Search results for: virtue

  1. Page 48
  2. A Refuge from Karma
     … You train the mind in virtue, you train it in discernment, so that it doesn’t have to suffer from things. You train it not to be overcome by pleasure or pain. You do that through the concentration. You can sit here, and everybody has had this experience: You start out meditating and there’s a pain here and a pain there. Your immediate … 
  3. All Dhamma, All the Time
     … You take the virtues of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, and you bring them in. And you do that by imitating the Buddha. He was the sort of person who questioned himself all the time. As a young prince, he noticed he was suffering. He didn’t blame his father, he didn’t blame his mother, he didn’t blame the surroundings … 
  4. Safety All Around
     … With the training in heightened virtue, where you observe the five precepts, you observe them strictly. If you’re consistent in holding to the precepts, you’re providing safety to everybody. They don’t have to fear anything from you. They don’t have to fear that they’re going to be killed or that their things will be stolen by you or that … 
  5. Things as They’ve Come to Be
     … So ask yourself, what would be inspiring right now? The Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha? Your own past generosity? Your own past virtues? Or do you need something besides the carrot? Do you need a stick? Think about death. It could come at any time, and you can ask yourself, “Am I ready to go?” Almost universally the answer is, “Not yet.” Okay, what … 
  6. Ultimate Reality
     … And you do that through developing the noble eightfold path, which boils down to virtue, concentration, and discernment. These are things you do, and you learn about what you’re doing by being very systematic in what you do. This is why we practice concentration, why we have techniques for concentration, and specific questions to ask about what you’re doing while you’re … 
  7. The Rewards of Right View
     … On the one hand, it’s because we do choose our actions—and our actions are under our control—that all the virtues we can think of really are worthwhile. If everything were predetermined, the fact that you were good or bad wouldn’t be your responsibility. It’d be something or somebody else’s. But you have your choices—you’re the one … 
  8. Metta & Merit
     … The other three qualities are being generous with any special gains you get, having virtue on the level of the noble ones in common, having right view in common. These are the things that give rise to harmony in the group. But as I said, half of harmony is goodwill. So take some time to generate thoughts of goodwill. We read the news, and … 
  9. In the Context of the Deathless
     … You look at the things the Buddha asks you to do in terms of virtue, concentration, discernment: They’re all honorable qualities. They’re all things you can be proud to do. Good qualities of the mind. Qualities of the mind that you respect within yourself. The Buddha’s asking you to develop them even further. So there’s a joy in being on … 
  10. Meaning & Becoming
     … It includes generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity. When you develop these qualities, they take you out. So, if you’re looking for meaning and significance., it doesn’t have anything to do with the relationships you develop, although if you want to find what the Buddha calls an admirable friend, someone to helps you develop these qualities, that’s … 
  11. Don’t Be Burdensome
     … Contentment is one of the virtues that you develop within: contentment with your material surroundings, what you’ve already got, but not content with where you are in the practice. If there’s work that needs to be done, you’re willing to do it. But contentment with your material things really does have an impact on the people around you. It helps you … 
  12. Patience
     … You have to learn how to talk to yourself, to remind yourself you’ve got this virtue of generosity that’s going to pay off someday. In the meantime, you think about how spacious your mind is because you were able to give. One of the most important lessons, though, is that there is a ranking of pleasures. Say you have some food. You … 
  13. The Buddha’s Map
     … For instance, the Buddha teaches us how to put virtue, concentration, and discernment together. These are all things that we have to put together. Our intention to observe the precepts is something we put together. The precepts themselves are sketches. But they’re very useful sketches. If they were too complex, too detailed, they’d be hard to hold to, because they’d be … 
  14. For the Cessation of Dukkha
     … Everything we do as we practice virtue, concentration, and discernment, developing all the perfections, is based on that understanding. It’s because we realize that the pain is mental and the causes of the pain that are mental are the really important ones: That’s why we’re sitting here meditating. If the kind of pain that we can put an end to were … 
  15. Worldly Effort
     … The Buddha says we should look right here, developing virtue, concentration, and discernment. It seems an unlikely place, looking for refuge in our own actions, but he says that’s the only place you can do it. Our actions seem awfully ephemeral, but he says everything else is based on action. But the path is a special type of action. It’s the action … 
  16. Happy to Be Here
     … the happiness of generosity, the happiness of virtue. You want to reflect on that and bring that attitude into the meditation. You’re going to be providing food for the mind, and you don’t want to force the food on yourself. You want to lay the food out in front of the mind and wait for it to be interested in eating. So … 
  17. For When the World Can’t Help You
     … We also have the example of the Dhamma he taught on how to train the mind in generosity, virtue, and meditation. Then there’s the Sangha—the people who’ve practiced in line with what the Buddha taught and found that, yes, it’s true: You can achieve the deathless through this path. That’s an external refuge. Then you try to internalize that … 
  18. To Comprehend Suffering
     … And concentration, to be *honest *concentration, requires virtue. It also requires mindfulness and alertness, so that you can watch what’s actually happening in the present moment. It’s in this way that the duties of the four noble truths all come together. When the path is fully developed, that’s when you complete the duty for the third noble truth, which is dispassion … 
  19. When Aging Closes In
     … You develop more generosity, virtue, persistence, endurance, determination, goodwill, discernment, equanimity. All these good qualities are your real treasures. That’s what you want to keep in mind: that true worth of a human life lies in the quality of the mind, the quality of the heart. When you have that conviction, it nurtures your mindfulness so that it grows into concentration. From the … 
  20. Dhamma for Laypeople
     … He starts out with emptiness, but they complain, “That’s a little bit too high for us.” So the Buddha teaches them generosity and virtue. The two stories provide an interesting contrast, and get at an issue that’s really important. We see that many of the teachings in the Canon are addressed to monks, but to what extent are these teachings appropriate for … 
  21. Abandoning Effluents (3)
     … The destroying includes right resolve and all of the factors for virtue: right speech, right action, and right livelihood, because these things depend on maintaining skillful intentions and not acting on unskillful ones. And it’s also part of right effort, the destroying part. As for the seven factors for awakening you’re developing, you’ve got right view in analysis of qualities. And … 
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