The Ethics of Enjoyment: Sukha, Merit (Puñña), And Lay–Monastic Interfaces in the Pañcanikāya

This paper examines how the Pañcanikāya faces the ethical challenges of assessing ‘enjoyment,’ specifically what kind of sukha is wholesome and what kind entrenches craving. While most scholarship assumes that Buddhism rejects enjoyment outright, the Nikāyas suggest otherwise. For one, the Nikāyas outline a graded ethics that differentiates the lower sense-based kāma-sukha, the meditative pīti-sukha and the ‘bliss of blamelessness’ that is virtue-anchored. A close textual study of the Dīgha, Majjhima, Saṃyutta, Aṅguttara, and Khuddaka Nikāyas, alongside a thematic doctrinal synthesis on vedanā, intention, and karma results, has enabled the construction of the Nikāya synthesis. The work has three main features in the preview. First, a taxonomy of sukha, demarcating levels along the dimensions of source, stability, and ethical consequences. Second, the act, or moral technology of enjoyment, or puñṇa, circling dāna and sīla, reconceptualizes enjoyment from consumptive gratification and redistributes it as conditions for liberation. Finally, a restatement of lay–monastic correlates, where lay wealth and generosity sustain a cycle of supportive contemplative cultivation and shared goods from which the oppositional structure is built. A comprehensive framework of enjoyment has been constructed, preserving the interrelated affect, ethics, and soteriological dimensions.