energy — but which kind depends on the software installed. Unwholesome software induces sinful energy; wholesome software induces merit-energy. It depends on which software we choose to install. The heart is like the body: eating beneficial food lets our organs digest and nourish the body toward health, while consuming what's harmful degrades it. Mind and body follow the same principle — it's up to us to choose.

The story of the baby turtle: the three natures existed before Buddhism

Whether or not someone knows Buddhism, if they stand in universal goodness... Before the Buddha arose, wholesomeness, unwholesomeness, and neutrality already existed. Upon enlightenment, the Buddha saw the truth already present in the world and taught it to us. The teacher gives the example of baby turtles: hatching from eggs with no information in their heads, no parents to guide them, yet they instinctively make their way to the sea rather than wandering into the forest or town. How does a baby turtle know that's the sea? How does it know entering the water won't drown it? How does it know how to survive without anyone telling it what's edible? The answer is instinct — in Thai, "sanchat" means the origin of birth, "yan" means an inner faculty of knowing — together, an inborn, ancestral inner knowledge. Wherever in the world a turtle is born, it's the same — a program present from birth. But why does instinct let some turtles die young, some middle-aged, some old? Here people start to struggle for an answer. The Buddha taught that this nature truly exists, in three parts: wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral phenomena (kusalā dhammā, akusalā dhammā, abyākatā dhammā) — this is the Abhidhamma, the essential core the Buddha taught his mother in the Tāvatiṃsa heaven. He didn't simply teach "do good, avoid evil" — he taught the nature that controls all beings, along with its components and mechanisms.

Proving the inner voice: the story of a man whose family was attacked

The teacher gives the example of a man at work who received a call urging him to rush home because something had happened. Arriving to find belongings scattered, he learned that a feuding relative had stormed the house, causing distress; the family was in tears. Hearing this, he grew furious. An inner voice said: kill him. Another voice objected: you can't kill him, you'd go to prison — what would happen to your wife and children? Accepting this, yet another voice urged: then gather allies and deal with him. Another voice objected: if he doesn't die, he'll gather his own allies to retaliate — how could we ever live in peace? The teacher asks: haven't we all heard these voices countless times since childhood? We usually assume they're our own thoughts and pay them little attention. But if we reflect carefully, from childhood to now we've made hundreds, even thousands of mistakes because of these voices goading us into wrongdoing — and good voices that held us back have saved us from crisis many times, yet we never paid attention, assuming we thought it ourselves. But the voice we know we didn't think — where does it come from? Like this microphone: if the teacher didn't speak yet a sound came out on its own, could we call that sound ours? No. Where does that inner voice come from? This is precisely what guides us — and a guiding voice always comes paired with emotion; without emotion, we wouldn't want to act at all.

The goals of wholesomeness and unwholesomeness: wise versus unwise

Consider: some days we feel bored out of nowhere, with no apparent cause — that's a sphere of boredom, dark in appearance, overlaying the heart. The inner state expands outward as boredom; the heart perceives whatever it perceives. At the same time, it induces sinful energy, guiding us to seek some activity. "Akusala" (unwholesome) means "unwise" — not that the unwholesome force itself lacks intelligence, but that once it possesses us, it makes us act unwisely. "Kusala" (wholesome) means "wise" — when wholesomeness possesses us, it teaches us cause and effect according to truth, making us wiser. Wholesomeness aims to bring us happiness and prosperity, correctness and goodness — every good thing on earth, every school and university established, belongs to the wholesome side. Unwholesomeness aims the opposite way — toward hardship and suffering, seeking to harm and destroy people, even unto death, then leading them toward states of misfortune.

Three functions of unwholesomeness, and neutrality's "neither good nor bad"

These natures exist in every dimension we occupy, as long as we haven't attained Arahantship. Unwholesomeness has three functions: first, pressing our elements downward through greed, aversion, delusion, and lust; second, if we don't engage with it, it uses the hindrances to make life difficult — absorption in sights, tastes, smells, sounds, restlessness, irritation, drowsiness, doubt; third, if we seek liberation, it holds us back from it. Neutrality, meanwhile, is "neither good nor bad" — like someone who says, "I don't kill, I don't steal, that's good enough, I don't need to go to the temple." These three natures exist within everyone — sometimes we're so good we feel proud, sometimes so wicked we frighten ourselves, sometimes utterly indifferent to both good and bad — but the proportions differ from person to person.

