Search results for: virtue
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The Dhamma Eye : Text & Context
… In the words of the Canon, your virtues are now pleasing to the noble ones: unbroken, untorn, and conducive to concentration. The noble ones are also pleased because your virtues are not grasped at and you yourself are not made of virtue, meaning that you don’t take hold of your virtues to create a sense of conceit or self around them. You embody …
Selves & Not-self
A Healthy Sense of Self
… generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill. Each of these practices fosters a healthy sense of self. When the Buddha teaches generosity, he emphasizes the fact that you’re free to give. In fact when a king once asked him, “Who should I give things to?” the king expected that the Buddha would say, “Give to me and my disciples.” Instead the Buddha said …Show 5 additional results in this book-
On the Path
The Stream to Unbinding
… Being heedful, he achieves consummation in virtue. He is gratified with that consummation in virtue, but his resolve is not fulfilled. Because of that consummation in virtue he does not exalt himself or disparage others. He is not intoxicated with that consummation in virtue, not heedless about it, and does not fall into heedlessness. Being heedful, he achieves consummation in concentration. He is gratified …Show 10 additional results in this book
- The Meaning of Happiness… generosity, virtue, and meditation. And those three activities cover pretty much all the goodness in the world. The acts that give meaning to our lives come under these three headings. Generosity means not only giving material things, but also giving your time, giving your energy, giving forgiveness, giving help in all kinds of ways. It’s in the act of giving that a lot …Show 7 additional results in this book
- Appreciating MeritThere’s that chant we have at the end of every chanting session: “Through the power of all the Buddhas, all the Dhamma, all the Sangha, may you forever be well.” What is that power? Where does it come from? The Buddha gained his power from his generosity, his virtue, and his meditation, developing concentration, developing discernment all the way to nibbana. As did …
- Friends Inside… People who have virtue: They try not to harm others, they try not to harm themselves. That’s a good example for you. And then those who have wisdom and discernment: In other words, they understand what’s important in life and what’s not, what has long-term value and what has only short-term value. If you hang around with friends like …
- The Noble Eightfold Path to the Deathless… Then there’s loss of right view and loss of virtue: Those are major. That’s an area where the stream enterer is secure. He or she will never lose right view and virtue, which is why the stream enterer’s rebirths from that point on never fall below the human. But for those of us who haven’t fully reached the stream, for …
- Clearing a Space… You’d start out with virtue, and when your virtue is perfected you could focus on concentration, and then when concentration is perfected you could focus on discernment. It would all be very nice and systematic. The problem is that the mind is not systematic. It’s chaotic. Now, we all know that chaos has its patterns, but the patterns are very complex. That …
- Refuge… You’ve got to keep in mind that the establishing of mindfulness is based on, as the Buddha said, right view and strong virtue. This is why we take the precepts every week: to remind you that virtue is your foundation. When you focus on the mind, you want the mind to be honest, you want the mind to be sincere, you want it …
- Skillful Goodwill… generosity, virtue, and meditation. And even with all three of those, you have to be very careful. It is possible sometimes to be generous in a way that harms yourself or harms others. There are ways of observing the precepts that can be harmful if you’re not careful. And there are ways of going off-track with the meditation, so you have to …
- Happily on the Path… This is one of the reasons why the practice begins with generosity and virtue. When the Buddha would explain the four noble truths to lay people, he wouldn’t jump right into the four truths. He’d start out with what was called a graduated discourse, or step-by-step discourse, and the first two topics in that discourse were generosity and virtue. Notice …
- For the Survival of True Happiness… There’s loss of health, loss of wealth, loss of your relatives, loss of virtue, and loss of right view. As he points out, your happiness can survive perfectly well even when you lose your health, lose your wealth, or lose your relatives. But your hopes for true happiness will not survive if you lose your virtue or your right view. So those are …
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Into the Stream
Stream Entry & its Results
… Which three? The training in heightened virtue, the training in heightened mind, the training in heightened discernment. These are the three trainings under which all that is gathered. “There is the case where a monk is wholly accomplished in virtue, moderately accomplished in concentration, and moderately accomplished in discernment. With reference to the lesser and minor training rules, he falls into offenses and rehabilitates …Show one additional result in this book
- A Clean Life… He saw that the virtue of generosity was much more valuable than the things that people could amass. So he was very generous. He lived a very clean life. When we commemorate someone who’s lived like that, we want to turn around and look at ourselves. Is our life clean? In what ways are we holding on to things that we shouldn’t …
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Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha
Lessons for Aging
… There’s a passage in the Canon saying that virtue makes you beautiful even when you’re old. The Buddha also says that virtue is one of your most valuable possessions. Loss of virtue is more serious than losing your wealth, losing your health, or even losing your relatives. Now, there’s a challenge in observing these precepts. On the one hand, the ideal …Show 9 additional results in this book
- Good Fences All Around You… You want this fence to be all around you—in terms of your virtue, your concentration, your discernment. The fence of virtue is really important. As Ajaan MahaBoowa says, “Anything in your mind that would have you break any of the precepts, you have to recognize as a defilement. In fact, anything that goes against the Dhamma: Recognize that as a defilement.”** **A good …
- Direct Your Life… the path of generosity, virtue, and meditation.” It’s up to you to decide whether you want to follow his directions. If you do, then he’s got a lot to tell you: about how to think about generosity, how to think about virtue, how to practice the meditation so that you get the most out of it. So you look to his directions …
- Thinking Your Way to Stillness… recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, virtue, generosity, and devas. He said to keep these things in mind while you’re living at home with your children and you’ll find that it will lead the mind to a sense of well-being, a sense of confidence, and from that sense of confidence the mind will eventually get concentrated. So these are …
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Fistful of Sand & The Light of Discernment
Blatantly Clear in the Heart
… Come to see clearly what sufferings virtue can drive out of the heart, what obstacles to happiness and peace it can drive out of the heart — to see what sorts of benefits it can bring. Ask yourself: if you didn’t observe this or that precept, what would appear in your physical or verbal actions? A life composed of those actions: in what direction …Show 5 additional results in this book
- Like an Athlete in Training… Train your grandchildren to realize that virtue is what’s important in life. Of course, that’s true not only for grandchildren. It’s true for all of us. We want to behave in an honorable way, and so look at the opportunities for honorable action that come your way. Ask yourself, when you’re faced with a decision: What’s the honorable choice …
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