Search results for: virtue

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  2. Opting Out
     … our independence—and it’s a noble act. In that last year, as the Buddha taught, going from place to place, one of the recurring themes was the four noble dhammas: virtue, concentration, discernment, release. It’s the release that makes these dhammas noble. But they’re also noble in the sense that you’re not harming anyone. You’re not harming yourself, you … 
  3. Respect for the Training
     … The training is very basic—virtue, concentration, discernment—and in some cases it’s so basic we tend to overlook it. We want to go to the higher Dhamma, things that are more abstract that seem to be more in line with our level of intelligence. As a result, we tend to miss a lot of the really good lessons that can be learned … 
  4. Develop Your Inner Observer
     … As you come here to meditate, you have to ask yourself, “What do they know?” When you’re training the mind through virtue, concentration, and discernment, you’re going into territory that most of them never knew before. So you’ve got to train your inner critic to actually be helpful as you train in these skills. Some people say they just want to … 
  5. Suffering is an Addiction
     … That’s what the path is for—the practice of mindfulness, concentration, the practice of virtue, learning to take some satisfaction in knowing that you’ve behaved in a skillful way. In the Buddha’s instructions on how to help yourself through helping others—treating other people with goodwill and with sympathy, with patience and equanimity—the Buddha says it’s immediately good for … 
  6. Choosing a Teacher
     … You’re not going to know their virtue—i.e., their truthfulness—until you’ve been with them for a while and seen them in action. And you have to be observant. This requires that you be honest, too. You’re not going to know a person’s discernment until you hear them discuss issues and see how they treat a particular issue, how … 
  7. The Purity of Your Intentions
     … There may be times when, by holding the precepts, you’re going to suffer a loss of some kind, but as the Buddha said, that kind of loss is nothing compared to the loss of your virtue. So when information is hard to come by, all you have is your intentions, the purity of your intentions, to fall back on. This is why we … 
  8. Rewriting the Mind’s Song
     … Because after all, we’d like to see all the unskillful people in the world stop being unskillful and learn to work in ways that are conducive to generosity and virtue and general well-being all around. So you have to consciously learn to think these thoughts. Goodwill doesn’t mean that you’re giving your approval to what people are doing or that … 
  9. A Slave to the Dhamma
     … all the Capricorn virtues. It’s important to realize that this is a part of training the mind. If training the mind were simply a matter of closing your eyes and sitting very still, it’d be a lot easier, but it wouldn’t really challenge you in the way that the full training of the heart and mind does. One of the things … 
  10. Training like an Adult
     … In other words, we’re not trying to make a self or create a self around our virtue, around our restraint, around our renunciation, around our concentration, or around our wisdom. We’re doing these things because they work. So learn how to look at what you’re doing, learn how to read the results of what you’re doing, starting from the outside … 
  11. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … What helps the mind to settle down? The Buddha says, “views made straight and purified virtue.” Those are the bases for right mindfulness, and then right mindfulness is the basis for right concentration. So make sure your views are straight: that if there is suffering in the mind, it’s caused by the mind. No matter how much you may be suffering over bad … 
  12. Determined on Goodwill
     … In other words, your virtue is not something you’d give up. Even if it may help other people, the Buddha said that’s not in the long run going to be helping anybody. Finally, there’s peace. This is not just the peace of having attained the goal you want, but also of learning to keep your mind calm and unruffled as you … 
  13. You Can Do It
     … As for consummation in conduct, that includes restraint of the senses, moderation in eating, wakefulness, being consummate in your virtue, working on the four jhanas. Then there’s a set of qualities which are the ones I can’t remember, but they’re very similar to the seven treasures: They include conviction, a sense of shame, a sense of compunction, learning, generosity. These are … 
  14. Even Common Animals Can Be Trained
     … Generosity is restraint, virtue is restraint. Concentration, discernment: All of these things involve restraint. With generosity, you hold yourself back from using up things that you could give to other people. With the precepts, of course, you hold yourself back from doing and saying things that you know are going to be harmful. With concentration, you restrain your mind from wandering around as it … 
  15. The Real World Isn’t for Real
     … We develop virtue, we develop generosity, good habits inside, good habits in our relationships with people around us, so that we have a sense of self-esteem, that we do have some self-worth. That way, when things come up in the mind that challenge our self-image, we’re not devastated. We have the confidence that we have enough goodness to deal with … 
  16. A Separate Self
     … That’s what we say every day as we chant the virtues of the Dhamma: “It’s to be known by the observant for themselves.” No one can know this for anyone else. We can’t even show it to other people for them to look at. When the results come, they are yours. And as Ajaan Lee says, no one else has to … 
  17. Everybody Benefits
     … generosity, virtue, meditation. It’s through this symbiotic relationship that everybody benefits. This becomes especially dramatic on a day like today with the kathin. There’s been a lot of activity. A lot of people had to be fed. They came to support the monastery, to support us in our practice, so we have a responsibility. We have to make sure that they’re … 
  18. Go Out of Your Way
     … One of the sources of joy is that you’re in a community where everybody has the same views, everybody has the same virtue on the level of the noble ones, and we’re all generous with one another. We treat one another with thoughts of goodwill, words of goodwill, actions of goodwill. That goodwill shows itself in little ways. If you can be … 
  19. Goodwill & Gratitude
     … After all, generosity, virtue, meditation: These things are all beneficial for others in addition to being primarily beneficial for ourselves. So we’re looking for a happiness that doesn’t create boundaries. This is why the Buddha said we should develop goodwill in all directions: goodwill without limit, compassion without limit, empathetic joy without limit—along with equanimity without limit to balance out our … 
  20. Practice Without Gaps
     … In that way, as your virtue becomes more continuous, it becomes a good foundation for your concentration. You get used to not making exceptions for your likes and dislikes. This is one of the problems of the world right now. There are people who say they honor the precepts and the principle that you shouldn’t be harmful—except for these cases or those … 
  21. Centered on Concentration
     … And it’s interesting that of a three main aspects of the training—training in virtue, training in concentration, training in discernment—the one that the Buddha singled out to the stress in those verses we chanted just now is respect for concentration, the ability get the mind centered in the body, with a sense of ease, even with a sense of fullness, refreshment … 
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