Behavior according to the proportion of the three natures, across all religions

Someone with a high proportion of wholesomeness wakes and chants, meditates, radiates loving-kindness, gives alms, cares for family with kindness, and chants again before sleep. If not Buddhist, they follow their own faith's correct, good conscience — a Muslim behaving according to right Islamic conduct, a Christian according to right Christian conduct — all guided from behind by wholesomeness. In every corner of the world, wholesomeness guides people toward goodness. Someone with a high proportion of unwholesomeness behaves the same way everywhere in the world — drawn toward vice, alcohol, drugs, cycling in and out of prison — because unwholesomeness aims to harm and destroy, regardless of social class. Neutrality, meanwhile, wakes and idly checks the phone for news, watches series, scrolls social media, invites friends to play games or watch shows, wanders about aimlessly, spending life and possessions carelessly, never having enough left to help others, because neutrality won't let them share. Unwholesomeness, when it has money, buys tools that support causing harm — like guns for hunting.

The sin-sphere and the death-sphere

The sin-sphere appears dark, brimming with defilement and impurity, a state of suffering hard to bear. At its center lies the misfortune-sphere, even darker, meant to destroy our treasures — form, wealth, virtue, retinue, gain, honor, praise, happiness, path, fruit, Nibbāna. At the very center of the misfortune-sphere, normally invisible, appears the death-sphere only when it's truly one's time to die — darker still than the misfortune-sphere. If it appears, death is certain; if not, death cannot occur — some survive plane crashes, some don't drown, because the death-sphere hasn't appeared. Sin-spheres well up just like merit-spheres, continuously bubbling into the center of our heart, the center of un-Dhamma. The key point is: don't let unwholesomeness possess you. If it does, stay still and simply know it, and it will dissolve. But if we delight in what it presents, that shows unwholesome software has been established, and sin will keep flowing in continuously.

Merit and sin envelop each other

The merit-sphere and sin-sphere share the same center; whichever is larger envelops the other, preventing it from expressing its qualities. If merit is larger, sin cannot act — cannot draw in misfortune or push away treasure. If sin is larger, merit cannot act, and sin draws in misfortune — one problem after another, accidents, troubled customers, family hospitalized — until we exclaim, what's happening? But when merit and sin are evenly matched, we feel stuck in between, neither clearly good nor bad. This shows we cannot simply let life drift by fate.

A story: the construction contractor whose sin-sphere outgrew his merit-sphere

Years ago in Surat Thani province, a donor brought a friend, a construction contractor, saying he was about to go bankrupt, having already tried unsuccessful holy-water rituals. The teacher explained: right now your sin-sphere is larger than your merit-sphere. The merit-sphere, bright and clear, normally draws treasure and pushes away misfortune, but now it's smaller, overwhelmed by sin. Asked what he thought he should do, the man answered wisely: make the merit-sphere grow larger than the sin-sphere. The teacher confirmed this was correct — the method being to perfect wholesome deeds: whatever wholesome act was possible, do it — chanting, meditating, radiating loving-kindness upon waking, keeping the eight precepts, giving alms, offering sanghadāna, however little. In the evening, he'd come to the practice center to meditate but found it unbearable, only able to open his eyes and gaze at a photo of the elder teacher, since he'd never trained before — but with no other options left, he had to try. Near the kathina season, he traveled to Wat Phra Dhammakaya with only 40-odd baht left in his pocket, down from 10 million, having given it all away in merit-making. While sitting in meditation offering rice to the Buddha, unable to close his eyes from the discomfort, an inner voice of wholesomeness reassured him: look how vast and grand this hall is, worth billions, while your matter is only 10 million — don't worry so much. This brought comfort, letting him find his footing; he returned telling his wife he now had courage. The first thing wholesomeness helps with is giving us that footing, then gradually resolving issues one by one.

For the overdue wages, the inner voice of wholesomeness told him to call his sister; unwholesomeness argued he'd already borrowed from her many times unpaid — but wholesomeness reasoned, if she refuses, nothing is lost, if she agrees, he's saved. He finally called; she asked how much he needed, and he got enough to pay the overdue wages, though still short for materials. Lying face-down worried at home, merit's stream drew in his wife's friend, who never usually visited, to stop by unexpectedly; before leaving, she noticed his stressed face, and upon hearing about the cash-flow problem, offered a loan at low interest, letting work continue. As for the unapproved government payment, merit drew in a friend who taught at a technical school, who happened to stop by the construction site — and it turned out the site inspector who had been refusing approval all along was this teacher's former student. Recognizing each other, the teacher helped smooth things over, and the payment finally went through. Everything relies on this hidden background; the visible foreground can only do so little on its own.

