Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Time: 5:35 PM

Merits and demerits... they aren't just a Buddhist concept. Christians believes in then ... as do many other religious bodies. All believe in the belief that through good deeds "points" are earned and through bad deeds taken away. Both also believe that these points will come to play an important part in their life after death.

In essence, it's the belief that by doing good... you can save up merits so that in your next life (be it in heaven or another realm) you can have things better then you had before. Personally... I've come to believe this kind of thinking leads to problems. Why? Let me explain.

You can not think of merits as ... money. That they are something that can be earned.. and then spent.. and then earned back. It's basically the belief that you can do bad ... so long as its outweighed by the good. Saying to your self that "I've done so much good in my life and will do so much good in my life that.. I can afford to do something bad. "

That's not to say that with one bad deed.. all the good will be forgotten. But with a mentality like the one stated above ... a person can be capable of almost anything. Why?? Because in their minds they believe that once they reach their goal.. the journey there will be forgotten. Any hurt they cause, any rules they broke will be forgotten in the light of the goodness of the final deed. But if we accept this kind of mentality as being appropriate and correct... we have some serious rethinking to do.

We'd have to rethink if the Nazi's were really that bad.. I mean think about it... they just wanted to build a Utopia for their people! If the only thing that matters is the final goal then.. who cares about the Holocaust? Who cares about the 6 million people who died in concentration camps? If the intent is good and the destination good( and who can saying wanting to build a Utopia for your people is bad?) then the method of getting there doesn't matter.

We'd have a bit of a problem if a serial killer had done a lot of community service in his life. "What's a few bodies when this man has spent the last 5 years building houses for the tsunami victims?"

In those kind of situations we can accept that the mentality of "good deeds out weighing the bad" as crazy and obviously not right ... so why doesn't the same apply to smaller bad deeds? Does the good really out weight them as well? It's something to ponder about.