Search results for: "Generosity"
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- Happy About Kamma… When you understand kamma from his point of view, gratitude makes sense, generosity makes sense. So, if you learn how to think about kamma in the right way, you find that it is a good working hypothesis. Remember how the Buddha explained causality: Some causes give their effects immediately; other causes give them over time. Which means that what you’re experiencing right now …
- Believe in Your Actions… Mundane right view grows into transcendent right view through the Buddha’s description of generosity and virtue and the rewards, followed by his description of how those actions—which we’ve all experienced, we’ve all engaged in—lead to rewards that are good but have their drawbacks. The purpose of that teaching is to inspire you to be ready to listen to the …
- Looking Inward… when you look inside—that’s when there’s Dhamma. So this is where our practice focuses. Notice where the path lies: It lies in our thoughts, our words, our deeds. Generosity may be an act of giving things to other people, but it’s primarily a development of a quality of the mind. The same with the precepts: They govern our interactions with …
- Appreciating Your Practice… the practice is to see that you’re making yourself happier in a totally innocent way. Innocent happiness is really rare in the world. It comes down basically to three things: generosity, virtue, and meditation. When you find an innocent happiness that’s good for you, it’s good for other people, too. By finding a reliable happiness, it’s also good for other …
- Guarding the Truth… We practice generosity to know our intentions. Then, when we sit down to meditate, we’ve got the right focus, on intention. We intend to focus on the breath—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That’s the formula. We’re trying to get the mind into a state of concentration. As it settles in, you begin …
- Basic Wisdom… This is how our practice of generosity, virtue, and meditation leads to wisdom and discernment. And it’s how the wisdom and discernment lead to the end of suffering. They’re embodied in the four noble truths. Craving leads to suffering. That’s an issue of action and result. The path leads to the end of suffering. That’s another action and result. And …
- Making a Refuge… With the relationships, you look for admirable friends, people who are a good example in terms of their conviction, their generosity, their virtue, and their discernment. These are people you want to associate with because if they’re generous, they’ll be happy to share their knowledge with you. You can see the Dhamma not only in their words, but also in their actions …
- A Sense of Time & Place… There’s also recollection of our generosity and our virtue to reinforce our sense of self-worth. These are places for the mind to forage, to go when it needs a particular antidote to a particular problem. But you can’t wait until the problem comes up to start practicing these things. You’ve got to practice them ahead of time. It’s like …
- A Good Independent Self… When you realize that your true well-being lies in acting in skillful ways, acting on skillful intentions, then even if you have the idea of an independent self, you’ll want to act on impulses for generosity, virtue, the desire to train the mind so that you can be truly happy. At the same time, you avoid a lot of the problems of …
- The River of Karma… What kind of pleasure is bad for the mind? Okay, learn how to develop the pleasure that’s good, i.e., the pleasure that comes from concentration, the pleasure that comes from generosity and virtue. You develop these forms of pleasure so that they can put the mind in a place where it can observe things clearly. So there are the two things: You …
- The Practice is Wherever There’s Mindfulness… Maybe generosity and virtue are their practice.” In other words, practice isn’t just a matter of sitting with your eyes closed or doing walking meditation. It’s something you can do all the time. As Ajaan Maha Boowa once said, “Wherever there’s mindfulness, there’s the practice,” which means that you could be sitting here right now and not really practicing because …
- Appreciating Merit… learning to appreciate acts of generosity, learning how to appreciate virtue, learning how to appreciate the cultivation of skillful states of mind. This is why gratitude is one of the basic principles in developing this sense of delight in developing, in developing a delight in abandoning. You think of the good that other people have done for you. You realize that they went out …
- Feeding on Open Wounds… your generosity, your virtue, your ability to find pleasure outside of sensuality, your discernment, your persistence, your endurance and forbearance, your truth, your determination, your goodwill, your equanimity. As you develop these good qualities, you benefit, and the world benefits as well. It benefits even more when you pull yourself out of the feeding chain and leave good things behind. It’s not as …
- Genuine Satisfaction… We’re fed with generosity. In the beginning, it seems counterintuitive. You give something away but you get fed. On the immediate level, there’s a sense of well-being that comes when you know that you have more than you need and you have enough to share. And it feels good to share. You learn to relish that feeling. It teaches you a …
- Different Paths Go Different Places… all the treasures of conviction, virtue, a sense of shame and compunction, your knowledge of the Dhamma, generosity, discernment, and the food of good concentration. Nobody else can take these things away from you. These are treasures that are safe. The treasures out there in the world, as the Ajaan Lee likes to say, are like the gold chains that people wear around their …
- Gladdening the Mind… Then there’s recollection of your generosity, of your virtue — all the good things you’ve done as you’ve been following the path. This is a valid recollection, a good one for gladdening the mind as well. As for recollection of the devas: This doesn’t mean you sit thinking about devas. You think about qualities that make a person into a deva …
- Truths of the Will… What are the perfections? Generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, energy, tolerance or endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, and equanimity. Sometimes when conditions are difficult, you’ve got to work on the equanimity and the endurance. Other times when opportunities are good, you have to work more on the energy, not to let good opportunities pass you by. When you keep these qualities in mind, you find …
- The Mind Comes First… mind?” You can think about the different perfections that the Buddha talks about. He didn’t give the list of the perfections himself, but the list is drawn from his teachings: generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truthfulness, determination, goodwill, equanimity. Try to develop these qualities as you go through life because you can take them with you. And they’ll provide a good …
- Delighting the Mind… The same with generosity: You had things that you could have consumed yourself, but you decided purely out of freedom of choice to give them away. Thinking about those gifts can lift your spirits. Another way of approaching the step of gladdening the mind is to think of the six kinds of delight that the Buddha talks about as being conducive to the practice …
- Appropriate Attention Plus Admirable Friendship… Conviction in the principle of action, in other words, belief that what you do really does matter, really will make a difference, generosity, virtue, and discernment. The Buddha said that one of the advantages of living with a person like that is that you get a good example and, two, you get to hear the Dhamma. But sometimes the examples shout louder than the …
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