A story: finding customers for the factory through cultivating purity

The teacher shared his own experience as a factory owner, needing more customers as workers outnumbered available work. One morning, about to drive out to find customers, an inner voice said he should do what needed doing first, but he stubbornly drove on anyway; nearing the main road, the voice grew insistent again, and he finally turned back, went up to meditate in the shrine room. An inner voice told him: cultivating purity draws pure elements to you — simply generating purity would draw good customers on its own. Two or three days later, a customer came to sign a contract. Asked who had referred him, the customer said no one had — he'd simply ended up in that part of Bangkok without knowing why, then suddenly remembered pending work needing a factory, asked a motorcycle taxi driver if there were any suitable factories nearby, and was brought right there — even though a similar factory had existed near his own location the whole time. Everything arises from the hidden background, which must release a stream of merit to draw in the elements needed for our life to prosper. We must therefore accumulate merit.

The pipeline of merit from ordination: needing wholesome software to receive it

The reason we undertake short-term ordination is to gain merit to support our livelihood and business, requiring patience to do it properly. Every time we recall enduring hardship during ordination, it brings deep satisfaction — great merit. One layperson reported that during novice ordination, not much was noticeable, but once fully ordained as a monk, a great pipeline of merit appeared, flowing continuously through both the ordained and everyone participating in the merit. With a heart full of goodness and faith, we sit and chant to receive this stream of merit — but without wholesome software installed in the heart, the merit flowing through cannot be retained. We must therefore establish wholesome software, not letting unwholesomeness guide us into petty dissatisfaction or excessive desire to sleep during our few days of ordination — we must endure and persevere.

Precepts versus Dhamma: restraint-beauty and virtue-beauty

Buddhism has two matters: precepts (sīla) and Dhamma. Precepts are prohibitions; Dhamma is what should be practiced. Precepts create a beauty of restraint — refraining from what unwholesomeness guides us toward wrongly, and beauty arises from that restraint, requiring patience. Merit flows in through two circumstances: first, when we do good, dwelling in wholesome states, merit flows continuously as we practice; second, when we resist evil — unwholesomeness guides us but we refuse — merit flows in to support that resistance. Refraining from evil is called "restraint-beauty"; acting on good causes is called "virtue-beauty." We only need to do these two things — avoid what's not good, do what's good — and merit will flow. Even when the mind resists practicing, pushing ourselves to a place where merit flows lets wholesomeness gradually improve things on its own.

Precepts provide five kinds of safety: the Universal Monarch analogy

Holding 227 precepts, more than eight or five, the difference between someone with precepts and without is that upon undertaking them, the sphere of precepts brightens within the inner Dhamma-sphere, becoming an important tool for living, providing safety. It's like working somewhere with intense office politics — feeling unsafe, we look elsewhere. Precepts provide five kinds of safety: safety of life (not killing), safety of property (not stealing), safety of family (not committing sexual misconduct), safety of speech (not lying), and safety of mindfulness, the basis of wholesome states (not drinking intoxicants). Providing safety to ourselves simultaneously provides safety to others. The five precepts protect us from unwholesomeness; the eight precepts protect against both unwholesomeness and neutrality. This is like a Universal Monarch who receives the treasure of the Wheel Gem, which appears in the eastern sky at dawn; wise counselors then petition the king to keep the Uposatha precepts, because the treasure of a Universal Monarch is a treasure of wholesomeness. The monarch must undertake the Uposatha precepts, sitting to reflect on the purity of his own precepts, until merit flows to completion and the Wheel Gem settles into its rightful place. The treasure of a Universal Monarch depends on Uposatha precepts to prevent unwholesomeness and neutrality from using that treasure.

The essence of precepts is purity: the practice of confession

The foundation of precepts is safety, but the true essence of precepts is purity. If we meet a precept-holder who lacks purity, would we want to bow to them? No — we bow because of their purity. Now that we are monastics, we must keep our own precepts pure. If unsure, we ask a fellow monk to help with confession (paṅgāpatti); once confessed, we become pure again, resolving to practice purity ever more. Merit born of precepts then flows through us into subtler dimensions — simply by recalling that our precepts remain pure, unstained, the sphere of precepts refines our mind toward cleanliness and purity, liberating us into subtler dimensions, bringing a feeling of openness and ease — this is the benefit. Our late teacher once said: a monk making merit the size of a fist receives merit the size of a mountain; a layperson making merit the size of a mountain receives merit the size of a thumb. Precepts, therefore, bring us enormous benefit — starting with the purity of our own precepts, and building from there with other practices that induce further merit. We each carry a power bank storing purity at our center — let us charge it as fully as possible in the time we have.