Search results for: virtue
- Page 33
- Making Progress… You have the treasure of your virtue, you have the treasure of having conducted yourself well with other people in areas outside of the precepts. You have your livelihood: Is your livelihood a good livelihood? And then finally there are your views: Are your views right? If your views are wrong, they can send you off in all sorts of directions. So you want …
- The Wear & Tear of Life… generosity, virtue, and meditation. These are ways of looking for happiness that cause no harm to anybody and actually spread well-being around. If your happiness depends on material gain, status, praise, sensual pleasures, then it creates boundaries, because when you gain something, somebody else has to lose it. But the happiness that comes from being generous, the happiness that comes from being virtuous …
- The Buddha’s Defense Policy… In fact, they’re happy that you are a person of virtue and are a person who’s generous. So this kind of wealth is safe and harmless. The two go together. When you’re harmless, you’re safe. When you’re harmful to other people, you’re not safe at all. So you want to be very clear about, when you’re doing …
- Determining Merit… This is why we practice generosity, why we practice virtue, why we meditate: to learn how to be consistently good. Then the power of that goodness will come back to us, and it helps people around us as well. The ajaans talk a lot about making a determination when you do goodness, so that you don’t just fritter your merit away. For instance …
- What Are You Doing Right Now?… This is why the teaching starts with teachings on virtue. Learn how to abstain from acting on unskillful intentions, and you’ll learn a lot about your intentions, both those that go in line with the precepts and those that go against them. Even prior to virtue, the Buddha talks about generosity: giving rise to good actions, being helpful. Generosity doesn’t mean giving …
- How to Listen… He talked about the goodness of generosity; virtue, the goodness of acting in harmless ways—basically affirming what people already knew about goodness. He went on to say that generosity and virtue gave good results in this lifetime, good results in the next lifetime, even up to the sensual levels of heaven. Then he turned the tables. He said, “But even those sensual pleasures …
- Developing Discernment… Because with discernment, we can’t wait until the very end of the path and say, “Now that my virtue is perfect, now that my concentration is perfect, I’ll start thinking about discernment.” It doesn’t work that way. Everything you do in the path, even beginning with generosity—your ability to talk yourself into being generous, talk yourself out of holding on …
- Appreciating Dispassion… Someone once asked the Buddha, “What is virtue for?” “Virtue,” he says, “is for the sake of concentration.” “What’s concentration for?” “Concentration is for the sake of discernment.” “What’s discernment for?” “For the sake of release.” “What’s release for?” “For the sake of nibbāna.” “What is nibbāna for?” That’s when the Buddha said, “You can’t keep going with these …
- One Thing Clear Through… There’s the practice of virtue, the practice of concentration, the development of discernment. In every case, there are things we have to give up in order to get something of greater value. With virtue, there are times when you would like to break the precepts—it would be easier, it would be convenient—but the long-term results would not be good. Or …
- There’s Still Goodness in the World… When Sariputta left, did he take virtue with him? No. Concentration? No. Discernment? No. Release from suffering? No. These are all the good things in life. They’re still there. So we do these good things. This is why we make merit on the occasion of a death like this: one, so that we can send the merit to the person who’s passed …
- The Buddha’s Safe Space… The factors having to do with virtue—right speech, right action, and right resolve—those are simply an expression of your right resolve that you don’t want to harm anybody, and they provide the foundation for building your safe space of concentration inside. So the different aspects of the path—virtue, concentration, and discernment—all help one another along. And they all provide …
- Approaching the four noble truths… The same with the principle of virtue, which is the second topic: By abstaining from harm, there are good results. Whether he actually explained the principle of karma while he discussed these topics, we don’t know. But the way he discussed them definitely shows that your actions are things you choose, and they do make a difference. So, pay careful attention to what …
- Choose Your Friends… conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment. These are the qualities that you want to develop in yourself. So if you want to have a good friendship with this person, you want to develop those qualities as well—and ask that person how to do it. The first thing they’ll tell you in terms of conviction is that the good things in life are the things …
- Determined to Make a Difference… Generosity, virtue—these things are necessary. As the Buddha said, a stingy person can’t get into the stages of right concentration. As for virtue, it is possible for unvirtuous persons to get their minds concentrated, but there’s an element of dishonesty in that concentration, which means it can’t be trusted. If, however, you’re used to recognizing your own unskillful intentions …
- Developed in Body & Mind… We make merit through generosity, we make merit through virtue. What we’re doing is developing good qualities in the mind. And as we’re meditating, we’re focusing more and more directly on the mind. With generosity, you’re thinking about this person, that person, what object you want to give. With virtue, you’ve got to think about your dealings with other …
- Merit & Skill… The path has eight factors, or can be divided into three types of training—training in virtue, training in concentration, training in discernment. Meritorious activity has three kinds—generosity, virtue, and meditation. The Buddha was famous for making lists of all the different qualities that were required in the practice. There’s never a list of ones, which means that as you practice you …
- Wisdom, Compassion, Purity… There’s virtue: the holding to the precepts. Concentration: getting the mind to be still; having it centered with a sense of well-being. And then discernment: being able to use that concentration to see what’s going on in the mind—where you’re causing yourself unnecessary suffering; what you’re doing that’s getting in the way of finding the happiness whose …
- Three Levels of Refuge… When you find a good friend like that, the whole point is to emulate that person’s wisdom, generosity, virtue, conviction—what human beings can do. That’s one level of refuge, the external level. Then the next level is that you try to develop the qualities of that person or of those people within yourself. Take the example of the Buddha. His main …
- The Desire for Things to Be Different… This is why we practice generosity; this is why we practice virtue. That kind of change outside is also useful. But there are times you find yourself presented with raw materials from your past karma—and this can be anything from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, to other people, situations outside that are beyond your control—and if you go butting your head …
MvI: mahākhandhako
… attanā na asekhena sīlakkhandhena samannāgato hoti na paraṁ asekhe sīlakkhandhe samādapetā “He himself is not endowed with the aggregate of virtue of one beyond training, nor does he get others to undertake the aggregate of virtue of one beyond training. attanā na asekhena samādhikkhandhena samannāgato hoti na paraṁ asekhe samādhikkhandhe samādapetā “He himself is not endowed with the aggregate of concentration of one beyond …- Load next page...
