Search results for: "Generosity"
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- Part V : Finding a Teacher… Another quality in admirable friendship that goes with conviction is generosity. You see the things you have to give up in order to develop skillful qualities in the mind, and you’re willing to give them up. The word caga here means more than just generosity, giving things to other people. It also means giving things up. Relinquishment might be a better translation. If …
- Breath Teaches the Bramaviharas… There are opportunities for generosity. There are opportunities for being careful, sensitive to the needs and well-being of other people, if you simply look for them. It’s good to have some guidance in these areas to see these potentials, which is one of the reasons why the Buddha said that the whole of the holy life is having admirable friends, people who …
- Opting Out… A good part of generosity is to help alleviate some of those situations, but that’s not our purpose for being here. That’s not the purpose in our generosity—we’re trying to develop good qualities of mind. We’re leaving behind good things as we leave the world. It’s not the case that we leave everyone in a lurch. Look at …
- One Thing Clear Through… From there he goes on to the rewards of generosity and virtue, not only in this life but also, as he says, in heaven: lots of sensual pleasures, good things that come from good qualities of the mind. But those good things are not nearly as good as the qualities of the mind. If you focus on feeding on things outside, even the good …
- A Slave to the Dhamma… You look back at what you’re done, you can think of all the good things you did in the course of the day, and although there may have been problems, there may have been conflicts, they were really not important in comparison to the fact that this was all done as an expression of generosity. And we developed other good qualities as well …
- Seriously Happy… The awakened people you ask will tell you to start with generosity, virtue, and meditation. In other words, look for happiness in ways that’re harmless. If you want your happiness to last, you don’t want it to harm anybody. Otherwise, they’ll try to destroy it. Look for happiness in ways that you’re sharing with other people, and they’ll be …
- Mindfulness of Death… It’s basically those four qualities—conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment—plus learning. This, of course, refers to the Dhamma you’ve learned, and most particularly, I think, the Dhamma you’ve memorized. This is why it’s good to memorize passages in Pali, passages in Pali and English, so that you have some skillful thoughts sloshing around in the mind. After all, as death …
- Paying Off Your Debts… This relates to another form of wealth, which is generosity. But the Buddha also talks about virtue as being a form of generosity. On the one hand, when you’re observing the precepts, you’re giving safety to others. And if your precepts are absolute—i.e., principles that you follow in all situations—then you’re giving universal safety. People may face dangers …
- Trading Up… The Buddha would get people ready to think in these terms first by giving a talk on generosity and a talk on virtue, and then on the rewards of generosity and virtue. Then he’d start talking about the drawbacks of sensuality—even the pleasures that come as a reward of being generous and being virtuous. if you just stay on the regular worldly …
- Limitations… But there are other people who are more serious about developing generosity, and they want to use their imagination as to what’d really be a good gift and what would be the best way to give it. The more you get engaged in your generosity in this way, the more you’re going to enjoy it. Which is the whole point of being …
- Even Common Animals Can Be Trained… With generosity, you hold yourself back from using up things that you could give to other people. With the precepts, of course, you hold yourself back from doing and saying things that you know are going to be harmful. With concentration, you restrain your mind from wandering around as it ordinarily might. You keep your mind tied to an object. The Buddha’s image …
- Radiating Goodness… qualities like patience, determination, resilience, generosity. As I said this morning, before you’re going to gain anything out of the practice, you have to be willing to give. An attitude of giving is an actual refuge so that when disturbances come, you’re not disturbed by them. We’re facing a weekend of absolute craziness. They’re going to bus in twelve busloads …
- The Ten Priorities… These include generosity and renunciation. Generosity is a quality of mind. It’s not just the things that you give, it’s the attitude with which you give them, such as the attitude that sees that somebody else needs something or could use something and you have it. You don’t need it quite so much, or you can do without it, so you …
- An Island in the Flood… It sounded as if he was advising people, “Don’t help anybody regularly, just do it the spur of the moment when the urge hits.” The Buddha does talk about that, in terms of the generosity—you act on your sense of being inspired to give—but he also says that there’s a higher motivation for generosity, which is that you have a …
- Everybody Benefits… We have to make sure that they’re happy in their generosity. The Buddha once said there are six characteristics of a really happy gift, three pertaining to the donor and three pertaining to the recipient. The donor is happy beforehand while thinking about giving the gift, happy while giving the gift, and then gratified when looking back on the fact that it was …
- A Radiant Practice… to dedicate to others, it makes you more sensitive to the good you can do as you go through the day. There are three big categories: generosity, virtue, and meditation. They cover a lot of different activities. Generosity covers a huge range of activities. Simple things like cleaning up the place, little acts of kindness, anything that makes you feel good that you’ve …
- Resilience Plus… And your generosity: You’re coming from a place of giving rather than being a place of being threatened. And finally, your discernment. What’s the most skillful thing to say or do at this time? Here, your discernment is aided by two other qualities that the Buddha recommends, or that he mentions as strengths. One is your learning of the Dhamma. What have …
- Born for the Perfections… The third is generosity, where you have giving and renunciation. And the final one is calming, where you have equanimity and endurance. So you could say that all the paramis come under determination because, after all, they portray the qualities the Buddha was trying to develop as he was going through lifetime after lifetime, determined on awakening. The *paramis *also cover the factors of …
- From Compunction to Release… The Buddha first teaches you dispassion for unskillful actions by talking about the rewards of generosity, the rewards of virtue, and also the opposite of rewards that come when you act on unskillful intentions. But the rewards of generosity, the rewards of virtue are what? Rebirth in the sensual heavens. Then you get into concentration and you can look back at the pleasures of …
- Responsibilities… But our resources are limited, in terms of our generosity. This covers all aspects of the responsibilities you take on—they’re forms of generosity. Give in a way that doesn’t harm you, that doesn’t harm others. Remember, this is all in the context of the practice. As death approaches, that’s going to be the big question: What have you done …
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