Punna

Meaning

Puñña is a wholesome, “meritorious” action and the wholesome kammic potential it creates: a seed capable of sprouting and ripening into fortunate circumstances and a favourable rebirth.

MN 129 shows the general mechanics from both sides: the fool acts badly and moves towards a bad destination, the wise person acts wholesomely and moves towards a good one.

Spiritual bookkeeping

The general idea of accumulating merit resembles a bank account, and this view of kamma and rebirth took deep root in the traditional Buddhist cultures of Asia. The Pali Canon contains quite concrete statements too - the Dhammapada, for instance: “the accumulation of merit brings happiness.”

The three classical bases of merit (puñña-kiriya-vatthu):

• dāna - generosity
• sīla - virtue
• bhāvanā - development of mind, meditation

The list runs from the most accessible to the increasingly inward. Developed mettā is rated especially highly: in Iti 27 all the other bases of merit leading to a fortunate existence are not worth even one sixteenth of the liberation of mind through mettā.

The field of merit

Who receives the gift also matters. In the suttas a worthy recipient is compared to fertile soil: the same seed yields a different harvest depending on the field.

MN 142 ranks gifts explicitly by the qualities of the recipient - from an animal and an unvirtuous person up to noble disciples and the Buddha. AN 6.37 names the qualities of both giver and recipient among the factors of an especially fruitful gift.

Hence the notion of puññakkhetta - “field of merit.” In the standard formula the noble Saṅgha is called “the unsurpassed field of merit for the world.” Lay people offer material support as though sowing seed, but the fruit depends in part on the soil.

The ceiling of merit

In its basic kammic function, accumulating merit improves the “living conditions” within saṃsāra but does not by itself lead out of it. Even an enormous wholesome fruit - rebirth in the heavenly realms, say - is eventually exhausted. In MN 117, worldly rightness turns out to be merely a ticket to a more comfortable carriage, not yet an exit into the city.

Liberation means stepping out of the mechanism of kammic accumulation altogether: arahants leave behind both the wholesome and the unwholesome.

In practice

The motive of practice can shift as practice matures. Early on, “I do good in order to get a good result” is a perfectly workable logic, and it is what the Buddha taught lay people. Then generosity and virtue become pleasant and valuable in themselves.

Further on, wholesome action looks less and less like trade: the question “what do I get for this?” gradually loses its meaning.