Search results for: virtue
- Page 12
- Noble Treasures… Ajaan Mun once made the comment that qualities like virtue are really, really valuable. If people could steal them, they would. But that’s the nice thing about them: You can’t steal somebody’s virtue, you can’t steal somebody’s generosity. Nobody can steal yours. These things stick with you wherever you go. So look at the qualities you’re developing, because …
Contents
… Strength for the Journey Into Position Two Guardian Meditations Playing Host An Image of the Buddha Binoculars The Electric Heart Restraint of the Senses Snakes, Fires, & Thieves Enduring Principles Part II Merit On Target The Art of Letting Go At the Tip of Your Nose Part III Fragments Understanding the World & the Dhamma Inner Eyes Noble & True Recollection of Virtue Treating the Mind Dedication-
Honest & Observant
… As he said, “When concentration is nurtured by virtue, it has great fruit, great reward. When discernment is nurtured by concentration, it has great fruit, great reward. When the mind is nurtured by discernment, it’s freed from the effluents.” We’re looking for freedom. We have to build our search on virtue, concentration, discernment. We all know this, but it’s good to …
Handful of Leaves, Volume One
DN 2 The Fruits of the Contemplative Life | Sāmaññaphala Sutta
… Consummate in his virtue, he guards the doors of his senses, is possessed of mindfulness and alertness, and is content. The Lesser Section on Virtue “And how is a monk consummate in virtue? Abandoning the taking of life, he abstains from the taking of life. He dwells with his rod laid down, his knife laid down, scrupulous, merciful, compassionate for the welfare of all …Show 10 additional results in this book- Head & Heart… That’s why generosity has meaning—why it is a virtue. If we didn’t have choices in our actions, then giving a gift would be an automatic thing that was determined by somebody else or something else. It wouldn’t have any meaning at all. But it’s because we do have choices in the present moment—and that’s what the main …
-
Four Noble Truths
Chapter Four: Step by Step to the Truth
… By focusing on generosity and virtue in particular, he’s connecting with his listeners’ experience of looking for happiness in ways that are socially mature. When you find happiness in generosity and virtue, you make the people around you happy as well. In focusing on this point, he’s appealing to his listeners’ nobler side, affirming that it has meaning and serves a genuine …Show 5 additional results in this book
- A Happiness Without Boundaries… And you understand that to be happy doesn’t require that much in terms of material things, especially if you augment this with the practice of virtue, the practice of meditation. Virtue is the resolve not to harm anyone, not to act in ways that are going to adversely affect yourself, adversely affect others. Again, this blurs the line between your happiness and other …
- Gifts of Noble Wealth… When you have the virtue that comes from training in the precepts, it’s a form of wealth. You’re refraining from doing the kinds of things you’d like to do just because you feel like doing them. You start thinking about the consequences, which helps you to avoid bad consequences—and that’s an important form of wealth. Virtue here is supplemented …
-
Undaunted
Chapter Four: Aging
… The Buddha also talks of virtue as a form of wealth. A loss of your virtue, he says, is more serious than a loss of health, of material wealth, or even of your relatives (AN 5:130). Virtue is an inner wealth that’s essential to any trustworthy form of well-being. The basic definition of virtue expresses it in terms of five precepts …Show 7 additional results in this book
- Protecting the Mind from Itself… In the textbooks that they use in Thailand for the monks and novices, there’s a statement to the effect that virtue is a matter of your words and your deeds. When the textbooks first came out in the 1910s, Ajaan Mun took exception to this teaching. He said, “Virtue is primarily a matter of the heart, of the mind, because it’s a …
- In the Mood to Meditate… So recollection of the virtue you’ve practiced in the past and recollection of the generosity you’ve practiced in the past are not just to put you in a good mood. They’re also to remind you: You’ve learned lessons from generosity, you’ve learned lessons from virtue that are going to be really useful as you sit here and meditate. After …
- What Are You Becoming?… So take advantage of this opportunity, especially in a place like this where you have the opportunity to develop goodness in all kinds of ways, through your generosity, through virtue, through your meditation. Generosity can take many forms. It’s not just being generous with material things. It also can mean being generous with your time, being generous with your help, being generous with …
- Your Own Mainstay… We train it in virtue. We train it in concentration, discernment. We train it in generosity to begin with. When you learn that there’s a lot of happiness that comes from giving things away, this is counterintuitive to children. They’re happy when they get things. But as you get more mature, you realize there’s a lot more long-term happiness that …
- A Special Happiness… People are talking a lot about happiness and merriness today, but what are the causes of happiness? There’s generosity, there’s virtue, and then there’s developing the mind. Those are the things that give rise to a happiness that’s lasting. The happiness you get from presents or the happiness you get from parties and things: That doesn’t last very long …
- To Take Danger in Stride… your virtue and your right view. A loss of those, he says, is serious. As for external losses, those are not nearly as serious, because when things outside are lost, they can be regained. But if you lose your virtue and your right view, it’s going to be a long, long time before you can get those back, and you can do a …
- Visakha Puja – True Homage… There’s a tradition that the incense stands for virtue, because the scent of virtue, as the Buddha said, even goes against the wind. The scent of incense goes with the wind, but the scent of virtue, the attraction that comes when you see a virtuous person, goes against the wind. The flowers stand for concentration as the mind blooms. The candles stand for …
- Faith as a Virtue… As he once said, “Let someone come who is honest and observant, who is no deceiver, and I’ll teach that person the Dhamma that leads to freedom.” In this sense, conviction is a virtue. If you take it on as conviction in your own desire to be responsible and to use the power of your actions in an honorable way, you’re willing …
- Faith in the Practice… It’s even sometimes said to be a virtue: the more unreasonable the object of faith, the greater the virtue in believing in it. But faith in the Buddha’s teachings doesn’t mean that. It means very basically faith in the fact that the Buddha really was awakened. He did it through his own efforts and then he taught the Dhamma well. That …
- Happiness Comes from Inner Strength… through generosity, virtue, and fostering thoughts of universal goodwill. In each case, we find that we have to take something we have inside and develop it further. In doing so, we gain inner strength. That inner strength, that sense that we can depend on ourselves and we have something inside that we didn’t have to take from anyone else but it’s there …
- A Monk’s Wealth… Someone asked Ajaan Mun if you could separate a person’s virtue from his mind. And Ajaan Mun said, “No. If you could, someone would probably steal their virtue.” The goodness in your mind goes with you wherever you go. Of course, the bad qualities you develop in the mind go with you wherever you go, too. So ask yourself: What do you want …
- Load next page...
