Search results for: virtue
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- The Precepts… You reflect on your own virtue, your own generosity, your own good qualities. These are reflections on the past that you bring into the present to put the mind in good shape. You take your ability to think, your ability to form thoughts, and you put it to good use. It’s not that you’re just supposed to snuff out thoughts of past …
- Mission Possible… The Buddha recommends that you either reflect on the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, the examples they give, or on your own generosity, your own virtue, remembering that you do have some good to you. Or you can reflect on the fact that you’re here, you’ve got this opportunity, which means you’ve got the merit someplace that allows you to …
- The Power of the Mind… heightened virtue, heightened mind, heightened discernment. Okay, which part of that training is not yet heightened in you? Does your virtue need to be heightened? Does your concentration? Your discernment? What’s lacking? You’ve got three months to settle down, living in a community of other people who are also practicing. What do you want to make out of this time? Choose wisely …
- Attention to Your Potentials… In terms of mindfulness, the sustaining qualities are what he calls purified virtue and views made straight. In other words, you straighten out your views in terms of what’s skillful, what’s not, and then you make sure that your virtue is pure. If there are blemishes in your virtue—in other words, where you’ve harmed somebody or harmed yourself, and you …
- Medicine for the Mind… But if you gain in generosity, gain in virtue, gain in the sense of well-being that comes as you train the mind, nobody loses at all. Everybody gains. So this a kind of search for happiness that leads to unity, leads to harmony, unlike the happiness that leads to divisions, as we see so much around us right now. So you have to …
- Cooking the Present Moment… How’s your virtue? How’s your discernment? Are you able to not be overcome by pleasure? Are you able not to be overcome by pain? Your attitudes to the world: Are they in line with the brahmaviharas? If you’ve got all that going, then when bad stuff comes in from the past and you’re a good cook, you know how to …
- Right Fear… But you maintain your virtue. You stick with the training. You’re loyal to the vision of what the Buddha pointed out as a really honorable life, a really worthwhile life. This is why the precepts are such an important part of the practice. There are times when they force you to make choices, force you to divest yourself of certain attachments. When you …
- How to Learn from Your Mistakes… This is why being truthful is the primary virtue. You do something, you own up to it, because then you can learn from it. If you hide your actions from other people, you start hiding them from yourself. That way you never get to learn. So the Buddha’s instructions on this point are really basic but they go all the way through the …
- Hold on to Right View… You can lose your relatives, you can lose wealth, you can lose your health, you can lose your virtue, you can lose your right view. Of those, three are not really serious—losing your wealth, losing your relatives, losing your health—because that kind of loss doesn’t necessarily take you to a bad place. When you lose those things, you can get them …
- True Protection for the World… How can you not sit here and train your mind given all the bad examples out there in the world, all the dangers out there in the world? Where else are you going to find the strength to maintain your virtue, to keep your goodness alive? The nourishment that keeps your goodness alive has to come from within. Your goodness is something that has …
- Harmony Inside & Out… As the Buddha said, sila means not only virtue but it also normalcy. You want this to be your normal state of mind. When you’re not following this, it’s abnormal. Of course, we look at the world around us and it’s full of abnormalities of this sort. You wonder whose normal we’re talking about. Let’s talk about the Buddha …
- Why Now… These three qualities that go into the practice of meditation are based on the practice of generosity and virtue. With generosity, you’re mindful of the needs of others. You’re alert to an opportunity to help. And you make the effort. With virtue, you’ve got to keep the precept in mind. You’re alert to whether your behavior is in line with …
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… Several of the samaṇa, or contemplative, movements of the Buddha’s time countered the brahmans’ claims by asserting that there was no virtue in giving at all. Their arguments fell into two camps. One camp claimed that giving carried no virtue because there was no afterlife. A person was nothing more than physical elements that, at death, returned to their respective spheres. That was …Show 5 additional results in this book- The Buddha’s Dream… But the real difficulty is in learning how not to be soiled by the rewards of generosity and virtue. That’s why we meditate and get the mind under control, so that whenever bad things come our way, we can turn them into something good. Whatever good things may come our way, we can prevent them from turning into something bad. That’s the …
- Forest Bathing… Those instructions come down basically to virtue, concentration, discernment, all based on a principle of generosity. So, stop for a while and think about what that means. Happiness is found through generosity and then perfected through virtue, concentration, and discernment. This is why we meditate. This is how we escape danger. A forest is a good place to do this because as you let …
- Values of the Noble Ones… generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity. Those are all good things to develop. You simply have to figure out which ones are appropriate right here and now. If the list of ten is too long, just think, “How about goodwill?” Goodwill is not just a pink-cotton-candy attitude you spread out with cloud machines. It’s basically thinking, “What …
- The Focus on Suffering… One is virtue, you actually observe the precepts. Look at the way you act; look at the way you speak. Try to be more and more skillful at those things. That fosters right view. Listen and learn, read. That’s another factor. Discuss what you’ve learned to make sure your understanding’s right. And then there are the two factors of tranquility and …
- Anger… Think about their virtues, think about their generosity, think about their good side so that your response isn’t one-sided. That’s the problem with anger: It looks at things from one side. It’s like a one-eyed beast. It has no perspective. When you bring in two eyes, you can look at the good side and the bad side of the …
- Timeless Practice… Or, in the case of Thailand early in the 20th century, it was excuse for the government to get monks to get involved in starting an educational system, to do things besides their basic practice of virtue, concentration, and discernment, leading to release. But those excuses have no force if you don’t want them to have any force. It’s up to you …
- Look After Yourself with Ease… All the skills of the path—generosity, virtue, meditation—are there for you to learn how to become more independent in looking after yourself, more capable of looking after yourself even in difficulties, so that you don’t have to be a burden on others. And your happiness doesn’t have to depend on conditions being just so. There’s a passage in the …
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