Merit

The Buddhist tradition is very intellectual, and the written material is much bigger than any individual can read during a life. So, from a position of having read just a fraction, trying to boil down the ideas into just two words, these words would be emptiness and merit.

Emptiness is the Buddhist description of reality. The full understanding of this is very sophisticated.

One very important aspect of emptiness is absence of self nature. Everything is created by causes and conditions.

This means that if we want a good life we have to get the right causes and conditions.

And good causes and conditions are made by merit.

We get merit by having a positive attitude towards others in everything we do.

Doing typically good things as help to heal and to be of service for those who need service gives merit if we mean what we do. We can also get merit by having a positive attitude in situations which are not typically good.