Search results for: virtue

1. Food for Thought Taking the Long View
    … People disenchanted with rebirth make an extra effort to build up their virtues so that they won’t have to come back and be reborn. If you want to cut down the number of times you’ll take rebirth, you should steadily increase your inner quality and worth. In other words, make your heart clean and bright with generosity, moral virtue, and meditation. Keep … 
2. Food for Thought First Things First
    … The basic level of virtue protects our words and deeds from being evil. The intermediate level protects our senses and keeps them clean—which means that we don’t let the three defilements of passion, aversion, and delusion be provoked into action by what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or think. As for the highest level of virtue—inner virtue—this means giving … 
3. Food for Thought Trading Outer Wealth for Inner Wealth
   Trading Outer Wealth for Inner Wealth July 1, 1958 Inner wealth, according to the texts, means seven things—conviction, virtue, a sense of conscience, scrupulousness, breadth of learning, generosity, and discernment—but to put it simply, inner wealth refers to the inner quality we build within ourselves. Outer wealth—money and material goods—doesn’t have any hard and fast owners. Today it may … 
4. Food for Thought Serving a Purpose
    … The novice, however, declined their offer to make him their heir, and taught them the Dhamma, making them see the rewards of practicing generosity, virtue, and meditation. The moneylender and his wife were deeply moved, overcame their stinginess, and asked to take refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha from that day onward. Eventually, they progressed in virtue, meditation, and right practice to the … 
5. Food for Thought Stop & Think
    … So stopping is the factor that gives rise to strength, knowledge, and discernment—the fixed mind that knows both the world and the Dhamma in a state of heightened virtue, heightened consciousness, and heightened discernment leading on to the transcendent.
6. Food for Thought The Honest Truth
    … If a person isn’t true to the Buddha’s teachings, the Buddha’s teachings won’t be true to that person—and that person won’t be able to know what the Buddha’s true teachings are. *     *     * When we practice virtue, concentration, and discernment, it’s as if we were taking the jewels and robes of royalty and the Noble Ones to dress … 
7. Food for Thought Respect for the Truth
    … On the other side, we lose in terms of the Dhamma because our virtue, concentration, and meditation all suffer. Illness makes us lose in these ways because we lack discernment. This is why the Buddha taught us to use our eyes. We live in the world, so we have to look out for our well-being in the world; we live in the Dhamma … 
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