Doing Merit

When I was studying with Buddhist monks in Thailand, I learned about doing merit. It’s a concept I understood intellectually but was also able to put into effect tangibly and physically multiple times a day, in every choice I made and action I took. Doing merit moved from a passive to an active approach, a mindset of specificity toward doing good deeds. I felt so grateful to have been welcomed into the community, and it felt good to find opportunities to serve. I have been re-reading the Tao daily, and today’s verse shares, “Serve the needs of others, and all of your own needs will be fulfilled.”

Between 1992 and 1993—way before the dude with the sign and advertising campaigns with people looking into the camera and sharing their thoughts—Gillian Wearing created a series titled I’m Desperate that includes over fifty color photographs. In each image, a person holds a sign with writing on it. The signs have been widely acknowledged as expressing what the people presenting them wanted to say (rather than what those reading them would want to hear). Tell your truth. Be of service. Everything is connected.

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