Search results for: "Generosity"
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- Victory over Death… One of our strengths, of course, is meditation, training the mind, based on generosity, based on virtue. You develop good qualities of the heart and mind. It’s good to remember when training the mind that the Pali word for “mind,” citta, also means “heart.” So we’re not just training the thinking side of the mind. We’re also training the part of …
- New Feeding Habits… You don’t have to feed off of your generosity anymore. You don’t have to feed off your virtue; you don’t have to feed off your discernment. The goal is that good. The path is a good path. After all, learning to be a person of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—these are all good things: good things to do, ennobling things …
- Hindrances to the Heightened Mind… You could think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, think about your generosity, think about your virtue. As long as you’ve got the energy to think, think about good things. And finally, uncertainty: Ask yourself, what’s wise about uncertainty? You’re looking for the allure of these hindrances, that’s basically what it comes down to. Why do you go for …
- Guardian Meditations… You can think about your past generosity, especially when you’re feeling discouraged in your practice, when you feel that “I don’t have any good in me,” tell yourself, “What do I have in me? What do I have in the past that’s good?” Think of the times you’ve been generous when you didn’t have to be. Think of the …
- Choosing Freedom… You can think about your own generosity. You can think about your own virtue. Maybe your virtue isn’t perfect, but there have been times when you’ve been good. You’ve done the honorable thing; you’ve acted on your principles. You could think thoughts of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity. Extend those to everybody you can think of—whatever you find calms …
- The Ennobling Path… It might be the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha; qualities of generosity, goodwill, any of the brahmaviharas ; the practice of virtue. Contemplate these things until the mind feels inspired. Once it gets lubricated, you can settle down with the breath again. And you find that the mind is willing to settle down and be still. So the practice of concentration is designed specifically …
- Generating Desire… You’re living off their generosity. As a return act of kindness to your supporters, you want to keep practicing partly to pay back the debt, partly so that their gifts to you will bear great fruit for them. That’s part of the way kamma works: If you purify your mind, those who support you will reap great rewards. The Buddha also talks …
- Accepting the Way Things Function… If you’re feeling discouraged, think thoughts about your generosity and your virtue: the good that you’ve done. Think in a way that gets the mind more and more in the mood to meditate. Then you can focus on the breath. Here, again, it’s not just awareness of the breath. There are also your perceptions, your visualizations. How do you visualize the …
- Feeding your Attack Dogs… So their consumption is actually an act of generosity. It’s an act of giving. It’s a very special way of living, so that instead of attack dogs eating, it’s all giving, giving, giving. As that comment Ajaan Suwat made once, when someone told him, “This Buddhism you guys teach would be really good if you had a god to give you …
- Why We Train the Mind… When you’ve had enough of that, you say, “Maybe there’s another way out, another way to happiness.” You start looking inside, looking into this practice of training the mind through generosity, through virtue, through meditation. You see that you really can change the direction of the mind to look for happiness in new places, to look for happiness in new ways—like …
- Working at Home… the Dhamma of generosity, the Dhamma of virtue, the Dhamma of patience, equanimity, goodwill—all these other virtues that are an essential part of training the mind. The idea of creating meditation retreats came basically in the late 19th or early 20th century, the same time when the assembly line was invented, breaking jobs down into little tiny parts that you do repetitively. This …
- Breath, Tranquility, & Insight… Or you can think about your own generosity or your own virtue, the good you’ve done in the world, the bad things you could have done but decided not to on principle. This gives you a sense of your own worth, your own dignity as a person. It gives you a sense of competence that you can handle these things. When it gives …
- A Committed Relationship… Sangaha-vatthu, is from a sutta where the Buddha talks about how a family can stay together, how people can stay together on good terms. And he lists four basic qualities: generosity, kind words, genuine helpfulness, and consistency. Those are precisely the things we need in the meditation. To begin with, when you meditate you have to give of yourself. All too many people …
- Faith in the Practice… What about me?” You remind yourself while you do the practice here—while you’re practicing generosity, practicing virtue, practicing meditation—you’re benefiting. This gives you the encouragement, the confidence to go on. As for concentration, it’s the same sort of thing. Some people don’t have to develop very strong concentration. We hear of cases where people get just the first …
- Mindful of Death… The recollection of your virtue, the recollection of your generosity: These are really sustaining for the mind. You can see this even as you sit here and meditate. There are times when the meditation is not going well and you start thinking, “I just don’t have it. I don’t have the potential.” But then you can recollect times when you’ve been …
- Breath Meditation: The Third Tetrad… You can think about your past virtue, your past generosity, things that you find uplifting. Then you can come back to the breath, but this time with a better state of mind. If, however, the mind is feeling overly excited, overly energetic, then you want to figure out how to breathe in a way that steadies the mind. And again, this might have to …
- Right Next to Ignorance… Think about your generosity. Think about your virtue. In times like this, you want to think about how good it has been, the times when you actually were able to carry through with the precepts when it was difficult, or you were able to be generous when it was difficult, to give you a sense of well-being. But eventually you do want to …
- The Mind’s Eating Disorders… Give it the good food of concentration, a sense of well-being that comes from generosity and virtue, and the mind gets stronger and stronger. Give it conviction in the practice. That strengthens you. Make it persistent, be mindful, develop concentration so that you can develop the discernment that sees these things clearly. This is how you strengthen the mind to the point where …
- Virtuous Beginnings… We’re consummate in virtue, consummate in generosity, consummate in conviction, consummate in discernment. If we aren’t able to make our way out of this continual round of coming back, coming back, virtue at least makes sure that we arrange a soft landing for ourselves, that we come back in good circumstances, circumstances that allow us to take up the path again with …
- Thinking Seriously about Happiness… If you’ve been a monk for a couple years, every cell in your body is the result of somebody’s generosity, of the food you’ve eaten, as the different cells get replaced. But one thing you do have that’s your own, and that’s the goodness you can generate from within your mind. So when you generate goodwill, it’s like …
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