Search results for: "Generosity"

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  2. Why Now
     … These three qualities that go into the practice of meditation are based on the practice of generosity and virtue. With generosity, you’re mindful of the needs of others. You’re alert to an opportunity to help. And you make the effort. With virtue, you’ve got to keep the precept in mind. You’re alert to whether your behavior is in line with … 
  3. Gifts of Noble Wealth
     … The path starts with generosity and goes through virtue and on into developing good qualities through meditation. If you think about these types of noble wealth as forms of investment, this is your starting capital. In any kind of investment, you have to make the decision, “I’m going to put aside something now that I can trust will pay back in the future … 
  4. What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now
     … In terms of developing generosity, virtue, and meditation, these are all exercises in learning about your freedom of choice. Generosity is probably one of the first ways, as children, that we realize our freedom of choice. We can choose to give something or not give something. The Buddha’s teachings on generosity deal not with gifts that we give because we have to, but … 
  5. Reinvest Your Noble Treasures
     … There’s a passage on generosity that discusses the different motivations for giving and the rewards that come from those different motivations. The lowest is, “I’ll get this back, perhaps with interest.” That gets you to the heaven of the Four Great Kings. Then, there are higher motivations: “Giving is good.” Or, “It’s not right that I have more than enough and … 
  6. A Sense of Space Inside
     … Every aspect of the practice, starting from generosity on up, is a way of stepping back from your ordinary total involvement in a particular sense of who you are. Think back to when you were a child and you had things that you wanted, toys that you wanted, food that you wanted. Then there came a time when you realized that you could give … 
  7. Empathetic Joy
     … It’s a form of generosity, a generosity of spirit: that you’re happy to see other people doing something that might be better than what you’re able to do. That generosity of spirit is a good aid to the meditation, so that when you stay with the breath and it feels comfortable, you don’t feel guilty about the fact that it … 
  8. The Third Frame of Reference
     … This is why it’s so important that generosity not be forced. I was reading a while back someone, a monk, saying that if Buddhism was to be a good world religion, it would have to start having some good world charities. He was criticizing people who meditate for being selfish and self concerned. There’s a very strong “ought” in that statement. It … 
  9. In Charge of Your World
     … That’s because we came together to do good, to be generous, and to rejoice in one another’s generosity. This is something that’s been typical of the Buddhist tradition ever since the very beginning. Back in the 19th century when Westerners were beginning to read some of the Buddhist texts, and all saw was suffering, death, aging, illness, As a result, they … 
  10. A Complete Training
     … As we develop merit—or goodness, basically—through generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill, we’re learning about how to construct good states of heart and mind, and to have a good influence on the world around us. After all, this is the world in which we’ll be practicing, so you want to create a good environment. At the same time, if … 
  11. In the Land of Wrong View
     … The second one is that you want to find people who are generous—not only because they’ll be generous to you, but also because they’ll teach you generosity by example so you can pick up some of that habit. If you’re going to be competing with one another, learn how to compete in being generous rather than in accumulatimg. The third … 
  12. Staying on Track
     … It’s a framework that comes from the practice of generosity and the practice of virtue. These are qualities not only of the mind, but also of the heart. They keep you on course. This is why the Buddha taught meditation as part of a larger path, an eightfold path, not just a one- or two-fold path. Generosity is one of the prerequisites … 
  13. Mistakes
     … It starts out with generosity, the joy that comes with generosity and then the long-term benefits. Virtue was the next topic, and again, the joy of being virtuous, of looking at your behavior and seeing that there’s nothing in your behavior that you could criticize yourself about. Then he would talk about the long-term benefits of generosity and virtue in this … 
  14. Bless Yourself
     … He never uses the word goodwill when he’s teaching generosity. He says that when you’re being generous you should try to develop a mind of sympathy for the recipient. But goodwill is something else. It’s something, like virtue, that you want to make universal. It’s a wish for your own happiness and a wish for happiness of all other beings … 
  15. Steal the Dhamma
     … You ask yourself, “How far have I come in conviction? How far have I come in generosity, virtue, discernment, learning, ingenuity?” Four of those qualities—conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment—are the qualities of an admirable friend. So, to what extent have you learned from your admirable friends? To what extent are you an admirable friend to yourself? Then there’s learning, which means learning … 
  16. Tough Goodwill for a Tough World
     … It’s totally possible to have boundaries within limitless goodwill, because the help you give to others is a form of generosity. Goodwill may be limitless, but your generosity has its limits in terms of your strength, your wealth, your position in life. It’s good that you see the difference between the two. When people are taking advantage of you, you can say … 
  17. When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath
     … The Buddha talks about gladdening the mind through the practice of generosity, through the practice of virtue, but you can use your directed thought and evaluation to have a lot of fun with the breath, to play around with the breath as well. Just as generosity provides you with lots of opportunities for exercising your ingenuity in the world outside—practicing the Dhamma in … 
  18. Kindness in the Light of Karma
     … It all came from somebody’s generosity. How do we repay that generosity? By practicing, by being a good example. A forest monk once said that people who practice are like lampposts by the side of a road. The lamppost doesn’t have to do anything but shed light. It does its own thing and—in so doing, by giving light—helps a lot … 
  19. Giving to the Meditation
     … Your willingness to give the effort is important, because along with the Buddha’s teaching on the fact that you already have what you need for happiness, you find the very basic role he gives to generosity—to the act of giving. His explanation of right view on the mundane level starts with giving, that giving really is a good thing. It’s a … 
  20. The Brightness of the World
     … The second one is generosity. Look for someone who sees the value of giving. Again, you benefit directly from that, in that you become the beneficiary of that person’s gifts. But at the same time, that person sets a good example for you. The world isn’t all about taking. Giving is what keeps human society alive. It also develops the qualities you … 
  21. Unlimited Compassion, Limited Resources
     … What are your capabilities? How much can you help somebody else? And how far do you go before getting to the point where you’re harming yourself? Because the help you give to others comes under the principle of generosity, and one of the basic principles of generosity is that you don’t give to the point where it hurts. In other words, you … 
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