When Karmic Obstacles Arise, Without Merit You Are Done For

When you're quietly cultivating merit day to day, no one knows about it—not even you. It only reveals itself when something happens. Take the cause and effect we just spoke of: when things are calm, you don't realize how precious merit is. When does merit actually come into play? In a single decisive moment. At the critical moment, you'll find out whether your "bank account" has any savings. If the bank is empty—"bang"—you go down, and it all depends on how heavy the karmic obstacle is.

A person with merit may fall, but they can get back up. A person without merit falls and stays down. Who will save you? No one can. That's why accumulating merit is a daily practice—drop by drop, saved up little by little. When crisis finally comes, you'll understand. Spiritual cultivation works the same way, bit by bit, through accumulated effort. Only you know whether you're building merit. You just do the work, quietly, on your own.

Today you go help someone see a doctor. When someone is in difficulty, you step forward to treat them. That's saving up, slowly. It's like putting away a hundred today, three hundred tomorrow, five hundred the day after—savings built up little by little. When crisis arrives, these become your real strength. Everyone has karmic obstacles. When they surface, it comes down to whose "bank" has more in it.

Some people don't know any better—they never bother cultivating merit. In ordinary times, you can't tell the difference. But when karmic obstacles appear before them, suddenly they know fear. When karmic obstacles come and you have no merit, you're finished. You get back exactly what you put in—there's no such thing as a heavy debt being repaid lightly. Without merit, a heavy blow is just a heavy blow. That's why merit isn't for everyday use. It's for the critical moment!

Life consists of only two things—borrowing and repaying.

You arrive at birth with zero, and you leave at death with zero. Everything in between is borrowed. Your health, a smooth-sailing life, a successful career, a happy family, dutiful children and grandchildren—all of it is borrowed. Once you pass sixty, you start to repay. And there are two ways to repay: paying it all off at once, or paying in installments.

What does paying it all off at once look like? A life that runs smoothly all the way through, without much hardship. If you've lived to your fifties or sixties without ever going through any of this, that's not a good thing—it's a "great misfortune"! Because in the end, you'll definitely be paying it all back at once. "Bang"—you go down, and it's over. Take someone who was perfectly fine yesterday and gets into a car accident today, gone just like that. They can't accept it—too sudden, with no warning at all. That's why a person like this definitely can't attain a favorable rebirth. Why? Because they can't accept it. They repay with an unwilling heart and a reluctant spirit!

What about paying in installments? It looks like Doctor Hong's illness this time around. You should feel grateful, not complain. This is an email from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas—telling you life is impermanent, telling you it's time to start repaying your debts! A person whose life has been too easy will never know what "impermanence" means. They can't take it in—they won't believe a single word of it. In the end, when the impermanence of life and death arrives, they complain about why it had to be so sudden.

So with the installment plan, you pay it back slowly—today three hundred, tomorrow five hundred, the day after a hundred. This is when you find out whether the "bank" has any savings. Wholesome affinities, merit, cause and effect, karmic forces—all of it must be cultivated. Believe, give, let go. When you truly face the threshold of life and death, you can put everything down!