Search results for: virtue

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  2. An Auspicious Birth
     … presents, whereas over in Thailand they have a more Buddhist attitude toward birthdays, which is that when it’s your birthday you give the presents, you make donations, you practice the virtue of generosity This is in line with the Buddha’s teachings on what makes a day auspicious. It’s what you do with the day, not so much what you receive or … 
  3. Normalcy
     … Sila , ordinarily translated as “virtue,” is one of the requisites for meditation. Sila also means normalcy. You’re trying to develop a state of normalcy in your actions, where you’re not deviating from harmless behavior. You’re not going off into extremes of harmful behavior because you’re trying to establish a pattern that will carry into your meditation. You want to keep … 
  4. Above the World
     … We heighten our virtue. We heighten our discernment. We heighten our concentration. If we don’t do this, we’re down on the same level as the world and we spin around with it. The spinning of the world isn’t innocent. It’s not like a simple wheel. It’s more like gears in a machine—gears with teeth. As they turn, turn … 
  5. Sanity for the Holidays
     … So as you develop these virtues—patience, equanimity, goodwill, sympathy— they make it a lot easier to deal with other people, and they strengthen good qualities in your own mind, qualities you’re going to need in the practice. I was reading an interesting passage today where the Buddha’s talking about good people living together and bad people living together. Bad people living … 
  6. The Gift of the Practice
     … Because on the one hand, the skills you develop in the course of developing the path—generosity, virtue, all the various skills in the meditation—are skills you also need in order to deal with other people in a compassionate way. As you develop concentration, you’re coming from a more and more solid place. You develop the equanimity that’s needed to deal … 
  7. Four Noble Truths to One
     … You develop, basically the triple training of virtue, concentration, discernment. In the beginning, these duties are four separate duties, but they’re interconnected. After all, as you develop the path, you begin to abandon some of your passion for your craving as your right view begins to see through the things you used to crave. And particularly, as you develop right concentration, that gives … 
  8. Maintained by Fabrication
     … It’s built on virtue, and that right there has a lot to recommend it. Of course, it’s not proof. As the Buddha said, you don’t really have proof of his teachings until you’ve seen the deathless for the very first time. You’re like the hunter in the forest looking for an elephant. You see likely signs. Even in the … 
  9. Metta
     … through generosity, virtue, meditation. When you can think in this way, you realize that goodwill isn’t something that requires you put on rose-colored glasses or send out pink clouds or cotton-candy of nice thoughts. It’s extremely practical. It’s essential. It’s what allows you to live safely in the world.
  10. Ready for Death
     … by doing good in terms of generosity, virtue, meditation, creating opportunities for good places to go, and also by working on the skills you’re going to need at the moment of death. Just sitting here meditating as you want to stay with the breath, other thoughts come up that can wander away and lure you to wander away. You have to say, “No … 
  11. Looking Off to the Side
     … We’ve developed our powers of virtue, concentration, and discernment, which as we circle in on the present moment allow us to see more and more. One of the reasons we focus on the breath is because it’s very close to that element of intention which is so important to understand. The breath is a bodily fabrication, which means that there’s an … 
  12. Endurance & Equanimity
    Endurance and equanimity are two virtues that are very similar but they’re not quite the same. With equanimity, the mind is not affected by things it likes or doesn’t like. It has an ability to stay on an even keel. With endurance, you’re dealing with things you don’t like. Whether the mind is on an even keel or not, you … 
  13. Circumspection
     … Be circumspect in the way you develop your generosity, the way you develop your virtue, the way you develop an attitude of goodwill. We’re not here to connect with everybody. That’s an idea that has its roots back in European Romantism: the idea we’re suffering because we don’t connect with all our fellow humanity. Well, there are some people you … 
  14. Page search result icon Shoulds & Desires
     … Yet in the happiness that comes from generosity, virtue, meditation, everybody wins. ** So this is a pursuit of happiness that actually creates harmony in the world. We think about that phrase “the pursuit of happiness,” and it sounds kind of grubby, especially if you’re looking for happiness where people have to fight one another over what they’re getting. But if you pursue … 
  15. Page search result icon The Buddha’s Rx : Attacking Suffering at Its Cause
     … Here you keep in mind the principles of virtue. At the same time, you have to be alert to what you’re doing, to make sure that your actions stay within the bounds of those principles. These two qualities, mindfulness and alertness, are basic to the practice of right concentration. Building on the joy developed by the path factors related to virtue, the next … 
  16. Faith in the Buddha
     … Again, there were people who said that because your parents were totally predetermined in their actions, there was no particular virtue in the fact that they gave birth to you, taught you, fed you, looked after you. It was simply a matter of natural conditions forcing them to do these things. So those teachers said there was no debt of gratitude. Here again, the … 
  17. The Light of the World
     … This is why the Buddha began the practice with generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill, because these are harmless ways of finding happiness. They may not be totally able to bring you to the deathless, but they are conducive. At the very least, they’re a form of happiness that’s harmless. You harm no one when you’re generous; you harm no … 
  18. Delight in the Path
     … the mind.” We’ve traveled around sensuality becomings, form becomings, formless becomings, for who knows how long, looking for satisfaction, wandering off the path, and now he shows us the way: virtue, concentration, discernment. Another exclamation was, It’s as if the Buddha had taken a lamp into the dark so that those with eyes could see forms. In other words, if you realize … 
  19. Potentials for Energy
     … For instance, with mindfulness, he says in another passage that the potential for mindfulness consists of virtue and views made straight. In other words, you have right view, and you have behavior that doesn’t put up walls inside. If you break the precepts, there will be times when you realize you’ve harmed this person or that person, or you’ve harmed yourself … 
  20. A Skillful Attitude
     … Whereas the path—virtue, concentration, discernment—is a skillful approach. So in looking at the meditation as a skill, looking at the whole issue of where there’s dissatisfaction, where there’s discomfort, where there’s dis-ease as something you can approach as a problem to be solved through mastering the skill: Those are the seeds of the four noble truths right there … 
  21. Glad to Be Here
     … You’re glad because of your virtue. You’re glad simply because you have the opportunity to do this: to have some quiet time by yourself where you don’t have any other responsibilities. In other words, you have to lift your spirits. In Thailand, they talk about lifting the mind to its object, and lifting your spirits is part of that, that you … 
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