Search results for: virtue
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- Spiritual Materialism… Whereas the wealth that you build inside in terms of your conviction, your healthy sense of shame and compunction, your virtue, your generosity, your learning, your discernment: These are things that fires and floods can’t touch; nobody else can harm; nobody else can take away. It’s the kind of wealth that’s safe. And it’s going to be safe for you …
- Asalha Puja… The incense stands for virtue. As the Buddha said, the sweet smell of virtue, unlike the smell of incense, can go against the wind. In other words, a virtuous person is respected in all directions. Concentration is like the flowers. The flowers bloom. Discernment is like the candles: It gives light. And you notice we started out with just one or two candles out …
- Treasures Beyond Death… But the treasures of virtue, compunction, and shame can prevent you from doing those things to begin with. So they can do something for you that money can’t do at all. When you have virtues that you hold to regardless, they’re a very strong treasure. You’re giving universal protection to everybody else, in that you’re not going to harm them …
- Goodness in a Crazy World… they know a lot of things that we don’t know. But we can take their knowledge and make it our knowledge as we try to develop their qualities within us: virtue, concentration, discernment. These are things we have to work on. So take the good from the world and then as you create goodness inside, you’ll be giving a lot of good …
- The World Offers No Shelter… generosity, virtue, developing goodwill. Even though these things are not permanent, they can take you to a place that does not get swept away. In the meantime, they provide you with a certain amount of stability—stability that the world outside cannot provide. Not only the world outside, even your own body can’t provide that stability. Just like the world, your body is …
- Against the Stream… Conviction in the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, and also virtues that are pleasing to the noble ones. You don’t lie; you don’t steal; you don’t have illicit sex; you don’t kill; you don’t take intoxicants. You stick to these precepts to show that you really do have faith in the Buddha’s teachings about karma. As you stick …
- Mature Strategies… His teachings on generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill — all the things that come under the category of merit — are skillful ways of employing your strategy of self. Basically, he has you take your sense of self, your sense of a continuing identity not only in this lifetime but also even into other lifetimes, and shows how to work with it intelligently so …Show 6 additional results in this book
- Seeds of Gladness… So you develop skillful actions by being generous, by being virtuous—making the sacrifices that have to come with generosity and virtue and gaining a sense of self-worth that comes from that, a sense of your own honorableness. That can provide the sense of well-being. In other words, you look for well-being in the skillfulness of your own actions. You take …
- Gratitude… You have the virtue of generosity. Two, when you receive a gift, when you receive someone else’s kindness, then gratitude is an appropriate response. If we lived in a world where people didn’t have freedom of choice, everything would be like a machine. There’d be no need to have gratitude for a machine, because the machine wasn’t making any merit …
- Into the Cave with the Tiger… Because if you look at the kind of conversation that’s going on in the mind before you try to settle down, and it’s a nice conversation—thoughts of generosity, thoughts of virtue—then it feels good to settle down, easy to settle down with a sense of well-being. This may be one of the reasons why when Ajaan Suwat was teaching …
Purity of Heart
Getting the Message
… There’s no evil for those who don’t do it.—Dhp 124 This is why the Buddha listed virtue as one of a person’s greatest treasures. Kings and thieves can steal your material belongings and even take your life, but they can’t take your virtue. If it’s uncompromising, your virtue protects you from any true danger from now until you …Show 5 additional results in this book- Karma Storms… And remember that patience is a virtue, endurance is a virtue. Our society doesn’t encourage much of it. We want things to go well right now, but sometimes there are obstacles. And as in the case with any obstacle, there are those that are quickly resolved. You can see what the problem is, you can get around it. Others take a lot of …
- In the Mood to Meditate… As the Buddha said, you can reflect on your virtue, you can reflect on your generosity. You may say, “My virtue isn’t all that great.” Well, think about the times when you did do something virtuous when you didn’t have to, or the times you were generous and you didn’t have to be. Those thoughts can gladden the mind. Of course …
- Balanced Meditation… Recollection of relinquishment, recollection of virtue. The qualities that make people into devas—that’s a recollection. Recollection of death. Mindfulness immersed in the body. Mindfulness of breathing. And the recollection of the peace of nibbana. These are good topics to know for when you’ve got specific problems coming up. In other words, when you’re discouraged in the practice, it depends on …
- Continuous Attention… It’s in the course of making decisions in your life as you practice virtue, as you practice concentration that you want to see what sorts of things are skillful and what sorts of things are not. That kind of knowledge is penetrative. So we’re active in our engagement of the world and we have to learn how to be more skillful in …
- Integrity — In Memory of Luang Loong… In Luang Loong’s case, one of his outstanding virtues was his integrity. Years back, when he was a young monk—and he has always had this character of being very plainspoken—there were a couple of senior monks who took offense at that. One of them happened to be the meal assigner at Wat Makut, who decided to cut Luang Loong off from …
- Paying Off Your Debts… Then there’s virtue, when you avoid harmful actions. That, too, is a form of wealth. It’s interesting: The Buddha says that when you’re following the precepts, you’re looking after your own good, your own well-being. When you get other people to observe the precepts, that’s when you’re working for their well-being, because basically you’re inspiring …
- Preparing for Death… As we practice virtue, we avoid cruel behavior, the kind of thing that might deserve punishment someplace. We look back on our actions and can see that there’s nothing with which we can criticize ourselves. That sense of confidence is going to be important as we approach death. As you’re leaving the body and the human realm, the practice of concentration is …
- Four Mountains Moving In… So the Buddha asked him, “When Sariputta died, did he take virtue with him?” “No.” “Did he take concentration?” “No.” Discernment?” “No.” “Release?” “No.” All the good things in life are there. The good potentials in life are always here. So even where there’s loss and danger, there are still good things we can do. And it’s important that we stay focused …
- Not Getting What You Want… The path comes down to training in heightened virtue, heightened concentration, heightened discernment. Which aspect are you missing? In which aspect are you weak? Virtue is there to make you honest and more sensitive to your mind as you go through the day. We talk about being mindful of mind states, as if it were happening as something in the abstract that you just …
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