Making and Dedicating Merit

(This is a repost from somewhere else. I wanted to get these ideas clarified and one way is to explain it to someone.)

Merit and sin both come from Karma and are to be reduced to zero, which is when liberation happens. It's easy to understand why sin is to be avoided since it results in pain at some point later. But why should one have zero merit? Aren't we supposed to do good?

Having a merit means one has to enjoy it. When one enjoys, one breaks -off temporarily from the divine. Suppose a musician has been practicing out of love of music and has mastered it. When the audience hears the music, they will tend to praise, which will prevent him or her from enjoying and focusing on the skillful practice of music that may even bring down his or her performance. Thus, any merit is a hindrance to Nirvana or Liberation. Does it mean that one shouldn't do any good work?

Obviously not. We know from common-sense that we are goaded or forced to do good. The explanation is that one should do good but dedicate all the results to the divine. This begs a question - if one gives everything off, then what does one have? Why would anyone want to work for no benefit?

The subtle truth is that one is also a part and parcel of the divine and so when one dedicates all actions, one gives it to himself or herself also a little - and - when other beings do a similar thing, they also contribute towards the one. You can protest - I understand that doing good will help me but where will I get the energy to do activities. . .I just want to sleep or cannot help procrastinating?

Tell me - what happens to the energy that comes from digesting the food that you eat? You cannot presently find energy because that energy has been wasted away in vain activities. The trick is to do all those activities that you previously engaged in but channel it towards the divine in some way. For example, developing a website can be your hobby but instead of making a website on whatever theme that catches your fancy, you can create one for a NGO helping out the needy. You can still protest - this is alright for those who have food to eat in the first place.

You can't help eating - can you? Either you want to eat from taste or cannot stand the hunger and have to hunt for food.  When you do this, you are contributing towards decreasing the Global Warming since the energy from the sun that you received through the plants and animals that ate the plants is now spent on creating harmony rather than increasing chaos. When you work like this, there is neither a lack of energy nor an unhealthy accumulation of it but it flows through you as you experience the joy of it.

Such good works have the advantage that there is not as much resistance to it from other people as is there in selfish actions which is frustrated by obstacles from competition. The efforts are repaid in full and gets cumulatively added even if done in small increments. The process is sustainable since with every action, along with the fruit comes the habit to do it again easily (the concept of Stigmergy).

While being enlightened on this truth may be instantaneous, the change in the lifestyle takes time since it requires a complete rewiring of one's brain. It takes a great deal of patience to shift from the vicious cycle to the virtuous cycle - a shift from the purgatory hell to an eternal heaven.