Search results for: virtue
- Virtue Contains the Practice… In his graduated discourse, virtue follows right after generosity. The reason for this is that when you’re trying to develop virtue, you have to look at the things you’re doing in your day-to-day life. This is how you develop your mindfulness and alertness. If you see that you’re causing any harm, you try to drop what you’re doing …
- Better to Give than to Consume… He starts with generosity and then moves on to virtue, the rewards of virtue in heaven, then the drawbacks of those rewards, and then finally the value of renunciation. Once the mind can see that renunciation would be a good thing, then it’s ready for the four noble truths. In many ways, renunciation is a continuation of the principle of generosity. You learn …
- Recollecting the Devas… You recollect their virtues. You treat them with respect. And then you take what you learn from them and you put it to the test to see if it really is conducive to training the mind. As for the recollection of the virtues of the devas, that’s useful if you want to raise the level of your mind here in present life. You …
- The Truth of Transcendence… He’d go through various topics starting with generosity and virtue and then the rewards that come from generosity and virtue. He’d talk about heaven, which is another part of the teaching on kamma: There is a life after this one, and the actions we do in this lifetime bear results now and on into the future. If the actions are good, they …
- Truth… This is one of the reasons why the Buddha regarded truthfulness as the most important virtue, both in the sense of speaking truly and in the sense of not betraying your knowledge or your understanding. All the precepts come down to this quality of truthfulness. You observe that you’ve been harming people—yourself or others—and you want to stop, and then you …
- A Mind Without Inertia… Find the happiness that comes from generosity, the happiness that comes from virtue, from being principled in your behavior, and the happiness that comes from meditation. He compares these things to food—and particularly the sense of wellbeing, rapture, and refreshment that come from getting the mind into a good strong concentration. That’s your food and nourishment on the path. It gives you …
- Accepting the Buddha’s Standards… all those virtues that tend to get short shrift in our society. But we’re not here as consumers, which is apparently what our society would like us to be. We’re here to make something of our potential to find true happiness, not the happiness they want us to buy. We have to discipline ourselves because that’s what’s required, to have …
- Loss… And the Buddha said, “Well, did Sariputta take virtue away with him? Did he take concentration away? Did he take discernment away? Did he take release away?” No, all the important things in life were still there. The important possibilities, the important opportunities were still there. And the Buddha continued, “Did I ever tell you that anything born will never leave you? Things that …
- Encouraging Perceptions… For example, reflection on your own generosity, reflection on your own virtue, recollection of the Sangha, remembering all those monks and nuns who went through a lot of difficulties. Some of them were on the verge of suicide and yet they were able to pull themselves together and ultimately gain awakening. That’s encouraging. They could do it, why can’t you? Any of …
- Pissing on Palaces… What we’re living for as meditators is to develop the qualities—in some cases they’re called the noble treasures—of conviction, virtue, a sense of shame and compunction over the idea of doing something harmful, the willingness to learn, generosity, and wisdom. These are qualities of mind you can take with you, and you don’t want to scrounge around for them …
- Conviction & Confidence… We’ve got the treasure of conviction, the treasure of virtue, the treasure of a sense of shame, i.e., your sense of your own self-worth, that you would be ashamed to stoop to harmful actions. The treasure of compunction: that when you think of doing something harmful, you just pull back and say, “No, I can’t do that,” for fear of …
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