Search results for: "Generosity"

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  2. The Reflective Self
     … Then there’s relinquishment, which can cover both generosity—being generous with your time, generous with your energy—and giving up unskillful mental states. Here at the monastery we have our chores, and it’s good to think of them as an opportunity instead of seeing them simply as chores. Here’s an opportunity to do something well. Do it with a sense of … 
  3. You’re Already Dead
     … Another treasure is generosity. You know that someday you’re going to have to give up everything you have, so before it’s wrenched from your grasp, learn how to let it go. If you see something that you have and someone else could use well, make a practice of giving it. The mind gets lighter, more expansive. That sense of spaciousness in the … 
  4. Getting the Most Out of the Present
     … In particular, whatever goodness you may want to develop in terms of generosity, virtue, all the qualities that are called perfections: Those are things you develop. That’s the duty there, and in that way your life away from formal practice is not wasted. We have only so much time, but we also have duties that are imposed on us, either from outside or … 
  5. Appreciating Goodness
     … He lists three types of goodness in particular—generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill—because these are ways of finding happiness that don’t cause any harm to anybody. The Buddha never said that the search for happiness is a bad thing. He never said that you should try to deny your happiness for the sake of others. He said you should work … 
  6. Discernment: Commit & Reflect
     … You see this with the precepts; you see this with the practice of generosity: really basic stuff. Consciously be more generous, consciously be stricter with yourself about the precepts, and notice what happens. If you’re going to be stricter about the precepts, you find you’re more careful. If you’re more generous, you find there’s a good quality—a spacious, wide … 
  7. Prerequisites for the Practice
     … But if all you can find around you are people who are lacking in conviction, lacking in virtue, lacking in generosity, lacking in discernment, it’s best not to associate with them. You certainly can’t take them as a guide in the path, which means that you have to be especially stringent with yourself in terms of those other qualities: developing appropriate attention … 
  8. A Valuable Gift
     … the merit that comes from generosity, the merit that comes from virtue, the merit that comes from meditating. He was talking to a lot of people who tended to be happy to give gifts but weren’t so interested in following the precepts or practicing meditation. So he told them that if you just give gifts but don’t follow the precepts or meditate … 
  9. How to Feed Mindfulness
     … And on the basis of that, you realize, for example, that generosity is a good thing, gratitude is a good thing, because people do have the choice to act skillfully or unskillfully. You have to be grateful for the times when they’ve chosen to be skillful, and grateful to yourself for the times you’ve chosen to be skillful, because thinking in this … 
  10. A Sense of Yourself
     … you can look at the perfections. These are the qualities that were detected in the various stories that built up around the Buddha’s previous lifetimes. In Theravada there are ten: generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill and equanimity. You can take that list and ask yourself, “Where are you lacking?” If you don’t know about what it means to … 
  11. The Mind When Trained Brings Happiness
     … You’re going to be less of a burden on them and you’ll be developing good qualities that you can share with them, qualities like generosity, virtue, and the discernment that you develop from training the mind. True happiness is something that is within our capabilities. So we have to look carefully at where we’re looking for our happiness because there are … 
  12. Look after Yourself Happily
     … So these are our motivations for practicing generosity, virtue and meditation: our sense that we’ll benefit from them and that we have the ability to do them. You want to maintain those all the way to the last steps of the path. Then, once you’ve reached the end of the path and you’ve found the ultimate happiness, there’s nothing you … 
  13. A Memorial to Your Life
    There’s a phrase that Ajaan Fuang would use when he tried to teach people to put forth extra effort in the practice—whether in the practice of generosity, virtue, or meditation. And that was to “create a memorial to your life.” It took me a while to understand what he was talking about. Basically, suppose that in some future lifetime you gain the … 
  14. Not-self for the Sake of Happiness
     … This is one of the reasons why he gives the graduated discourse, to point out that even the best forms of happiness that can be found as you practice generosity, virtue, thinking of long-term happiness, and being in a position where you can gain long-term happiness for yourself, will have their drawbacks, their “degradation,” as he says. When your reflective self agrees … 
  15. A Refuge from the Winds of the World
     … They’re people of generosity, virtue, discernment; you try to develop those qualities as well, because you pick up the qualities of the people that you’re near. There’s an image in the Canon of a leaf. If you use the leaf to wrap up fine-smelling spices, the leaf will smell fine as well. If you use it to wrap rotten fish … 
  16. Dhamma Intelligence
     … The Buddha recommends topics like recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, recollection of your generosity, recollection of your virtue. Those are to give you encouragement. Then there’s recollection of death, which is to remind you that you don’t know how much time you have, so there’s definitely work to be done right now. You can ask yourself, “Are you … 
  17. A Home of Your Own
     … So what kind of actions do you want to take with you to make a long-lasting fixture in your home? You want them to be acts of generosity, acts of virtue, acts of discernment. Those are the best things for decorating your house inside. With them, it becomes easier to become more and more at ease being here, having a strong sense this … 
  18. Curious About the Process
     … So a good first stage is to think about the other practices we have in terms of generosity and virtue. When you’re preparing something to give to other people, or you’re in the process of trying to observe the precepts and you come up against a problem, and you can handle it well, that’s when it’s pleasant to look at … 
  19. Steering the Raft
     … What it’s good for is as a tool to develop skillful qualities in the mind—as we practice generosity, as we practice virtue, as we meditate. So you’re using this tool. You’re using this raft. Be very clear about the fact that the raft is something just slapped together out of inconstant things, but if you steer it properly, it’ll … 
  20. Happiness Without Conflict
     … This is why even though the practice of generosity and virtue and meditation are relatively harmless, you’re still not totally free from harm. You’re not totally free from having to compete with others until you reach the deathless. So we don’t stop with the sense of well-being that comes from focusing on the breath. We try to figure out what … 
  21. Anybody Home?
     … the sense of self that can meditate, the sense of self that can practice generosity, practice virtue. That kind of self we need as long as the path hasn’t yet been fully developed. We need a sense of confidence that we can do it and a sense of competence that we can do it, along with the sense of responsibility that if we … 
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