A lay follower asked whether making merit on one's birthday gives different results than making merit on a day that's simply convenient.

Phra Ajahn answered that yes, they are different. If in a past life you placed importance on making merit specifically on your birthday, then in this life you'll find yourself waiting, as your birthday approaches, for something wondrous to happen. Phra Ajahn himself has experienced this kind of waiting before, and something wondrous truly did happen. That means the year of that birthday is the year the merit from your birthday giving ripens.

If instead you make merit whenever it's convenient, good fortune tends to show up more often - maybe once a year, maybe more frequently. That's the difference between the two.

With birthday merit-making, we usually do it in a big way, since it only happens once a year. As the birthday approaches, life tends to change in a way that feels amazing, almost astonishing - we wait to see that life-changing shift, and it comes because of the scale of the birthday merit, such as offering a meal to a hundred monks.

With merit made on a convenient day, we tend to do it more casually and don't usually give a large amount each time. But if we do want to make a large offering, it needs its own special occasion. So we place more importance on that occasion itself - good luck just keeps coming often, so we keep doing it that way, and save the big offerings for a proper occasion.

When we make merit specifically for our birthday, it's clearly marked - we know that around our birthday, life is due for a change. We wait for that day with a sense of encouragement, looking forward to the wondrous change to come.

With merit made on convenient days, life simply carries a steady stream of good luck. Then, when the birthday comes, we can go all out and make a big offering too, bringing about a big change in life just the same.