Search results for: "Generosity"
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- A Snare of Death Laid Out… When he gave his graduated discourse, he started out with generosity, virtue, and the rewards of generosity and virtue, which would be to experience sensual pleasures here in the human realm and then up in the higher realms. Then, before he taught the four noble truths, he had to take you through that step of seeing the drawbacks and degradation of sensuality, to the …
- Helping Others Is a Battle… And in his generosity, he helped people in all kinds of ways—not just with material things, but also with his discernment, with his forgiveness, with his knowledge, with his energy. But he knew how much to give and how much was too much to give. As the Buddha said, one of the principles of generosity is learning your limitations. You don’t give …
- The Source of Goodness… The first is generosity, giving. Be generous with your time. Be generous with your forgiveness. Be generous with your knowledge—although you should have a sense of time and place for how you share your knowledge. I was once thinking of writing a humorous piece on how you can use Buddhism to ruin your marriage. “Honey, could you be a bodhisattva and take out …
- Motivation… Sometimes the Buddha has you think back on your past virtue, your past generosity as a way of giving yourself a sense of self-confidence that, Yes, you can do this. The good things you’ve done in the past are a sign that you’ve got some of the perfections and some of the merit that’s needed, some of the good qualities …
- Respect for the Mind… It’s the fruit of somebody’s generosity. Everything here in the monastery is a fruit of somebody’s generosity. So treat it with respect. And two, for the monks, each monk has only one bowl. You want to make it last as long as you can. Bring the same line of thought to your mind. The fact that you’ve got a human …
- Guardian Meditations, Right & Wrong… He saw that generosity was the beginning of our practice. And one of the best ways to teach generosity is to be generous yourself. And the atmosphere he created by giving the Dhamma makes it something that’s given in the family. When you charge for something, it’s a sign that there’s a barrier. You’re not in the family anymore. You …
- Respect… But if it’s based on generosity, on virtue, on concentration, on discernment, there’s no need for those boundaries. This is why the Buddha said that when you train your mind, you’re also helping others; when you help others, you’re training your mind. The two processes go together when you’re looking for this kind of happiness. And it’s something …
- Good Fundamentals… The more experienced the people are in terms of generosity, virtue, conviction, and discernment—particularly discernment into how to put an end to suffering—the more you benefit. What it comes down to is the Buddha’s realization that the Big Problem in life is the suffering we cause, and yet we don’t have to. Why do we cause that suffering? It’s …
- What Are You Doing Right Now?… Even prior to virtue, the Buddha talks about generosity: giving rise to good actions, being helpful. Generosity doesn’t mean giving just material things. You can be generous with your time, generous with your knowledge, generous with your forgiveness, learning how to be more skillful in how you deal with other people. That’s an important part of the practice. That way, when you …
- How to Listen… He talked about the goodness of generosity; virtue, the goodness of acting in harmless ways—basically affirming what people already knew about goodness. He went on to say that generosity and virtue gave good results in this lifetime, good results in the next lifetime, even up to the sensual levels of heaven. Then he turned the tables. He said, “But even those sensual pleasures …
- Developing Discernment… Everything you do in the path, even beginning with generosity—your ability to talk yourself into being generous, talk yourself out of holding on to things that you know that you can give away with good results—is the beginning of discernment. Because the Dhamma is all about your actions. As the Buddha said, we suffer because of our actions, but we can also …
- One Thing Clear Through… It starts with generosity and ends with letting go. And every step along the way there’s going to be some letting go—which is probably one of the reasons why the Buddha said that nobody attains jhana, nobody attains any of the noble attainments, without being generous. So what do you learn from generosity? You learn, one, the principle that you do have …
- The Reality Principle… You can start by reminding them of their generosity: the good things they’ve done for other people in the past, the bad things they’ve avoided doing. These are forms of generosity. These are forms of compassion and goodwill because they open up the mind and make it more expansive. When the mind is in a more expansive state, the amount of suffering …
- The Desire for Things to Be Different… This is why we practice generosity; this is why we practice virtue. That kind of change outside is also useful. But there are times you find yourself presented with raw materials from your past karma—and this can be anything from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, to other people, situations outside that are beyond your control—and if you go butting your head …
- The Brahmaviharas on the Path… But he also says that the quality of your generosity will grow as your meditation advances. In other words, generosity helps your meditation, your meditation makes it easier to be generous in ways that grow more and more large hearted. This is particularly true when you’re working on developing the brahmaviharas. Ajaan Lee describes that the brahmaviharas as food for your precepts. And …
- Mature Strategies… His teachings on generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill — all the things that come under the category of merit — are skillful ways of employing your strategy of self. Basically, he has you take your sense of self, your sense of a continuing identity not only in this lifetime but also even into other lifetimes, and shows how to work with it intelligently so …
- A Sense of Yourself… How are your precepts? Where could you improve on them? Similarly with the third quality, generosity: How generous are you with your time, with your energy? An important part of the path is composed of the heart qualities that come with generosity: your sympathy for other beings, your sense that you have more than enough. You develop a sense of inner wealth by being …
- Disconnecting… The Buddha says that the path requires generosity. If you don’t have a generous mind, you can’t get into right concentration—and forget about genuine discernment. So generosity is something that you can do well. This is how you create good interconnections. Instead of feeding and taking in, you’re giving, distributing out. It’s the opposite. The same with the precepts …
- Responsible for Your Goodness… The Buddha talks about how the different levels of generosity that come along as we’re practicing get higher and higher until finally we get to the state of awakening. Then generosity is just a natural ornament of the mind. In other words, the goodness we do for other people at that point isn’t done because we want something out of them, or …
- Balanced Meditation… It’s also helpful to think about your own past generosity, your own virtue. These are topics that give you energy, because you realize that your birth as a human being hasn’t been a total waste. You’ve done good in your life. Of course, those two topics can get old and stale if you don’t keep on doing good, which is …
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