Search results for: virtue
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- When You Practice on Your Own… He’d start with what’s called the “graduated discourse.” He’d start talking about generosity, acts of giving, and then virtue. Then he’d talk about heaven as a place where generosity and virtue are rewarded with sensual pleasures. If you’re listening to this teaching, and you’ve been practicing generosity and virtue, you feel good about what the Buddha is saying …
- Meaning Through Perfections… This is just one example of how discernment takes ordinary, everyday virtues and turns them into perfections. So, as you’re developing the perfections, as you’re studying the perfections—trying to give rise to them in your life—always keep asking yourself, “What does discernment have to tell me about this perfection?” That way, the virtues you develop, as you try to develop …
- A Seeker’s Habits… Once you look at your daily life and you see, “Yes, this is solid,” you see that you’re reliable, dependable, all those virtues that don’t have a lot of flashing lights, but they do provide a good foundation for the practice: Then you find it a lot easier to settle down and get good results out of the action of sitting here …
Contents
Contents Titlepage Contents Cover Copyright Introduction A Connoisseur of Happiness Virtue Contains the Practice Less is More Rehab Work Kindfulness As Days & Nights Fly Past The Wisdom of Wising Up Living Forward, Understanding Backward Awe Conviction & Confidence Concentration Work Three Levels of Evaluation Rapture Truth Your Mind is Lying to You Encouraging Perceptions Broad, Tall, & Deep Your Gyroscope Better to Give than to Consume …- Dignity in the Face of Hardship… generosity, virtue, meditation. You’ve got to train your desires to think in terms of cause and effect, and focus on the causes. As the effects seem to be falling apart, resist the temptation to clutch to them because they can pull you down. This may not be easy, but then remember the distinction that Schiller made between dignity and grace. Grace is when …
- Losses… However, if you lose your virtue and lose your right view, then you can go to a bad destination very easily. Right view here meaning belief in the power of your actions, that you really are responsible for your actions, and your actions do have an impact on you and on the world around you. That’s the basis of right view. You don …
- To Delight in the Path… generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill. Learn how to take joy in the fact that you can have goodwill for everybody, because you’re aiming at a happiness that’s not going to harm anybody, doesn’t require anybody be oppressed. You’re walking lightly in the world: Take joy in that. Then as you sit down to meditate, you can reflect on …
- A Mind Larger than the World… Actually, they came before Mahayana split off, and they really are a powerful way of understanding how Buddhism is practiced in Southeast Asian Theravada countries, because they deal with the virtues you need, the virtues you develop, as you go through daily life. Some of them are related to meditation, like renunciation, which doesn’t mean just giving up pleasures. It means giving up …
- Death Is Normal… This is going to happen, and realizing that—since we’re going to be leaving one another anyhow—we might as well take advantage of the time we have together now to do good for one another through our generosity, through our virtue, through our goodwill for one another. Because even worse than suffering a loss like this, is suffering a loss when you …
A Handbook for the Relief of Suffering
Part III: The Buddhist Way
… We should develop within ourselves all qualities that we know to be good and virtuous, maintaining the virtues we already have—this is called ārakkha-sampadā—and constantly aiming at developing the virtues we haven’t yet been able to acquire. 3. Whatever activities we may engage in, we should do so with purity of heart. We should make our hearts pure and clean …- Gaining the Dhamma Eye… When the Buddha recommends virtue, okay, we try virtue. We fit all of our actions and attitudes in line with the requirements for virtue. The precepts are promises we make to ourselves. They’re universal promises. In other words, under no circumstances will we kill. Under no circumstances will we steal and so on, down through the main precepts. In whichever areas you find …
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With Each & Every Breath
Introduction
… Concentration provides the mind with a sense of refreshment that allows it to resist unskillful urges that would create lapses in virtue, and the stability it needs to discern clearly what’s actually going on inside. Discernment provides strategies for developing virtue, along with an understanding of the mind’s workings that allow it to settle down in ever-stronger states of concentration. Virtue …Show 6 additional results in this book
- Goodwill as a Strength… And as for the damage they can do to you and people you love or the people you care for, the Buddha said that kind of damage is much less a concern than damage to your virtue and damage to your right views. Nobody can damage those except you yourself, So goodwill protects both of your virtue and your right views, remembering that we …
- The Duty to Be Positive… That’s why recollection of your generosity and recollection of your virtue are both really important parts of the path. They’re not there to make you simply feel that you’re good enough as you already are. They’re there to give you the energy you need to pick up your duties and carry on. As the Buddha said, death can come at …
- Knowing Your Intentions… the goodness of generosity, the goodness of virtue, and the goodness of meditation. The word meditation literally means to develop. You’re developing good qualities in the mind. You do this first by focusing on the breath. Take a couple of good, long, deep in- and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing. Try to stay with the sensation of the breath all …
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Lost & Found
The Line of Fire
… Take virtue, for instance. Virtue is not just a matter of following the precepts, it’s a quality of mind that’s solid in its intentions. You make up your mind that you’re going to avoid evil and then you just stick with that intention. That’s the essence of virtue. The word sila in Pali is related to the word sela, which …
- In a World of Crooked Wheels… loss in terms of relatives, loss in terms of your health, loss in terms of your wealth, loss in terms of right view, loss in terms of virtue. He says that with the first three—wealth, health, relatives—loss isn’t all that serious. It sounds heartless. How can you say that loss of your relatives is not serious? Loss of your wealth and …
- A Made Up Mind… Where there’s no virtue, you can think about things and develop virtue. In other words, you think about the value of these things, these good qualities of the mind, and then you can bring them into being and see that they really are worthwhile. This kind of independent goodness is something you want to develop as much as you can. Because if you …
- Going Out of Your Way… The first is basically a matter of virtue; the second, a matter of generosity. And it’s interesting to note that when the Buddha teaches, he brings generosity up first. When he explains mundane right view, it starts with: “There is what is given.” In other words, the times we go out of our way to be helpful to other people, generous with other …
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Come & See
Entering for the Rains
… On the lowest level, there’s generosity, virtue, and meditation. The Buddha taught these as daily practices: the lower level of virtue, the medium level of virtue, the refined level of virtue. The lower level is the five precepts. The medium level is the eight or ten precepts. The refined level is the 227 training rules for the monks. In the 227 training rules …Show 3 additional results in this book
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