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How do you transfer merits to others?
Is it possible and how actually can it be done? I would like my sick and departed relatives to be free from suffering. Also, anyone who's suffering anywhere.
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Do not however carry the burdens of the world on your shoulders.
http://www.ksitigabhabodhisattva.com/
That's all it takes. Very easy.
In what ever ways one can develop compassion, love & wisdom...Great.
Wishing to help where ever it is needed is basic Buddhist practise. The act of helping others can widen ones heart and lesson ego's hold on our lives. BUT
I have too often witnessed the selective offering of merit manifest as magical thinking.
Often manifesting as an alternative to that person really doing the difficult work of there own practise.
I think that in what ever way you manifest empathy, sympathy, compassion, tenderness, benevolence, love...helps everyone, everywhere.
We are all connected or we are not.
Thinking that meritorious actions and offerings can be selectively delivered to one being is common but does not bear up well with my meditative examination or understanding.
The conditions for recognizing someone after they die is little different than before they were born. Nada. Bits and pieces of karmic inertia, coalescing and dispersing again.
Your practise helps address Karma everywhere but your deceased relatives are probably only really recognizable in memory.
Sick relatives can be helped by your manifestation of the 4 noble truths path to sufferings end just as all of us are.
In Theravada, they have a chant they often do during morning and evening chanting if you want to check it out and see one example of how some Buddhists choose to do it.
For instance the sick person needs to desire to be well. From this point then the sick person will go to the doctor and receive treatment. And if they truly desire to be well, then there is a high probability that they will become well.
Now karma isn't that linear. There are an infinite variety of variables. The person could delude themselves into believing that they truly wanted to get well but subconsciously they want to be sick, etc. The doctor can be incompetent, etc. The sickness is a requirement and lesson for that individual on the path and nothing can interfere until they learn what is required from such sickness. And its really endless, the possibilities.
But it goes like this. If the individual is open to receive the merits given by the individual who desires to give merit then the merit will be received. The mechanics of that are speculations. But here is my speculation. It is a total, massive shift is perspective. For instance if I attained merit and believed wholeheartedly that I received merit, say through doing a ritual of purification and metta practices for others then what I am doing is allowing myself to receive the benefits of merit without reservations. What negates that is my karmic devil of the lack of self worth I have for myself, which arises due to past issues, etc.
So if you want to free your sick and departed relatives and everyone else in samsara. The biggest and most practical thing is to be on the path towards buddhahood. Practice sincerely and share your practice with everyone. Your intention is to help people and such intention will cultivate bodhicitta or the heart of enlightenment.
If you want to do something else then just do a ritual x, y, z and intend for the whole ritual to be for the purpose of helping others. Then fully believe that it did help others.
The power of thoughts and pure intent should not be underestimated.
This is my advice to you.
But people being what they are, we don't leave it at that, do we? It used to be a widespread practice to pay for copies of the Sutras to be made, with the thing dedicated to some loved one like a sick mother or even dead grandma, that sort of thing. Making the copy generated merit. Granted, the copy was then tossed into a cave along with the thousands of other copies this industry generated, and the "merit" was reserved for where you wanted it to go. A King would order hundreds of copies to be made at one time, every one promptly locked away, never to be used. So a bit of money changed hands, someone felt better about having done their duty, and a bunch of scribes were employed, so that a thousand years later archeologists have a pile of identical sutras to wade through.
You just gotta love humanity. We always take a good idea and turn it into a way of making a profit. Merit can become just another type of currency.
When it comes down to the barebones of life, merit only is relevant when there is grasping towards or against thought.
Ultimately the nature of reality is meritless, as who is it to own merit?
Merit occurs as soon as there is attachment to this or that.
When there is absolutely no attachment or aversion then merit is the just the traceless activity of the bodhisattva. What greater merit is there, then finding absolutely no merit.
You seem to take the empirical view on several advanced topics of this nature--for example asuras. Is this correct?
I shamelessly never try to give or take the validity of anything that my experience doesn't bear witness to. Some think that was the Buddha's last teaching. I have chewed through my share of the Tripitaka but think of that as meditative reference material. The "empirical" is my compass.
Not a big fan of classifying topics as advanced or not, provided a Buddhist foundation practise remains the priority. Folks just experience what their willingness allows for.
I have seen merit as one of Buddhism's sacred cows.
I don't debate the help that it can give, just have seen way too much hardening and solidification of ego accompanying the selectiveness of the offering. Just saying all merit is good rather than encouraging the examination of ones intent & relationship to it, is a teaching oddity.