Search results for: virtue
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The Skill of Release
The Treasures of the Dhamma
… When you abstain from evil in your words and deeds, they turn into the noble treasure of virtue. When this is the case, your treasures are within you. You haven’t deposited them with anyone else. Your generosity lies within you, your virtue—the virtue of restraint of the senses—lies in your eyes, your ears, your mouth. When your treasures are with you …Show 6 additional results in this book- Your Goodness is Your Protection… And how do you keep yourself protected in a case like that? Through your virtue and generosity and your goodwill. The qualities that the Buddha calls treasures: your sense of conviction in the principle of kamma, your virtue, your compunction, your sense of shame, your knowledge of the Dhamma, your generosity, your discernment. These things are your protection. So we work on developing these …
- Attention to Intention… But with the happiness that comes from meditation, as with the happiness that comes from generosity and virtue, nobody loses. Everybody gains. So here you are, with a happiness that spreads its happiness around. It’s not just confined to you or a few people around you. It spreads its influence out into the world at large. This is something really worth sticking with …
- Indecision… Then he would move on to virtue. In some cases, he would explain virtue also as a gift. You’re giving a gift of universal safety when you observe the five precepts without exception. In other words, you don’t say, “Well, I’ll avoid killing in some cases, but there are other things I want to kill or cases where I think killing …
- Directly & Indirectly to the Breath… Three other topics the Buddha recommends are recollection of generosity, recollection of virtue, and recollection of the devas. In terms of the generosity and virtue, you think about times when you have been generous and have been virtuous, i.e., times you gave something not because you had to, or because it was the custom or because it was expected but simply because you …
- Survival Dhamma… But he did say that concentration bears great fruit if it’s fostered with virtue; wisdom bears great fruit if it’s fostered with concentration. Again, it is possible to have wisdom or discernment without strong concentration, but that sort of wisdom is very, very shallow. It doesn’t really dig down deep into the mind. It can be very easily erased—and very …
- Generosity & Gratitude… There’s no special virtue there. You don’t owe them any real debt, either because they were just material things or because what they did was totally predetermined. They had no choice in the matter. So when the Buddha was saying there is mother and father, he was saying that you’re not just the physical body, and your parents aren’t just …
- The Purpose of Empathetic Joy… He starts with generosity, giving, virtue, the virtue of restraint; and then the rewards of giving and virtue: the various heavenly realms that you can enjoy. That’s bright kamma. But then he talks about the drawbacks of sensuality. He calls them not only drawbacks, but also the degradation that sensuality involves. Here you are, just eating up the results of your old actions …
- Boosting Your Morale… You can think about the generosity you’ve practiced in the past, the virtue you’ve practiced in the past. And that gives you the energy you need to go back and do battle with your defilements. The defilements that tell you that “You’re a bad meditator.” The defilements that tell you, “You have no hope.” You can tell yourself, “Well, I do …
- Not-self… They slip through your fingers, and losing them doesn’t consign you to hell—whereas loss of right view or loss of virtue, would. So you regard the first three kinds of loss as not-self, but you hold on to the right view and virtue, which are parts of the path. The same when you’re practicing concentration: anything that would pull you …
- Your Committee of Addicts… It’s important to understand that when the Buddha extols shame as a virtue, he’s talking about the shame that’s the opposite of shamelessness. He’s not talking about the shame that’s the opposite of pride, because he does teach you take a certain amount of pride in doing well in the practice. When he talks about the virtue of shame …
- For What It’s Worth… It’s based on acts of generosity, acts of virtue. When you train the mind to be generous and virtuous, it’s a lot easier to watch. If you’ve been dishonest about things, lazy about things, harmful in your behavior, it’s very easy to put up walls of denial. And when you’ve got walls of denial, how are you going to …
- The Buddha’s Wisdom… You get more and more sensitive to the ways in which you do cause harm—some of which are expressed in the precepts, and others which are not, but they become part of your virtue. After all, virtue is expressed not only in precepts, but also in principles like contentment, modesty, restraint: ways in which you can look at your impact on the world …
- Appropriate Attention Always… The serious ones are loss of right view and loss of your virtue. The ones that are not serious are the kinds of things that the world takes seriously, like loss of wealth, loss of health, loss of your relatives. The Buddha said that those are minor. You lose those things, you get them back—if not in this lifetime, then in another lifetime …
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Right Mindfulness
The Lessons of Fabrication
… And what is the basis of skillful qualities? Well-purified virtue & views made straight. Then, when your virtue is well-purified and your views made straight, in dependence on virtue, established in virtue, you should develop the four establishings of mindfulness.… Then, when in dependence on virtue, established in virtue, you develop these four establishings of mindfulness, you will go beyond the realm of …Show 3 additional results in this book
- Taking Stock… You’ve got the potential for virtue, concentration, discernment. It’s simply a question of learning to develop these potentials. Of course, you’ll find, as you look in your mind, there are a lot of other potentials as well, a lot of less skillful potentials. You’ve probably had some practice in developing those, too. But it’s important that you realize you …
- Helping Yourself by Helping Others… So when you find yourself getting irritated by one another, remember that endurance is a virtue, and it helps you see clearly where something might be positively changed. All too often we think of patience or endurance as a weakness—it’s the virtue of people who have to put up with things because they can’t do anything else. But that’s not …
- Turtle Mind… The discourse starts with giving, and then goes to virtue. Virtue, too, is a form of giving. As the Buddha says, you give safety to others. When you develop the brahmaviharas in your search for merit, again, you’re radiating. You’re not taking in. Ultimately, of course, when you get into meditation and your mind gets still enough so that you can gain …
- The Range of Our Responsibility… She went to see her teacher, and the teacher said, “Reflect back on your virtue; reflect on your generosity.” His meaning was for her to remind herself that she did have virtue and she had been generous. But she started thinking, “Well, the fact that my meditation isn’t going well is a sign that I haven’t been virtuous and I haven’t …
- Cleanliness is Next to Mindfulness… The title of the talk is “Reflection on Virtue,” or “Recollection of Virtue,” but a good two-thirds of the talk is about being clean. That’s an important part of virtue. In other words, while you’re living here, don’t think that the day-to-day facts of eating or having a place to sleep are minor matters to hurry through so …Show 9 additional results in this book
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