{"collection":"Anguttara Nikaya","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/suttacentral_an5.45/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/suttacentral_an5.45","id":"suttacentral_an5.45","license":"CC0","rights_basis":"suttacentral_bilara_data_cc0","source":"suttacentral","source_url":"https://suttacentral.net/an5.45/en/sujato","summary":null,"tags":["Anguttara Nikaya","Early Buddhist Texts"],"text":"\u201cMendicants, there are these five kinds of overflowing merit, overflowing goodness. They nurture happiness and are conducive to heaven, ripening in happiness and leading to heaven. They lead to what is likable, desirable, agreeable, to welfare and happiness. What five? When a mendicant enters and remains in a limitless immersion of the heart while using a robe \u2026 almsfood \u2026 lodging \u2026 bed and chair \u2026 medicines and supplies for the sick, the overflowing of merit for the donor is limitless \u2026 These are the five kinds of overflowing merit, overflowing goodness. They nurture happiness, and are conducive to heaven, ripening in happiness, and leading to heaven. They lead to what is likable, desirable, agreeable, to welfare and happiness. When a noble disciple has these five kinds of overflowing merit and goodness, it\u2019s not easy to grasp how much merit they have by saying that this is the extent of their overflowing merit \u2026 that leads to happiness. It\u2019s simply reckoned as an incalculable, immeasurable, great mass of merit. It\u2019s like trying to grasp how much water is in the ocean. It\u2019s not easy to say: \u2018This is how many gallons, how many hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of gallons there are.\u2019 It\u2019s simply reckoned as an incalculable, immeasurable, great mass of water. In the same way, when a noble disciple has these five kinds of overflowing merit and goodness, it\u2019s not easy to grasp how much merit they have: \u2018This is how much this overflowing merit \u2026 leads to happiness.\u2019 It\u2019s simply reckoned as an incalculable, immeasurable, great mass of merit. Hosts of people use the rivers, and though the rivers are many, all reach the great deep, the boundless ocean, the cruel sea that\u2019s home to precious gems. So too, when a person gives food, drink, and clothes; and they\u2019re a giver of beds, seats, and mats\u2014 the streams of merit reach that astute person, as the rivers bring their waters to the sea.\u201d","title":"Overflowing Merit","tradition":"Anguttara Nikaya","translated_text":null,"word_count":326}