About This Teaching
Ajahn Dtun compares making merit to worldly investment: just as people give time to work for outer wealth, coming to the monastery early, preparing offerings and bringing body and mind to practise is an investment in inner wealth. Seeing the value of this needs right view; with wrong view people spend their days only seeking worldly happiness. All Buddhas and arahants built up their perfections over many lives, and the path, like any long journey, is completed by patience and effort, resting when tired and going on again.
He explains why he accepted offers of land in Australia after many years of declining them. Theravāda is still young in the country, monasteries are few and far apart, and many migrants bring Buddhist inclinations with them. He recalls the emissaries sent out by King Asoka, who travelled on foot and by cart, and says that if they could endure such hardship, he can too. He is not a sun or a moon, he says, only a firefly, but even a firefly gives some light.
Those who see the value of generosity are few, those who keep sīla fewer, and those who meditate fewer still. In the Buddha's time arahants were many; today finding one is like panning for gold. Yet anyone who meets the Buddha's teaching and puts it into practice has merit, and with patience and effort will reach Nibbāna, sooner or later according to their own practice.