Search results for: virtue
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- Dedicating Merit… generosity, virtue, developing thoughts of unlimited goodwill. As the Buddha said, genuine happiness comes from doing good. He says that the phrase, “acts of puñña,” is another word for happiness. And it’s a happiness that spreads around. It’s not like the happiness that comes, say, from wealth or status or praise or sensual pleasures. All too often that kind of happiness means …
- Good Heart, Good Mind… It also includes endurance, determination, truth, virtue, strengths of character. This is one of the reasons why we meditate: to develop some strength of character. We’re working on a skill that requires patience, it requires a lot of discernment, and it requires determination. Some people find it easy for the mind to settle down; other people find it a lot harder. But because …
- Noble Happiness… the practice of generosity and the practice of virtue. Because the practice of meditation is both virtuous and generous. So meditate with confidence. As you notice the mind slipping off the breath and you bring it back, have a sense that what you’re doing is something very important, something very noble. It may not seem like much right now, but as you develop …
- No Happiness without Restraint… Ajaan Maha Bua’s term for the normal state of the mind is “unruliness.” Virtue is a fence, he said, for the unruliness in your behavior in body and speech. Concentration is a fence for the unruliness of your mind, because without restraint you can’t focus on what is the big problem in life: the fact that we do everything we can for …
- Bow Down to Your Mouth… Tell yourself, “Okay, I’m going to make up my mind to learn how not to do that again.” Or you can think of some forms of goodness, like generosity, virtue, meditation, where you’re still weak. You might want to figure out some way to make them stronger. Because it’s the goodness that we do in our lives: That’s the monument …
- Doing the Right Thing… Boil it down to those three issues, and the training that the Buddha gives in virtue, concentration, and discernment helps right here. Virtue writes in very large terms: Okay, these are certain actions that you just don’t do, regardless. They’re never going to be skillful. Even though they may seem to be to your advantage in the short term, they’re really …
- Ingenuity… The four are conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. Conviction means conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, and that translates into conviction in the power of your actions. You want to pay careful attention to what you’re doing because your actions really do make a difference. You really do have choices in the present moment. The Buddha is very clear on this. You have …
- Balancing Tranquility & Insight… the sense of well-being that comes from developing virtue, developing generosity; the sense of confidence that arises from contemplating the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha; or recollecting on your own past virtues, your own past acts of generosity, and, as they say, the qualities of the devas that you’ve been developing, which include generosity and restraint. When you think about these …
- Reinvest Your Noble Treasures… You’ve got the profits of conviction, of a sense of compunction, shame, virtue, learning, generosity, discernment. You gain these things. You can use them for all kinds of purposes. There are a lot of people who use their discernment just to gain more money—that’s a real waste. Use your discernment to find the deathless. Reinvest your noble treasures. And you’ll …
- Immersed in the BodyIn the verses on respect that we chant often, the Buddha mentions respect for the triple training, which is training and heightened virtue, heightened mind or concentration, and heightened discernment. But he also mentions respect for concentration. It’s as if he wanted to make sure you know, that you’re doubly sure, that concentration is important. Maybe he foresaw that, in later centuries …
- Homage Through the Practice… So we train it in virtue, concentration, and discernment. Virtue means normalcy. You bring the mind to a state of normalcy where it’s not wanting to harm itself, not wanting to harm anybody else. The desire to harm is abnormal. The desire to wish for your own happiness, to wish for the happiness of others: That’s normal. So keep your mind in …
- A Refuge from Death… So it’s in developing this refuge inside, through the practice of virtue, concentration and discernment: That’s what ultimately offers our truest protection. And it takes us beyond fear of death. Of those four reasons for fear of death, one of them deals with our outside behavior: the way we treat other people, other beings. This is what the precepts are for. You …
- Learning from What You Do… finding people who are exemplars, people whose virtue you admire, whose generosity you admire, whose conviction and discernment you admire. Try to learn from them, talking over these issues, emulating them in areas where they’re worthy of emulation. Because we do have our blind spots: That’s what ignorance is all about. It’s not an abstract thing. It’s being ignorant of …
Suttas (Handheld Index) | dhammatalks.org
… SN 46:1Himavanta Sutta | The Himalayas (On the Factors for awakening) A monk attains to greatness by being established in virtue and developing the seven factors for awakening. SN 46:3Sīla Sutta | Virtue The rewards of reflecting properly on the Dhamma you have heard. SN 46:4Vattha Sutta | Clothes An arahant can observe the seven factors for awakening as they arise and cease within …- Sending Happiness… Who are the people who have admirable qualities in terms of their conviction, their virtue, their generosity, their discernment? Conviction, here, means conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, which translates into conviction in the principle of how important your actions are. Everything the Buddha awakened to comes down to the importance of your actions and what a big difference your actions can make. It …
- Looking at Your Life… One is conviction, generosity, virtue, and discernment. Another list is what he calls the seven noble treasures. It starts again with conviction, which means conviction in the fact that what you do is important, not necessarily important in the eyes of the world, but important in shaping your life, shaping your mind. So you want to be as skillful as possible in your intentions …
- Fighting Attitude… And although patience and equanimity are virtues, they’re virtues with a proper time and a proper place. If you’re in a situation where you simply cannot figure out what to do with an unskillful state that comes into the mind, then you watch patiently to see if you can detect something you haven’t detected before. But a lot of these hindrances …
- A Friend to the World… This is why the practice of goodwill goes along with virtue, goes along with all the rest of the practice. So when we chant these chants in the evening and in the morning, let them go beyond being just chants. Make them genuine resolves on your part, and express them as a true friend to the world in your thoughts, in your words, in …
- Training for Dispassion… It’s simply that our admirable friends show us—through their qualities of discernment, virtue, relinquishment, and conviction—that these things are possible and they can lead to genuine happiness: a happiness that we might not have imagined otherwise. So we depend on them to open these possibilities to us. But at the same time, we have to be up for the task. We …
Non-violence
Introduction
… This means that there’s no room at all in the Buddha’s teachings for a theory of “just war.” The path to put an end to suffering requires that you be willing to sacrifice many things, but not the purity of your virtue. Passage §19 makes this point clear by stating that the forms of loss usually cited as excuses for breaking the …Show one additional result in this book- Load next page...
