Search results for: virtue
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- A Meditator’s Environment… The Buddha talks about how a good background in virtue is important for concentration, because it keeps your concentration honest. There’s so much that can happen in a quiet mind. Sometimes you get the idea that anything that arises in a quiet mind can be trusted, but that’s not the case. A lot of people go crazy through their concentration because they …
- The Skill of Happiness… That’s what the chants on goodwill are for, along with the practice of generosity, the practice of virtue so that we’re not harming anybody. But the prospect that there could be something that doesn’t change and that is true happiness: That captures our imagination, makes us curious. Is this true? When the opportunity is there, you don’t want to let …
- Circumspection… We’re practicing their teachings, so it’s good to reflect on the type of people they were so that we can inspire ourselves, to see whatever virtues they had that we can develop within us. When Ajaan Fuang talked about Ajaan Lee, two features stood out. One was what he called his large-heartedness. Ajaan Lee wanted to make the teachings available to …
- Ven. Ananda’s Awakening… You come to the practice ideally with a sense of joy, which may be a mental joy based on generosity and virtue, but it also can translate into a sense of physical ease—and that’s what you can spread through the body. The Buddha talks about spreading a sense of rapture, a sense of ease through the body. It’s not just a …
- Goodwill Is Respect… generosity, virtue, and meditation, learning how to turn within and finding the resources within our body and minds—our many minds—to see what we can develop that would lead to that happiness. Ajaan Lee talks about how human beings have so many good potentials within them that go undeveloped. So let’s see what we can develop out of the breath. You can …
- You Are Not Redundant… Your virtue has inherent value. The development of good qualities in the mind has inherent value, and so you can choose to take part in that value yourself. There was a famous thinker in 19th to early 20th century America, William James. He went through a very bad depression when he was young. He wanted to be an artist, but his father did everything …
- Meaning & Happiness… qualities like generosity, virtue, renunciation. As we’re sitting here right here, right now, that’s a type of renunciation: Renouncing our fascination with sensual pleasures and looking for something deeper. Discernment, endurance, effort, truthfulness, determination good-will, equanimity: These are all good qualities to develop inside. And a life devoted to developing them is a meaningful life. It heads some place. A life …
- Skilled in Aims… The way you do it is through the noble eightfold path, and that involves right view, right resolve, all the way down through right concentration, including right speech and right action—again, virtue. You’re acting in harmless ways. So you want to protect your right view—protect your goodwill—regardless, and this means making it independent of everything else, making it bigger than …
- Skillful Distress… It requires virtue. And these activities set a good example in the world for true progress on the social level. The people who’ve attained the goal of the renunciate life, whether they’re monastics or laypeople, are the ones who shine a light in the world. So it is possible for a human being to pursue a noble goal, behave in a noble …
- Recollecting the Buddha… It informs his wisdom, informs his purity, and informs his compassion—the virtues that are traditionally attributed to him. He was a very true person. It requires someone who’s true like that to find the truth. So contemplating the Buddha in that way—if you have doubts about the Dhamma—helps to overcome those doubts. The problem with thinking about how amazing the …
- Concentration as a Skill… your own mind a lot better. And the process of unlearning your unskillful habits is not tedious at all. But as Ajaan Lee said, the discernment is not the big problem. Virtue is not the big problem. When you’re working on the path, concentration is the one that’s the big problem. He said it’s like building a bridge across a river …
- Fire… But even on the way there, the treasures that we build into the mind – our conviction, our virtue, our sense of shame and compunction, our learning, our generosity, our discernment – are treasures that no outside fire can burn. Just make sure your inner fires don’t burn them up, and you’ll be safe.
- The Gift of Discernment… Try to feed off virtue. Try to feed off concentration. Feed off all the factors of the path—concentration in particular. That’s where you can get a sense of inner nourishment. But it also steadies the mind so that when thoughts move in one direction or another, you know. Then you begin to see that what you used to think was simply watching …
- Push Yourself… loss of wealth, loss of health, loss of relatives, loss of view, loss of virtue. Those first three can actually happen through holding to the precepts. You can make money by lying, but you’re not going to lie. You can save your relatives by lying about what they did, but you’re not going to lie. You can feed yourself, become wealthy, maintain …
- Straightening the Arrow… seeing the value of generosity, seeing the value of virtue. Getting the mind in concentration, the Buddha said, is a perception attainment. You have to maintain the perception of breath and choose the proper perception of breath so that the mind can settle down with it, so that you don’t forget and wander off someplace else. The perception is the marker that keeps …
- Something Good to Cling to… We hold on to the concentration, we hold on to the practice of generosity, virtue, we hold on to our discernment, because these things enable us to strengthen the mind and give us a good place to stay as other things in the world come and go, so that as the other things that we tend to hold on to and we tend to …
- Determination… There’s more to the practice than just meditating.” She said, “Go back and look more carefully.” And sure enough, the people were practicing generosity, they were practicing virtue, they were teaching their children gratitude. The woman who was doing the study began to realize that there’s more to the practice than just sitting here with your eyes closed. We’re developing all …
- Saṃvega & Pasāda… selfish about that? You’re willing to replace our common habit of feeding with one of giving. Instead of taking in, you distribute out. Generosity, of course, is giving material gifts. Virtue is said to be the gift of safety. You may not be able to protect everybody from other sources, but you are protecting them from any potential harm coming from you. As …
- Choose Your Battles… As you get more and more clear about what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing—in your practice of virtue and concentration—then when things come together, then there’s a sharp drop. It’s a quantum leap, something very different from anything that went before. But for that balance to come together, and for that sharpness of discernment …
- The Perfection of Freedom… your life. But none of the qualities in the list can be totally perfected. Generosity: You can’t be perfectly generous, because there are constraints on what you have to give. Virtue: You can’t be perfectly virtuous. Even if you hold by the five precepts, the five precepts cover only so much. You can’t be totally sure that you’re not killing …
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