Merit is the economy most Buddhists actually live in. Giving to monastics, feeding the sangha, gilding a statue, releasing captive animals, copying a sutra — each generates punya, and the standard practice is to immediately dedicate it to someone else, usually a dead relative. Philosophically this sits awkwardly beside anatta (whose merit? transferred to what?), and the schools have answers of varying comfort. Practically it is the hinge that makes Buddhism a religion rather than a meditation curriculum: it gives laypeople who will never sit a retreat a way to participate, and it funds everything.