Search results for: "Generosity"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. Make Yourself Small
     … After generosity and kind words, then there comes genuine helpfulness. You see what the other person really needs, and if you’re in a position to provide it, you go ahead. You don’t make a show of helping them just to make a good impression on them. You don’t do it for their sake or anyone else’s sake. You do it … 
  11. A Doctor’s Strategies
     … If you’re feeling down on yourself, think about your generosity, the things you’ve given to other people in the past when you didn’t have to. Think about your own virtue, the times when you did the right thing even though it was hard. These are in the traditional list of what they call recollections—meditation as thinking. Because, the Buddha points … 
  12. Mindful of the Buddha’s Shoulds
     … When the Buddha recommends generosity, recommends virtue—these are things that you choose to do because they’re worth doing. That’s a value judgment. Then you get the mind into meditation. Even a simple practice like goodwill is a mindfulness practice—you’ve got to keep reminding yourself to do it. Goodwill for all beings doesn’t come naturally. You focus on the … 
  13. Stay Principled
     … It’s because you can make choices that there is a virtue in generosity. It’s because you have the ability to make choices that you owe gratitude to your parents—because they made choices, too. People who’ve looked after you chose to be helpful, and you always have to appreciate that, have gratitude for it. If you don’t have gratitude for … 
  14. Kindfulness
     … You start with generosity, which obviously benefits other people, but you benefit as well. The mind grows larger, more expansive, more able to include other people in your consideration. The same with the precepts: You refrain from harming other people. That means you have less remorse to deal with inside. If you’re going around intentionally hurting this or that person, and then you … 
  15. Furnishing Your Home for the Mind
     … Without it, we wouldn’t be able to meditate, we wouldn’t be able to practice generosity. So he’s not down on the body. When we’re meditating here, we’re trying to fill our awareness with good breath energy throughout the body. So it’s not that the body is a bad thing. It’s just that you have to learn how … 
  16. Why We Practice the Way We Do
     … Now, you start that with the practice of generosity and the practice of virtue. You try to get rid of your greed and your stinginess—the narrowness of the mind that doesn’t want to help other people—by being generous with your time, generous with your things. That way, you develop skillful qualities in place of unskillful ones. The same with the practice … 
  17. Filling in the Buddha’s Outline
     … the wrong view that your actions don’t make any difference, that generosity isn’t worthwhile, that gratitude isn’t worthwhile, that nobody knows what happens after death so who cares. Those are things you have to avoid across the board. As you get into the four noble truths, especially when you get into the noble eightfold path, there are specific instructions on how … 
  18. Clinging & Feeding
     … As the Buddha said, you want to be aware of your conviction, your virtue, your generosity, your discernment, your level of learning, your level of ingenuity. Have you developed these skills to a point where they really can lead to awakening? As for the self as consumer: If you ever feel tempted to leave the path, you remind yourself, “Hey, I got on this … 
  19. Determined to Stay with the Breath
     … The third quality is generosity, relinquishment, learning how to give things up. While you’re sitting here meditating, there are a lot of things you can’t do. Remind yourself that you’re making a trade. A lot of the other things you could be doing right now really don’t amount to much. And here you’re training the mind: the most important … 
  20. A Tradition of Ingenuity
     … How meticulous are you about your precepts? And how about your generosity? Are you truly generous with the things you have? And not just things: Are you generous with your knowledge? Are you generous with your time? Are you generous with your forgiveness? Then there’s learning. How much do you know about the Dhamma? The Buddha said you want to take what’s … 
  21. The Power to Transcend Suffering
     … He gives us the tools—starting with practicing generosity and virtue, as ways of creating a sense of well-being, a sense of esteem in ourselves. These things strengthens the mind in the face of suffering. And then there’s the practice of meditation. This strengthens the mind as well, but it also makes the mind a lot more sensitive, so that we can … 
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