Dedicate the merit of what you have done to others
Close a sitting, an offering or a good day by wishing that all beings — including those who have died — share in its goodness.
Why it works
Theravāda practice regularly ends with a dedication of merit: the wish that the good just done be shared by all beings. The Chanting Guide’s verses wish that beings “without limit, without end” share in the merit, naming parents, people seen and unseen, neutral and hostile. The canon’s “Outside the Walls” verses (Khuddakapāṭha 7) describe giving to the Saṅgha on behalf of departed relatives, saying that tears and grief do not help the dead while an offering well placed in the Saṅgha does — the basis of merit-making for the deceased still common in Theravāda countries. Turning a good act outward toward others, including people one dislikes, works against the tendency to hoard even one’s own goodness.
How to do it
- At the end of a meditation, an offering or a kind act, pause before moving on.
- Recite a short dedication — Ajaan Lee’s ends: “May all share in the blessings springing from the good I have done” — or the Chanting Guide’s longer verses.
- Name, silently, people you love, people you hardly know, people who are difficult for you, and those who have died.
- For a relative who has died, you can make an offering at a monastery on their behalf and dedicate it to them, as Khuddakapāṭha 7 describes.
- Let the dedication be a wish, not a transaction — you are not paying anyone, you are opening the good outward.
Evidence
The practice is found in the canon (Khuddakapāṭha 7), in Thai Forest manuals such as Ajaan Lee’s, which ends with a dedication verse, and in the standard Thai chanting texts. Its support is the living tradition; there is no direct research on dedicating merit. (anecdotal)
What merit is and how it reaches the departed are the tradition’s own teachings and are presented here in its terms. If a recent death is weighing heavily on you, a dedication can sit beside support from people around you, not in place of it.
Sources
- Sujato, B. (trans.). Outside the Walls (Khuddakapāṭha 7). SuttaCentral.
- The Dhammayut Order in the United States of America. Sabba-patti-dāna Gāthā: Verses for Dedication of Merit. In A Chanting Guide. dhammatalks.org.
- Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo. Keeping the Breath in Mind: Dedication of Merit. Trans. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu. dhammatalks.org.
Common mistake
Dedicating merit only to the people you love — the traditional verses deliberately include strangers and those who are hostile, and leaving them out narrows the practice back to self-interest.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Theravāda Buddhism: The Way of the Elders and How It Is Practised
- Go for refuge and keep the five precepts
Recite the three refuges and undertake the five training rules — the act that makes someone a Theravāda Buddhist, renewed every day.
- Practise generosity (dāna) and support the monastic Saṅgha
Give — food to monastics, time, help, the gift itself — in the way the discourses describe, and let the giving train the heart.
- Keep an uposatha day with the eight precepts
On an observance day, live for one day and night by eight precepts, “doing as the perfected ones do.”
- Recollect the qualities of the Buddha, Dhamma and Saṅgha (buddhānussati)
Bring to mind, phrase by phrase, the qualities of the Buddha, his teaching and his community — a meditation that brightens the mind.
- Chant the morning and evening Pali passages and the protective verses
Chant homage, the refuges, the recollections and the paritta verses aloud, alone or with others, the way Theravāda monasteries do each day.
- Practise in the Thai Forest style: “buddho” with the breath, and letting go
Join the meditation word “buddho” to the breath, make the breath comfortable, and let go of what the mind grasps — the way Ajahn Chah and Ajaan Lee taught.
- Find your way into the Burmese insight lineages
Understand the family of modern vipassanā methods that came out of Myanmar — Mahasi noting, and the courses taught by S. N. Goenka in the tradition of U Ba Khin — and choose one to learn properly.
Related concepts
- The Noble Eightfold Path as a Practical Life Framework
Eight mutually reinforcing practices for reducing suffering and living with greater clarity
- Vipassana Meditation, Made Practical
Insight, equanimity, and the body-scan approach to liberation from reactivity
- Ānāpānasati: The Sixteen Steps of Mindfulness of Breathing
Breath meditation as the discourse lays it out: a path from calming the body to letting go
- Śūnyatā: Emptiness and the Two Truths in Madhyamaka
Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way: why nothing has a fixed essence, and why that is not the same as nothing
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