Search results for: "Generosity"
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- Delight… Sometimes they’re neutral thoughts, sometimes they’re relatively okay—they might be thoughts about generosity or thoughts about other good things—but sometimes they’re just downright embarrassing. You wouldn’t want to think that that kind of thought could be going to go through your head. And so one of the customs of the noble ones is to learn how to develop …
- Vows… So even though we’re living in a land where it doesn’t rain much during the rains retreat, we can still make use of the tradition to decide that for the next three months we’re going to try to do something special with our lives, in terms of generosity, virtue, or meditation. The word meditation here, bhavana, means developing. You’re trying …
- Analysis of Qualities… This is why we have those other meditation topics—like recollection of death, recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, recollection of your own generosity and virtue—to incline the mind to see the importance of getting trained, settling down, developing some concentration. That’s one thing you have to watch out for in the mind. The other thing you have to …
- Learning from Determination… is how you practice? Or that the practice is the goal? Nowhere. The practice is all about the things you learn in the course of mastering the skills the Buddha taught. Generosity is a skill. You’re free to give wherever you want, but if you want to approach gift-giving as a skill, you think about where your motivation is aimed, what the …
- Honest & Observant… The Buddha teaches you to be generous and to reflect on your generosity. The same with virtue: You follow the precepts and reflect on what it means to follow the precepts. This quality of being reflective: That’s where you’re going to learn. When you’re being generous, watch the mind to see what its motivation is, to see the parts of the …
- Harmony… As Ajaan Lee used to say, “When you live in a monastery, make your eyes as big as the monastery.” See where you can help—in line with that principle of sympathy, generosity, goodwill for one another. Be active in trying to make sure that harmony is something that’s maintained, because it’s so easy to destroy it. As I said, with a …
- Complexities of Karma… not just meditation, but also generosity and virtue. That way, your mind is under control, and you have good opportunities waiting to open up for you. So the Buddha’s policy for living a good life—and that includes managing a good death—comes down to some very basic things: Be generous, be virtuous, develop thoughts of goodwill in your mind, and then try …
- Meticulousness… It’s your way of showing respect for other people’s generosity, showing some gratitude for the fact that people have built this place. Everything we have here—you look all around you—it’s all a gift: the building we’re sitting in, the land we’re sitting on. All these things are gifts. So you should have some respect for them. And …
- In Harmlessness Is Strength… to rely on ourselves. If we’re going to find happiness in life, we have to develop the qualities of the path: virtue, concentration, and discernment. Or to develop meritorious activities: generosity, virtue, and meditation. In the course of doing that, we develop a very strong sense of self, a healthy sense of self. But as the practice develops, we find that the sense …
- Protective Meditations… The power of generosity is that strong. Then finally, recollection of death: This also counteracts greed, with the thought that the things you might amass and protect in an unskillful way, you can’t take with you. Death could come at any time, and it may have nothing to do with disease or social unrest, or the diseases you might think are dangerous. Something …
- Things as They’ve Come to Be… So ask yourself, what would be inspiring right now? The Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha? Your own past generosity? Your own past virtues? Or do you need something besides the carrot? Do you need a stick? Think about death. It could come at any time, and you can ask yourself, “Am I ready to go?” Almost universally the answer is, “Not yet.” Okay, what …
- The Limits of Control… re meditating is to find out exactly how much control we can exert over form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. This is the point of all the aspects of the practice. Generosity, for instance: One of your first experiences of freedom is when you have something that’s yours, but you decide you want to give it away, not because you have to or …
- The Power of the Mind… One is generosity, the ability to relinquish things that get in the way; and the other is calm. The mind tends to get worked up when it has to stick with something that challenges it, that forces it to give things up that it likes. If you allow it to stay worked up, then you’re not going to last for very long. The …
- Putting out the Flame… These principles go against our normal orientation; which is one of the reasons why the practice of the Dharma begins with generosity. Instead of taking in, you give out. You reverse the direction. The texts say that, in the final stages of breath meditation, you focus on inconstancy, you focus on dispassion, you focus on cessation. You would think it all stops there, but …
- Step by Step… The reason we’re commemorating him is because of the good examples he set, primarily in the area of generosity, persistence, and truthfulness. We look back on the history of the world, and there are very few people that really stand out for their goodness, but those who do, stand out because of these qualities. They’re generous with other human beings. They set …
- Values of the Noble Ones… The Canon lists ten perfections altogether. The Buddha himself never came up with this list, but the list does include things that he advocates elsewhere, in scattered places in the Canon: generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity. Those are all good things to develop. You simply have to figure out which ones are appropriate right here and now. If the …
- Meaning & Becoming… It includes generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity. When you develop these qualities, they take you out. So, if you’re looking for meaning and significance., it doesn’t have anything to do with the relationships you develop, although if you want to find what the Buddha calls an admirable friend, someone to helps you develop these qualities, that’s …
- A Conglomeration of Germs… If you use it to meditate—to give rise to concentration, to give rise to discernment—or as a means for generosity and virtue, that’s a sign that you really know how to use your body. Take advantage of this conglomerate of old kamma that you’ve got, and while you can hold it together, learn how to use it well.
- Equanimity as a Skill… I’m surrounded by dishonest people,” he said. “How can I find happiness in life? How can I find peace in life?” So I talked to him about generosity, virtue, meditation. “How do you meditate?” I gave him the address for the website. He seemed pleased, shook my hand, and went back to work. The irony was that night I was going to give …
- Patience… You have to learn how to talk to yourself, to remind yourself you’ve got this virtue of generosity that’s going to pay off someday. In the meantime, you think about how spacious your mind is because you were able to give. One of the most important lessons, though, is that there is a ranking of pleasures. Say you have some food. You …
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