Search results for: virtue
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- Peace Requires Character… generosity, virtue, and meditation. You learn to take pleasure, not in eating all the time, but in giving things to other people. This may go against the grain, but when you begin to realize that there’s a happiness there, it raises the mind above its ordinary level. Similarly with virtue: You realize that there are ways of finding happiness that would cause harm …
- Be Consistent… It’s by practicing generosity, practicing virtue, that we gain confidence in our own goodness, and we’re doing good things with a mind like that. It’s a lot easier to watch the mind when it’s doing good and to understand what’s going on. So make sure your practice is complete—not just meditation, but also generosity and virtue. These are …
- Seriously Happy… There are things you have to give up, there are strong virtues you have to develop: the virtue of being responsible, the virtue of being heedful. It’s work. The part of the mind says, “Oh no, more work”: You have to look at it. Reason with it. Argue with it. And find joy in the practice. In other words, you don’t tell …
- Virtue… Yet Ajaan Suwat focused most of his answer on practicing the precepts, developing virtue. I thought I saw a number people rolling the eyes, thinking, “Here we are meditators already, yet he’s teaching us this kindergarten stuff.” But it wasn’t kindergarten stuff. That’s how the practice is lived in daily life: through virtue. Remember that the word for meditation in Pali …
- Admirable Intentions… It starts with generosity, virtue, and developing good qualities in the mind. Of course, with generosity and virtue, you’re already developing good qualities. You’re thinking of other people: You realize that your happiness is not the sort of thing that you can develop just on your own without thinking about other people’s happiness. The same goes with virtue: If your happiness …
- Complete Goodness… The Buddha talks about three kinds of goodness—generosity, virtue, and training the mind in meditation. The first two help other people, and the meditation helps other people as well. Sometimes we’re accused of looking out after only our own welfare here, but that’s not the case. When you get your mind well-trained, the people around you benefit, too, because your …
- Truth Without Air Quotes… Some people treat virtue as an optional part of the practice, while the real practice, of course, lies in the techniques of meditation. But the Buddha never taught it that way. He taught virtue as an integral part of the path, because it’s through the practice of virtue—when you take on certain precepts and you try to follow them—that you start …
- Certainty Inside… Generosity is meant to energize the mind, as are virtue and the meditation. Generosity: You realize that you’re not just a guest here in the human realm. You have something you can give it. You become part of the goodness going around in the realm, one of the agents that makes this a good place to be. Rather than just living off the …
- Happy with an Open Heart… Acts of generosity, virtue, meditation: All these things are good things to do. They’re ways of looking for happiness that harm no one at all. And they’re answers to the Buddha’s question that lies at the beginning of discernment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” These are activities that harm no one at …
Contents
Contents Titlepage Contents Cover Copyright Acknowledgements Beyond All Directions Readings Lost in Quotation An All-around Eye Metta Means Goodwill On Denying Defilement Virtue Without Attachment The Limits of the Unlimited Attitudes The Essence of the Dhamma The Middles of the Middle Way Two Types of Middle The Middles of Moderation Moderation & Concentration Discernment & Moderation The Middles of Appropriate Attention Questions of Becoming Two …- Strength of Mindfulness… After all, with your virtue, you want to make sure that you stick with your virtue even when things get very difficult. If things break down outside—food becomes hard to find, other things become hard to find—can you guarantee to yourself that you’re not going to stoop to some unvirtuous actions in order to get what you want? You’ve got …
- Purity of Heart… If we just stop with generosity, just stop with virtue, the rewards are good, but they don’t last very long. Then we’re often back where we were before. And sometimes the rewards of generosity and virtue can get misused if you don’t have meditation to train your mind to have a good sense of what’s skillful and what’s not …
- Creative Goodness… generosity, virtue, goodwill: The happiness they create has no boundaries. It’s something you can extend to everybody because you make yourself happy, and the happiness spreads out. You make others happy, and the happiness comes back into you. If you make yourself happy in these ways, then the happiness becomes all-around. So many of the ways in which the world looks for …
- Immaterial Gifts… You can give the gift of virtue. As the Buddha said, if your observance of the precepts is total and all around, then you’re giving safety to the whole universe. Nobody has anything to fear from you. Now, there may be dangers coming to them from other places, but the area you’re responsible for is your own activity, your own choices of …
Frames of Reference
Frames of Reference
… When your knowledge can reach this level, you don’t have to worry much about virtue, concentration, or discernment. Virtue, concentration, and discernment aren’t the nature of the mind; nor is the nature of the mind virtue, concentration, and discernment. Virtue, concentration, and discernment are simply fabricated phenomena, tools for extinguishing defilement. When defilement is extinguished, then virtue, concentration, and discernment disband as …Show 2 additional results in this book- Heedfulness… So in terms of generosity, virtue, meditation, wherever you’re weak, you want to make yourself strong. You survey yourself to see where your strengths are now, because those are the things you’re going to have to rely on. When we’re born in this world, we’re kind of like those avatars they have in games where the avatar has to have …
- Virtue Contains the Practice… In his graduated discourse, virtue follows right after generosity. The reason for this is that when you’re trying to develop virtue, you have to look at the things you’re doing in your day-to-day life. This is how you develop your mindfulness and alertness. If you see that you’re causing any harm, you try to drop what you’re doing …Show 10 additional results in this book
- Discernment All Along… In that set, your discernment comes first, followed by virtue, and then right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This emphasizes the fact that you have to have some understanding of what you’re doing if you really want to develop virtue, if you really want to get the mind into concentration. But then, there are the five faculties: You start with conviction. You have …
- Stay Principled… The basic elements in the path are virtue, concentration, and discernment. These are things you want to develop. You just don’t sit back and watch them come and go, and learn to accept their coming and going. Actively try to figure out: How do you give rise to more virtue, more concentration, more discernment? Once it’s arisen, how do you maintain it …
- Protection, Inside & Out… Would he make that deal? Sometimes some of the offers are perfectly fine as far as virtue is concerned. There’d be no problem. It’s when there’s some difficulty in terms of the virtue, difficulty in terms of the precepts: That’s when you have to be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of holding to your precepts, but it’s …
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