Thais usually interpret the benefit of giving to the sangha (dana) as a future reward, a better life in the future or rebirth in heaven. Such a belief is childish. One still remains stuck in the cycle of rebirth. Giving can be looked at in two ways. In the first, one needs someone to receive the gift. In the other there is no recipient. The former is bound to the cycle of rebirth; the latter is not. The first involves giving a material gift to someone, and giving forgiveness in return [a process fundamental to the merit-making relationship of laity and monk]. The second is the giving of dharma. I'll call it the "giving of emptiness," which leads to release from rebirth. Another way of talking about this kind of giving is to say that it is to give nirvana as dana.
Now some people say that I don't teach what the scriptures say, but just make things up. That's not the case. I give them different names and use different words. What giving nirvana as dana refers to is producing or giving equanimity. For example, many people come to Wat Suan Mokkhabalarama. What they receive here is a coolness of heart because they forget themselves and their selfish interests. This is not nirvana as an eternal condition, but it is a foretaste of what nirvana is like.
The gift of emptiness means to give away oneself or to give up all selfish interests. This dana does not need anyone to receive it, nor do we need to feel that we give it. Indeed, if we really give this kind of dana there is no self which gives it. If you ask what is given, the answer is - the self (Thai: tua ku, that is, the gut sense of me/mine). What is given up is attachment to the I notion of a self. What is left is freedom, consciousness composed of awareness, wisdom, purity; freedom from the attachments of the five aggregates, from grasping, and from suffering. To give with an expectation of a return is like investing with the expectation of a profit. For one to "make merit" in the truest I sense, one must give with a pure heart without expectation of a return.
Actually, everything belongs to nature; it comes from nature; it returns to nature. From this perspective we can see that nothing really '"belongs" to a particular individual. Only the foolish think that "this is me" or "belongs to me." The body and the mind which we think of as "belonging" to "us" we must return to nature since in reality that is where they are.
The giving up of the self is nirvana. Another way of putting it is that nirvana is freedom from the self, and all that attends to the self - from defilements, suffering, rebirth, thirst, and grasping. This kind of giving is peace and equanimity. When our heart is at peace and we are freed from the bases of sense obsessionÑthat is nirvana. This is what I mean by "emptiness-giving" or giving that leads to nirvana. We must give up nirvana in any sense that we think nirvana is "ours." Likewise, a person who practices emptiness-giving doesn't practice moral virtue, meditation, or wisdom as something "other," something to be "got" or attained. S/he is [becomes] morally virtuous, meditative, wise.
What is called merit or merit making is for those caught up in the world because it tempts people to lose their way in the grasping of the senses, to look for pleasure and enjoyment in this or that. Indeed, of all the things that tempt people to be led astray and preoccupied nothing exceeds merit making. Nothing is so destructive of human freedom.
Ordinary folk think dualistically; they divide things into two sides: merit and demerit, good and evil, hell and heaven, happiness and suffering, and so. They like one side and dislike the other. In conventional terms such distinctions are correct; however, such dualistic thinking is not correct for those who wish to eliminate suffering. In fact, what is called "merit" and "heaven" becomes another locus of attachment, thereby leading to more suffering. In order to transcend suffering we must eliminate the source of attachment. The mind must be freed from the hope of both heaven and hell, merit and demerit, happiness and suffering. A person who has merit suffers. It is not the case that who has merit eliminates suffering. To want anything is to suffer simply from having the desire itself. To escape suffering, hope for merit and heaven must be totally rooted out.
translated by Donald K. Swearer from Buddhism in Practice, ed. Donald Lopez. Princeton University Press, 1995, pp.400-401. Based on pages 5-14 of Buddhadasa's essay, "Kan Hai Dana Thi Mai Sia Ngoen Laew Yang Dai Nibbana ["Giving Dana that Doesn't Cost Any Money and Leads to Nirvana"] (Bangkok: Association for the Propagation of Buddhism, 1974). © 1995 Princeton University Press