Search results for: virtue

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. Focus on the Precepts
    Training in virtue is an important part of the path. It teaches you to be honest, to be very clear about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it: to look directly at your intentions. When you take a precept, you can break it only intentionally, so that’s where your attention has to be focused. What is your intention in acting … 
  5. When You’re Discouraged
     … Cling to the path.” You learn how to attack the old craving and clinging by developing qualities of virtue, concentration, discernment. So we all come here in that category of “you’re doing something wrong,” but that can be fixed. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, nothing to be ashamed about, the fact that you’re doing it wrong. Don’t let your … 
  6. Weathering Karma Storms
     … Patience is a good lesson; determination is a good lesson; all those dull Capricorn virtues are good things to master.” Those are your real friends. They’re unassuming. They’re a little drab, but they stand by you. So learn how to nurture them. Learn how to see their value. Just don’t get tied up in thoughts of guilt or frustration or anger … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. Being Reliable
     … With things like generosity and virtue, the help really obvious. With goodwill it’s obvious. When you’re mindful to be looking for happiness inside, you’re not taking anything away from anyone else, and you’re becoming a better person. Similarly, the energy you transmit into the world is a better energy. The things you do—coming from mindfulness and concentration and discernment … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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