Search results for: "Generosity"
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- 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 …
- Not-selfing Your Selves… the self who practices the precepts, the self who learns how to be pleased by generosity, all the selves that go with the different good qualities you’re trying to develop. You take them on in a provisional way, but also as a way of changing the balance of power inside. Even though the fights among the different selves inside can be one of …
- Generating Energy… These can be the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha, your own generosity, your own virtue. Sometimes putting the breath aside for the time being and thinking about these things can be very helpful. Thinking about the Sangha for instance: Think about all the ajaans and the success they had in the practice. Remember that they were human beings, you’re a human being …
- The Body Doesn’t Care… The Buddha talks about finding the essence in your body, meaning that you learn how to practice generosity, you use the body to learn about the Dhamma, you use it to practice virtue and meditation. This is where you can find something of essential worth inside the body. We had the question the other day at the Q&A, “What is the essence of …
- Goodness & Goodwill… There are a lot of people who don’t want to be persuaded into generosity or virtue or thoughts of goodwill. So you have to learn how to be sensitive to the situation. Think of thoughts of goodwill going out in all directions. Then test them, to see how genuine they are. There are two good ways of testing them. One is to try …
- Purity… It was an act of generosity. We weren’t sorting out persimmons to eat ourselves, it was to give to somebody we respect. But as the day wore on and the time became more and more important, the king’s boxes were carefully sealed away. Then the persimmons were going to go other places. The blemishes that we wouldn’t have accepted before, well …
- The Wear & Tear of Life… place. It’s not bad to want happiness. It’s not bad to want well-being. It’s simply something that you have to approach wisely. There are basically three steps: generosity, virtue, and meditation. These are ways of looking for happiness that cause no harm to anybody and actually spread well-being around. If your happiness depends on material gain, status, praise, sensual …
- Xtreme Drama… There’s a pleasure in generosity. There’s a pleasure in being virtuous. There’s pleasure in finding time alone with nature. All these are perfectly legitimate ways of looking for happiness, legitimate ways of gladdening the mind. The same with steadying the mind. If you find that your thinking is running away with you, you’ve got to figure out ways of just …
- Discernment Performs… There’s a sutta where a general comes to the Buddha and asks him to talk about the benefits of generosity in this lifetime, the implication being that he didn’t want to hear about anything beyond this lifetime. So the Buddha gives a list of the benefits that come when you’re a generous person, but he doesn’t stop just with this …
- The Treasure of Equanimity… There’s generosity. The act of giving a gift broadens the mind, makes the mind more expansive, as you take into consideration the needs of other people and try to help those needs. And finally discernment: the ability to see what’s skillful and what’s not, to see what is your business and what’s not your business. This is where equanimity and …
- Modest in Manner, but Not in Goals… A lot of people say, “Well, I’ll just be happy with generosity, I’ll just be happy with observing the precepts, and stop there,” maybe doing a little bit of meditation to calm the mind down. But there’s so much more that the Buddha has to offer. It’s all for free, and he encourages you to take all of it. In …
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