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.

Constant change 2

Renunciation, emptiness and bodhicitta are the basis for Buddhist philosophy and practice, and these values are quite strange compared to traditional western ways of thinking.
On the material level, the western attitude has been to endorse progress almost at any cost. To claim that human happiness is different from material progress has been considered strange.
On the political level, many experiments have been made. By those in power the will to remain so has been strong. The opposite attitude, to see the political system as an example of emptiness, which means to be transparent and open to constant analysis and improvement, has not been popular.
Bodhicitta or the will to help others has at best been discussed. Many has seen self-interest as the main incentive for progress.
However, thanks to the material progress it should be possible to analyse the relations between material factors and human happiness in a more relaxed way.
The advantage with the Buddhist model is that it focus on human happiness and see material factors and political organisation as means to this end.

Absence

Absence is a more definitive word than emptiness. It is not totally wrong to say that something has emptiness, but it is totally wrong to say that something has absence. The combination "have absence" would be of the same category as "blade-less knife without handle".

The absence of inherent existence means that everything must justify its existence every moment. If not a process of decay starts immediately.

In society we try to create stability. And constant change gives stability. But if we want stability without change, we get problems.

The most important causes are in mind. Thoughts of importance are supported by other thoughts and experiences.

Mind as a construct of thoughts that partly support each other, and partly challenge each other is sophisticated, or should be sophisticated. In the reptile brain, the constructs are simple and gross. Then thoughts about violence and negativity are often supported, even if such ideas are not supported in other parts of the brain.

Mind is a secluded area, and any idea can appear and even get some support there. But the mere presence of an idea does not give it power or reality. The thought must be justified by other thoughts in order to have power and reality.

But in whose mind? This is another level of the analysis.

Are there direct connections between minds?

Anyhow, may you be happy, content and fulfilled.