Search results for: virtue

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. The Joy of Renunciation
     … That covers generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill. Under the heading of virtue, you’ve got not only the five precepts, but also the eight, the ten, the 227 precepts that the monks observe. When you compare the five to the eight, you see that the eight basically add the principle of sense restraint to the five. The precept against no eating after … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. Learning How to Talk to Yourself
     … It’s one of the reasons why we begin the meditation with thoughts of goodwill, and why the whole practice is bracketed in the practice of generosity and the practice of virtue. To do those things, you have to learn how to talk to yourself well. Talk to yourself in a way that gives you encouragement that “Yes, generosity is a good thing. Virtue … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. An Old School Inner Teacher
     … And, as he said, there’s a sense in which having admirable friends and admirable friendship is the whole of the practice—in other words, good people who know about the path, who embody the qualities of conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment. And then we try to imitate their qualities. So it’s not just a matter of having admirable friends. You have to make … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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