Search results for: "Generosity"
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- Determined to be Happy… All the forms of goodness—generosity, virtue, meditation—are totally harmless and they’re based on goodwill. With generosity and virtue, that’s easy to see: When you give to others, they’re happy. When you abstain from harming them, they’re happy. But especially meditation—getting the mind under control so that your greed, aversion, and delusion don’t take over: That’s …
- Initiative… You engage in admirable friendship, which means that if they have good qualities, and the Buddha gives a list—conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment—you try to emulate those qualities. You actually ask them, “How do you do this?” If you have trouble being generous, ask people who are generous, “How do you do this? What is your way of thinking that allows you to …
- The Buddha Teaches a Yakkha… truth, self-control, endurance, and relinquishment or generosity. One of the reasons Ajaan Suwat liked this story was because the Buddha was compliant. He wasn’t stubborn, but when it came to what was proper, he stood his ground. This was very much the character of Ajaan Suwat: He was compliant in a lot of ways, but when it came to a matter of …
- Taking Stock… the kind of happiness where everybody benefits, the happiness that comes from generosity, from virtue, and from training the mind. This is the kind of happiness where you still feel a connection, not only with the people around you right now but also with people who’ve helped you in the past, and the people who helped them, and the people who helped them …
- Fear of Death… Of those four fears, one of them can be alleviated by the practice of generosity and virtue. That’s the fear that you’ll be punished for cruel behavior. People who’ve come back from near-death experiences often say that the things they regret most—when they look back on their lives, thinking that they’re about to die—are the opportunities where …
- Death Is Normal… It’s why we also have the practice of generosity and taking the precepts when someone has died. Of course, these are practices we do all the time, but it’s especially important to do them at a time like this so that you put the mind in good shape. There’s the pleasure and the happiness, the well-being that come from generosity …
- We’re All Learning the Ropes… So generosity is a necessary part of the path. It develops a human quality, the quality of realizing that just as you love yourself, other people love themselves. And instead of taking that as an excuse to say, “Well, I’ll just love myself as much as I want, to hell with everybody else, let them fend for themselves,” use it as a jumping …
- Brahmaviharas & Noble Truths… The generosity is an expression of compassion. All the brahmavihāras are there, embodied in your practice, but we go beyond the brahmavihāras. There’s a passage where the Buddha talks about how, in a previous lifetime, he happened to be a king. The tradition within that line of kings was that as soon as you had your first white hair, you would abandon your …
- Heedfulness Is Auspicious… Years back, when I was giving a talk as a part of a retreat, I got to the topic of generosity, dealing with right and wrong attitudes to have toward generosity, and I wanted to give an example of something that was really right. I thought of the time that we built the chedi in Wat Dhammasathit, and Nok had been there from very …
- From Anxiety to Confidence… Another treasure is generosity, the ability to give up things you know are going to get in the way of a higher happiness—the ability to trade up, realizing that to gain something of great value, there are a lot of things of lesser value you’re going to have to relinquish. So rather than try to gather everything that you like together, you …
- All Winners, No Losers… These areas start out with something very simple, generosity, and go on through virtue and the practice of meditation. All of these are areas in which you gain happiness in a way that inflicts no pain or harm on anyone else. In fact, you can actually help them gain some happiness, too. When you’re generous, you give a gift. You acquire a magnanimous …
- The Challenge… Ajaan Suwat once noticed when he was teaching a meditation retreat that one of the reasons why everyone was so grim about their meditation was that they didn’t have any more basic experience of the Buddha’s teachings, experience with generosity, experience with virtue, or at least the particular way the Buddha taught generosity and virtue. He noted that if you had that …
- Strength to Be Good… But with the goodness that comes from the meditation, the goodness that comes with generosity, the goodness that comes with virtue: That kind of goodness spreads around. And because your gain in these things doesn’t mean that anybody else has to lose, these kinds of goodness create a good society where people can live together without constantly putting up boundaries and trying to …
- True Happiness Starts with Giving… From there, the Buddha would go on to talk about the rewards of heaven that come from generosity and virtue. We have very few of his teachings on heaven, aside from his saying that if you can imagine a king and all the pleasures of the king, they’re not one sliver of the pleasure that comes from being in heaven. But then he …
- It’s What You Give… It starts with generosity. This is why the Buddha starts his teaching with generosity. He’s pointing to the fact that what you put into the system is going to make a difference. So, as an example, he starts with something really simple, really basic: the simple act of giving a gift. Then he moves on to virtue. Here, too, he has you regard …
- Treasures from the East… Next is the treasure of generosity: when you’re able to give, even at times when it may be difficult to give, but you’re able to give. Here there’s a sense of wealth, even though the gift was difficult and required some sacrifice on your part. That gives a sense of honor as well. You realize that material things have only a …
- Guardian Meditations… His most basic teaching was a teaching on generosity, so what better way to teach generosity than to be generous with your teachings? This is why he taught freely. Anybody who needed the Dhamma, he was happy to teach. All he asked was that people be truthful. He said, “Let someone come who’s observant and no deceiver, and I’ll teach that person …
- Honesty… This is why the Buddha’s teachings often start with generosity. I don’t know how many times people come to meditation focusing what they’re going to get out of it. One time, when I translated for Ajaan Suwat as he was teaching at IMS, one of his comments after the third day of the retreat was: “You notice how grim these people …
- A Noble Warrior’s Path… If you can’t get the food of right concentration, learn to develop the food of generosity, the food of virtue. All these things are nourishing to the heart. Reflection on your generosity and reflection on your virtue help to give rise to that sense of confidence—and to the sense of honor that we’re doing something really noble here. And it’s …
- The Duties of Compassion… So there has to be a generosity of heart, a generosity of spirit underlying the practice. When you find good things in your practice, you’re happy to share. But your method of sharing is indicated in that phrase we chant about the Dhamma every evening: opanayiko, you have to bring it into yourself first; and then ehipassiko, only then do you call other …
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