Search results for: "Generosity"
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- Heedfulness for the Holidays… This is one of the reasons the Buddha would emphasize both generosity and virtue as a source of confidence. You go into groups of people who might be ready to criticize you, but you know if you’ve been generous and virtuous, whatever they’re going to criticize you about doesn’t really matter. After all, there are people in the world who will …
- Lessons from Stilling the Mind… This is one of the reasons why we practice generosity, practice virtue. As I said earlier today, if you’re going to watch your mind, the best mind to watch is a good mind—in other words, a mind that’s been doing good things, being generous, being virtuous, extending thoughts of goodwill to everybody. That kind of mind is easy to watch. You …
- Observing the Mind at the Breath… If something is disturbing the mind, what can you do to undercut it? Sometimes working with the breath directly will help with that; sometimes you have to bring in other topics, like contemplation of the body, goodwill, any of the recollections—the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha; recollections of your own virtue, your own generosity, to give yourself a sense of self-worth; recollection …
- Your Own Karma… recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha; your own past generosity, your own past virtue. You can recollect death when you’re getting lazy. Recollect the Buddha when you’re getting discouraged. Recollect the Sangha when you’re getting discouraged. Remember all the people who’ve trod this path in the past—people with lots more problems than you’re having right now …
- Our Sense of Self… That’s why we practice generosity; it’s why we practice virtue. When you learn to identify with a generous mind-state, you find you really enjoy it. It’s much more expansive than a greedy or stingy mind state. You learn how to withdraw from the greedy or stingy mind state. It may come up, but you decide you don’t have to …
- Success on the Path… And the practices he recommends that are inspiring are recollection of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha; recollection of your own generosity, virtue; recollection of the qualities of the devas, thinking about the fact that you’ve been developing those qualities as well. And you think about those themes as much as you need to get rid of that fever in the body …
- Values… You could think about your generosity or your virtue. Think about the times when you were generous and didn’t have to be. There was no compulsion, but you just simply wanted to share. It’s good to think about those times. Think about times when it was difficult to hold by your precepts, but you did. Or think about the *brahmavihāras, *or about …
- Choices… by the way you breathe, by the topics you think about, or by reflecting on the fact that you’re living a life of virtue, you’re living a life of generosity. You’re developing the qualities that the Buddha said will make you a deva: whatever theme you find is inspiring so that you’re happy to be here, because when you’re …
- Thinking Your Way to Stillness… There are also reflections on your generosity, on your virtue, on the fact that you’ve developed the qualities that make people into devas. Those are to remind you that you do have worth, that you do have potential in the meditation. These are some of the ways in which thinking is useful in the meditation. You analyze unskillful thinking and you try to …
- Admirable Friendship, Inside & Out… You ask them about their conviction, their generosity, their virtue, their discernment, and then you try to follow their example. Most difficult, of course, is the discernment. You find that it comes down to the questions they ask. Look at the Buddha teaching his son: At the very beginning, he said that if you’re going to do anything, look first at your intention …
- Acceptance & Equanimity… Like the Buddhist instructions on generosity: Give where you feel inspired or where you feel the gift would be well used. You may be inspired to want to see everybody happy, but as for your efforts to help other people to be happy, you have to focus them on places where they would be well used. And for that, you need equanimity, a more …
- A Good-natured Attitude… It might be the Buddha, it might be the Dhamma, the Sangha, the good that you’ve done either in terms of your generosity, in terms of your virtue. Then when the dryness goes away or the antsiness in the mind goes away, you can bring it back to the breath. Remember that you’ve got to have a number of tools at hand …
- A Sense of Duty… It’s part of our generosity. It’s part of developing our perfections. But what other people will do with the goodness we’ve left behind is totally beyond our control. Think of the Buddha toward the end of his life. One of the last things he said to the monks was that if they decided that any of the minor rules in the …
- The Origination of Suffering… The practice also involves generosity and it involves virtue. But the fact that you’re doing something here that nobody else can do for you, and that you can’t do for anyone else—that should give you a good sense of priorities. This is work that has to be done within. After all, the true causes of suffering are within, the work is …
- Ego… These pleasures come not only from concentration but also from understanding, from virtue, from generosity, the pleasure that comes from doing something noble with your life. You want to nurture this sense of pleasure and a sensitivity to this kind of pleasure, because when we talk about happiness it’s not just about people running around smiling all the time and being kind of …
- Determined to Make a Difference… to learn how to focus them, get them to be still, and to follow all the other elements of the path that are required to provide a good foundation for concentration: Generosity, virtue—these things are necessary. As the Buddha said, a stingy person can’t get into the stages of right concentration. As for virtue, it is possible for unvirtuous persons to get …
- Squeezing Goodness Out of the Aggregates… where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are in terms of learning, virtue, generosity, conviction, discernment, and particularly your ingenuity. So you try to develop these things. Try to get a sense of what you’ve got here in terms of these aggregates, and what you can do with them. Like the aggregate of form: What can you do with the different elements or …
- Three Levels of Refuge… When you find a good friend like that, the whole point is to emulate that person’s wisdom, generosity, virtue, conviction—what human beings can do. That’s one level of refuge, the external level. Then the next level is that you try to develop the qualities of that person or of those people within yourself. Take the example of the Buddha. His main …
- Rooted in Desire… Gladden it with generosity; gladden it with virtue. Then you can get it glad with concentration and discernment. The path creates a sense of well-being. It doesn’t lead only to nibbāna. That’s not the only pleasure it provides. It provides pleasure all along the way: When you’re generous, there’s a sense of self-worth, that you’re not a …
- Practicing Your Scales… This is one of the reasons why the Buddha also prefaced meditation practice with practicing generosity and observing the precepts. As you follow the Buddha’s teachings in ways that are simpler and easier to follow and see the results that come, it gives you confidence in the teaching: that even though some of the instructions may seem counterintuitive, they work. When you come …
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