Search results for: virtue

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  2. Freedom & Security
     … All these things together—virtue, shame, and compunction—are a form of wealth in that they protect you from having to look back on unskillful actions, the sense of remorse and regret that can come when you realize you’ve done something really, really harmful, really, really stupid. Those actions, once they’ve been done, can’t be taken back. No matter how much … 
  3. The Pleasure of Goodness
     … But when you’re finding happiness through generosity, through virtue, and especially through meditation, you’re not creating any divisions at all. In fact, your goodness spreads your happiness around and erases boundaries. So we should work as much as we can at developing these kinds of goodness. Especially with meditation, because meditation is the most direct form of developing merit and is also … 
  4. Endurance & Contentment
    Endurance and contentment are virtues that Westerners are notoriously bad about and lacking in. The ajaans in Thailand noticed, when they had Western students, that these were their weak points. Westerners had trouble enduring hardships, enduring restrictions. They were always finding something wrong with the situation and making themselves thoroughly miserable. So these are two virtues that we have to work on. And a … 
  5. Merit Radiates Out
     … This applies to the generosity and the virtue and the meditation: They’re all good things to do. And they spreads the happiness around. When you’re meditating, the less greed, aversion, and delusion you can allow in your mind, then the less other people around have to suffer from them. It’s easier for you to observe the precepts, it’s easier for … 
  6. Page search result icon Honest to Goodness
     … The second quality is virtue. You want to look for someone who sticks to the precepts and encourages other people to stick to them, too. This second quality follows naturally on the first, because anyone who really believes in the power of action wouldn’t want to harm any being at all. This means no killing, stealing, illicit sex, lying, or taking intoxicants. In … 
  7. Appreciation
     … He said it was because people here in the West come to meditation mainly without having gone through the training in generosity and the training in virtue that Buddhism gives. Or at least, they hadn’t found the joy in being generous and virtuous. This is partly because the training in generosity and virtue we receove here is that generosity is forced on you … 
  8. Possessiveness
     … And even before the noble eightfold path, there’s the teaching of the graduated discourse, where the Buddha teaches developing qualities of generosity, virtue, reflecting on the rewards of virtue and generosity, realizing that the sensual rewards that come from those activities are going to end and they entail a lot of drawbacks and what the Buddha says is even degradation. So you realize … 
  9. Sources of Lasting Happiness
     … The second is virtue. And the third is developing the mind—by which he meant developing good qualities in the mind, qualities like goodwill, mindfulness, concentration, discernment, alertness: qualities that help you act in skillful ways because they enable you to see what’s actually going on. They can help you see what you’re doing and see the results of what you’re … 
  10. Squeezing Goodness Out of the Aggregates
     … where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are in terms of learning, virtue, generosity, conviction, discernment, and particularly your ingenuity. So you try to develop these things. Try to get a sense of what you’ve got here in terms of these aggregates, and what you can do with them. Like the aggregate of form: What can you do with the different elements or … 
  11. Mental Balance
     … All the good things the Buddha has us practice—generosity, virtue, cultivating the sublime attitudes, getting the mind into good state of concentration, developing insight, gaining release: The primary focus is on what they do for your mind, but in each case, you’re not only helping yourself. The people around you benefit as well. With generosity, the dual benefit is obvious. One the … 
  12. Wealth Worth Holding Onto
     … So as we’re developing virtue, concentration, and discernment, remember that these are your valuables. Because the things of the world come and go. People, relationships, come and go. There was a novel I read one time called The Good Soldier. It’s narrated by one of the characters who’s a very slippery fellow. And one of the dominant images throughout the book … 
  13. The Bottom Line
     … the needs of others, more attentive to the needs of others, realizing that your happiness spreads around and is not diminished when you’re being generous. In fact, it grows more. Virtue is to remind you that you have to keep the mind under control. There are certain things you may want to do but will be harmful, so you have to tell yourself … 
  14. The Culture of the Practice
     … The four qualities the Buddha pointed out—and these apply not only to monks and nuns, but also to lay people—were (1) conviction, (2) virtue, (3) generosity, and (4) discernment. These are the qualities that create the culture of awakening, the culture of the practice. There has been a tendency in Buddhist circles, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, to reduce everything … 
  15. Admirable Friendship
     … conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment. You look at his conviction. He was convinced that there was a way out of suffering. And he tried many different ways, and he never gave up. So it’s good to have that kind of conviction, too. When you run into obstacles on the path, realize there have been people on the path here before you, and they’ve … 
  16. Understanding Happiness
     … So the mind gains a greater sense of spaciousness by cultivating the virtue of generosity. Then there’s the virtue of the precepts. This, too, is a kind of a gift. The Buddha says that if you make up your mind not to kill anybody at all, not to steal anything from anybody at all, not to engage in illicit sex with anybody at … 
  17. A Slave to Craving
     … You start with generosity, move up to virtue, and develop goodwill. That’s how you begin meditating: meditating on goodwill. All of these things teach you important lessons that you can then bring properly to the meditation. The lesson of generosity, or of giving, is that giving does have its rewards, but to gain those rewards, you have to give first. Generosity also teaches … 
  18. Self-Control
     … That’s the Buddha’s gift to us, showing us the skill of learning how to treasure our virtue, our concentration, our discernment, as our most important possessions—how to protect our intentions to make sure that they’re not simply pushed around by negative things outside. You look around at the world and it’s hardly ideal at all. We’re living in … 
  19. A Gift of Well-Being
     … It’s the same with virtue. When you abstain from unskillful behavior, it’s a gift. You can make the promise to yourself and keep it that you’re not going to harm anybody in any situation regardless: no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no taking of intoxicants. You can hold to that promise. You don’t keep making excuses to … 
  20. Character
     … You can think of your duties as an opportunity to develop your endurance, to develop your truthfulness, your determination, your persistence, all the Capricorn virtues, along with your goodwill. There are times when you have to do something because someone else needs your help, and here’s a way of proving whether you really have goodwill for other people. So it’s good to … 
  21. Make the Most of Your Life
     … both for the sake of the person who’s passed away to dedicate the merit to him—the merit of our generosity, the merit of our virtue, the merit of our meditation—and also to remind ourselves that we’re all in the same boat. There will come a time when somebody else is doing this for us. In the meantime, you want to … 
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