Search results for: virtue
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- Inner Wealth… The second treasure is virtue: When you think about the power of your actions, it stands to reason that you’d want to act in ways that are skillful, in ways that don’t cause any harm. That’s what the precepts are all about: You abstain from actions that are harmful, both to yourself and to other people. Some of us tend to …
- Wealth Management… Then there’s virtue: ghe ability to step back from anything that you know would be harmful to yourself or to other people and just say No. You don’t want to do that. But it’s not just a matter of saying No, though. There are lots of things you want to say Yes to. This is where the remaining qualities come in …
- Noble Treasures… So these four qualities of conviction, virtue, shame, and compunction all go together and they should strengthen one another. These are real treasures because they keep you from doing things that you’ll later regret. I remember hearing over the radio one time, a Vietnam vet, fifty-some years after the war, remembering a young Vietnamese girl that he killed during the war. As …
- The Buddha’s Letter… You have to be very careful about trying to protect what the Buddha identifies as virtue and as right view. If they can change your views to the point where you think that doing unskillful things is going to be fine or actually praiseworthy, then they’re really doing you a lot of damage. And what do they use to get you to do …
- Can DoThere’s a passage in the Canon that says, “Concentration nurtured by virtue leads to discernment. Discernment nurtured by concentration leads to release.” When we hear that, we should keep it in mind, because when we come to the practice, we’re coming out of ignorance. We’re going to be doing things that, in many cases, we’ve never done before. And yet …
- Treasure Island… Based on your shame and compunction, there’s the treasure of virtue. You decide to abstain from anything that’s harmful. You remember that the virtues of the precepts are also positive. In addition to not killing, you’re gentle and kind with living beings. In addition to not stealing, you help people protect their possessions. The same with not engaging in illicit sex …
- Firm in Your Intent… The really serious loss, though, he says, is when you lose your virtue or you lose your right view. Right view, of course, starts with conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, and then goes on to discernment: seeing things in terms of the four noble truths and carrying through with the duties appropriate to them. Notice that the discernment is not just seeing things …
- Obsessive Thinking… what he called training in heightened virtue; training in heightened mind, which means concentration; and training in heightened discernment. When you hear that list, it sounds as if you have to perfect your virtue first before you go to concentration; then you perfect your concentration before you can develop discernment. But in practice, that’s not how it happens. All three have to help …
- Near to the Buddha… The serious losses are when you lose your right views and when you lose your virtue. With things outside the mind, when you lose them, you can get them back. But if you lose your virtue, you lose your right views, you can do a lot of damage before you get them back. What does it mean to lose right view? You decide that …
- Restraint… He also taught virtue and he taught sense restraint. Virtue is basically the precepts we took just now: No killing. No stealing. No illicit sex. No lying. No taking intoxicants. You know these activities are going to cause trouble, both for yourself and for other people around you, so why engage in them? Think about the long-term harm that can be done when …
- Respect for the Triple Training… There’s virtue, concentration, and discernment, and we should realize that these things are above us. These are the kinds of things we submit to. I know that in Buddhist circles people don’t like the word “submit.” We’re free to choose, right? Well, we are free to choose, but we’re free to make a mess of our lives and we’re …
- Kind & Happy… The same with virtue, another one of the basic teachings: You realize that there are certain things that, when you do them, will harm other people. When you begin to have a sense of well-being, why would you want to harm anybody else? Killing, stealing, lying, illicit sex, taking intoxicants: These actions are harmful. People engage in them usually because they have no …
- The Taste Is Release… So we go back and work on our virtue so that our concentration will have great fruit and great benefit. The Buddha is not saying that you can’t get the mind concentrated without virtue, but the kind of concentration you get would be pretty dishonest. It’d be built on disassociation, denial. When you sit down and get quiet with the mind, memories …
- Greed for Outer & Inner Wealth… These are the qualities that underlie virtue, which is the fourth treasure. These four create a set: conviction, shame, compunction, virtue. They protect you from doing things that you would later regret, and that’s something really valuable. Years back, I heard a radio broadcast in which a veteran from Vietnam was talking about how he had very casually killed a young Vietnamese girl …
- Goodness… The Buddha talks about virtue as being a gift, in which you give safety to others. At the same time, you give a good example. The world needs good examples, because the media, which seem to be taking over everybody’s awareness of reality, trade in some pretty bad examples. Those are the ones that are easiest to find, say, on the Net. They …
- Sobering Up… As for qualities that would help, things like mindfulness, alertness—or as yesterday’s teaching to the new monks stressed again, and again, and again: virtue, concentration, and discernment—these are the things that will help you. Virtue is what keeps you honest. You take on a precept like no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no taking of intoxicants, and then …
- How to Motivate Yourself… generosity, virtue, development of goodwill for all beings. In which spots are you still lacking? Are there areas where you could be generous that you haven’t been in the past? This doesn’t mean you have to be generous only with material things. You can be generous with your time, generous with your forgiveness, generous with your knowledge, with your strength. In other …
- A Path of Aggregates… He would often prepare people by having them think about generosity, virtue, the rewards of virtue and generosity that can be found in heaven. But then the drawbacks: Even heavenly sensual pleasures have their drawbacks. Some of them can be quite severe. The Canon says that very few devas return to the human world after they pass away from the deva realm. Many of …
The Noble Eightfold Path: 13 Meditation Talks
An Overview of the Path
… For him, the prime virtue is the virtue of truthfulness. If you can’t admit to yourself that the things you say or do are causing harm, or the way you gain your livelihood is causing harm, there are going to be huge blind spots in your mind. So these factors of the path force the quality of honesty on you. If you want …Show one additional result in this book- The Management of Suffering… We usually hear about virtue in terms of the five precepts, but it’s also expressed in qualities of the heart, qualities of the character—things like contentment, the willingness to go out of your way to be helpful to other people, the willingness not to be burdensome. Those are all parts of virtue as well. The third quality you look for in an …
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