Search results for: virtue
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- Negotiating with Death… This is one of the reasons why the Buddha says, in relation to your virtue, any loss in terms of your health, loss in terms of your relatives, loss in terms of your wealth, doesn’t really matter that much. But loss in terms of your virtue and your right view: That matters a lot. So virtue and right view are things you want …
- Shelter Through Restraint… You have to remind yourself that when the Buddha talks about goodwill, as one of the types of merit you make, there’s a sutta where he lists generosity, virtue, goodwill in the body of the sutta, and then at the end of the sutta there’s a little poem, and the list gets tweaked a little bit: generosity, virtue, restraint. Restraint is an …
- Timeless Practice… With virtue, it’s your intention. You intend not to harm. The third topic in the step-by-step discourse was heaven. This is where the rewards of generosity—beyond the reward of just being generous in and of itself, being virtuous in and of itself—give long-term benefits. This is where the Buddha first broaches the topic of how karma has an …
- Determination… As for the quality of truthfulness, this covers the perfections of truthfulness and virtue. Truthfulness means not just telling the truth but also sticking with something that know is really good no matter how hard it may be. The virtues of the precepts carry that principle through. You make up your mind that you’re going to avoid harmful behavior and you stick with …
- Food for Endurance… Suppose we lived in a world where there was no Dhamma, where all people could think about was gaining wealth, gaining power, with no sense of right or wrong, no sense of generosity, no sense of virtue. It’d be a hard world to live in—not the kind of world you would want to live in. But here we live in a world …
- An Auspicious Night… So why would you want to do that to other people? That’s virtue. Next on the list is generosity. How generous are you with your time, with your belongings? If you have something, do you see it as an opportunity to give it away? If you don’t have things, what non-material gifts can you give? We live together. We know that …
- Cleaning Out the Stables… He talked about generosity and virtue. These are all really great skills to develop. He talked about the rewards, particularly the rewards that come in heaven: the best place you can be reborn in. But then you realize it’s almost like it’s a fiendish trick. You work so hard at being good—being generous and virtuous, getting to a place you want …
- The World Is Swept Away… There was an incident in the life of Ajaan Mun when someone came to see him and asked him, “Can you separate a person’s virtue from that person’s heart and mind?” In other words, is it something external? Ajaan Mun said, “No. If you could separate it, then people would probably steal your virtues. But they can’t be separated.” Working on …
- Fear of the Truth… Build virtues. Build concentration. It’s interesting that of all the virtues, the Buddha makes truth the most important. Truth is not just a quality of accurate statements; it’s also a quality of the mind. In fact, if you want to find the truth, you have to develop this quality of truthfulness: the willingness to look at what’s there, admit what’s …
- Group Harmony… And then in terms of your views and in terms of your virtue, you try to be on par with everybody else. This doesn’t mean that we go for the lowest common denominator. It means that at the very least to have the five precepts that we took just now. This is why we keep repeating the five precepts every week. It’s …
- Strength in Cooperation… There’s a lot that the Buddha says about the virtues of harmony, working together. It starts with the mind and the body. You’re sitting here meditating: If the mind is one place, the body someplace else, they don’t help each other very much. When they’re together, then they can help each other. The mind can look out after the body …
- Always Timely & True… So when you hear teachings about virtue, generosity, and meditation, don’t think “over and over again.” There’s nothing really tedious about these teachings. They’re showing you the way out. The question is, when are you going to get tired of the other things that come over and over again?—greed, aversion, and delusion. The methods the Buddha discovered for curing these …
- Magha Puja… This comes down to is virtue, concentration and insight. With virtue, you avoid whatever is harmful to yourself or to other people. And the most skillful thing you can resolve on, that you can aim for, is bringing the mind to concentration, like we’re doing right now. It’s based on the resolve to bring the mind above sensual passion. This is why …
- A Sense of Well-being… This is why the Buddha teaches us to practice generosity, to observe the precepts, because the intentions that go into generosity and virtue are skillful in and of themselves and also allow us to see more and more of what’s going on, to gain an appreciation of how much our intentions do shape everything. When we’ve made a practice of generosity and …
Contents
… the Bhikkhu Saṅgha Lodgings Kaṭhina Cloth Rains Bathing Cloth Rains-residence Candle Homage Visākha Pūjā Āsāḷha Pūjā Māgha Pūjā Veneration The Buddha’s Last Words After the Pāṭimokkha Sīluddesa-pāṭha | The Virtue Summary Tāyana-gāthā | The Verse to Tāyana Anumodanā Yathā vārivahā pūrā II. Aggato ve pasannānaṁ III. Āyudo balado dhīro IV. Āyuṁ vaṇṇaṁ yasaṁ kittiṁ V. Bhuttā bhogā bhaṭā bhaccā VI. Dānañ-ca …- Honest & Observant… The same with virtue: You follow the precepts and reflect on what it means to follow the precepts. This quality of being reflective: That’s where you’re going to learn. When you’re being generous, watch the mind to see what its motivation is, to see the parts of the mind that would argue against being generous, that would want to hold on …
- Long-term Consequences… We find that when we do that, it involves generosity, virtue, and meditation. These are the things that provide a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody in any way at all. That’s the kind of happiness that can last. We learn this from others and then we carry it on so that we can be a good example to still more other people …
- Bow Down to Your Desire for Happiness… Remember that meditation is one of the ways of doing it, along with virtue and generosity. These practices are how we find happiness within. It doesn’t come from getting, it comes from giving. And then the what you get that comes from what you give has a lot more solid value than things that just come floating your way. So bow down to …
- A Sense of Yourself… One is conviction; the others are virtue, learning, generosity, discernment, and quick-wittedness. These are all skills you can develop. You want to have a sense of where you are, where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are in these areas, so that you can use your strengths to make up for your weaknesses. So: How’s your conviction? Are you really convinced that …
- A Friend When You’re on Your Own… The teachings on generosity, teachings on virtue, teachings on goodwill and basic merit making are really important for what you’re doing as you meditate. They teach you how the life you live is shaped by your actions, how an attitude of giving is what gets you started on good things, and how the desire for happiness is something you really want to respect …
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