Rejoicing

Are you busy? Do you know anyone who is not busy?

It seems that part of living in the 21st century is being busy. Just being alive seems to require that so many things be done. That’s just the things that have to be done to keep our life functioning. If we add on the things that we would like to accomplish, but often never get around to, then life can seem to be overwhelming at times.

How can we possibly find time to do the spiritual practice that we know we should be doing, that we want to be doing, but we just don’t seem to have enough time to do?

The Dharma teachings tell us that in order to attain Enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings we need to accumulate the spiritual energy that’s known as merit. Lord Buddha knew that there would be times in history when people would be really busy. Out of his wisdom the Buddha gave us very easy practices which can be done by busy people.

One such practice is rejoicing in the merit of others. When anyone, sentient being, exalted Bodhisattva, or Buddha, does any spiritual practice with the correct motivation, then the spiritual energy of merit is created.

Knowing this, if we simply rejoice in the merit that has been created by others’ spiritual practices, we create the same merit for ourselves. This is skillful means. Rejoicing is a fast and easy way to accumulate merit even though we are busy. It is one of the merit-creating practices in the Seven-Fold Prayer, which is a practice for creating merit.

As always, we conclude our rejoicing with a dedication of merit. So simply setting a correct motivation, rejoicing, and dedicating creates a great amount of merit very quickly. Then we can get back to our busy lives knowing that we have made our life meaningful.