Search results for: virtue

  1. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha Lessons for Aging
     … There’s a passage in the Canon saying that virtue makes you beautiful even when you’re old. The Buddha also says that virtue is one of your most valuable possessions. Loss of virtue is more serious than losing your wealth, losing your health, or even losing your relatives. Now, there’s a challenge in observing these precepts. On the one hand, the ideal … 
  2. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha Mindfulness of Death (1)
     … You work hard at developing good qualities through generosity and virtue, which lead to pleasant rebirths, but if you simply enjoy the pleasures there, they erode the good qualities of your mind. That will cause you to fall back down, and you can fall lower than you were before. It’s because of this tendency that the Buddha developed saṁvega when he gained his … 
  3. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha Q&A
     … your acts of generosity, virtue, and meditation. That’s your protection from hell wardens. Q: Even though there are not necessarily treatments or doctors against aging, from the point of view of the practice, is there a particular difference between aging and an incurable disease, such as a degenerative disease? A: From the point of the view of the practice, you treat them the … 
  4. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha Q & A
     … This is one of the reasons why, in Buddhist countries, when someone is dying, people around them will try to remind them of the good things they have done in terms of their virtue and generosity. Now, simply willing the process of rebirth to end is not enough to make it end. You have to understand the process of becoming, as we described it … 
  5. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha Conclusion
     … conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. As for getting some control over the wind and putting out the fire—the skills that need to be used at the time of death—we develop them by using mindfulness, concentration, and discernment to overcome the hindrances and to understand the processes that lead up to craving. We see these processes described in dependent co-arising and in … 
  6. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha Introduction
     … This is why we practice generosity and virtue to provide good opportunities when aging, illness, and death come. This is also why we develop good qualities of mind through meditation—such as mindfulness, alertness, ardency, and discernment—to handle whatever conditions may arise at the time of aging, illness, and death. When we follow these two types of practice together, then at death we … 
  7. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha Passion for Dispassion
     … That’s why he recommends the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment. But that path, too, requires some elaboration, because it takes work to hold to the precepts, to get the mind to settle down, and to try to figure out how the mind is deceiving itself. This is why he said we should try to develop delight in the path: Delight is basically … 
  8. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha Q&A
     … This means developing good qualities like conviction, virtue, generosity, learning, and discernment, and the sublime attitudes, as we discussed the other day. These are the qualities that can help guarantee good opportunities for rebirth when you approach your own death. If you want to meet your loved one again in a future life, these qualities guarantee that you will have the opportunity to meet … 
  9. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha Q&A
     … Personally, I meditate and practice virtue for the benefits it brings me in this very life. A: Are you the same person that you were when you were a child? Yes and no. However, many things that you did when you were a child, like going to school, are definitely benefiting you now. At the time you were a child you felt that “I … 
  10. Book search result icon Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha The Process of Rebirth
     … This is why the Buddha advises practicing virtue, generosity, goodwill, and the other perfections, as we taught at the last retreat, until they become habitual parts of your character. In this way, even though there is a wind, it’ll be likely to take you to a good house. This is why the Buddha’s instructions on how to prepare for death include qualities … 
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