Search results for: virtue
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- Outside the Box… It’s loss in terms of your view, loss in terms of your virtue, that can. So look at your views. Try to develop a sense of values that is outside the ordinary, and learn how to question things you haven’t been questioning before. Ajaan Maha Boowa has some good questions for questioning pain. When you first read them, they sound kind of …
- Admirable Friendship, Inside & Out… You ask them about their conviction, their generosity, their virtue, their discernment, and then you try to follow their example. Most difficult, of course, is the discernment. You find that it comes down to the questions they ask. Look at the Buddha teaching his son: At the very beginning, he said that if you’re going to do anything, look first at your intention …
The Truth of Rebirth
1 : Questioning Assumptions
… When discussing more mundane topics, such as the rewards of generosity and virtue, he would cite the rewards they brought not only in this life but also in future ones. Even in cases where he was asked specifically to confine his discussion to the present life, he would end the discussion by referring to the rewards of these skillful actions after death (AN 5 …Show one additional result in this book- A Good-natured Attitude… It might be the Buddha, it might be the Dhamma, the Sangha, the good that you’ve done either in terms of your generosity, in terms of your virtue. Then when the dryness goes away or the antsiness in the mind goes away, you can bring it back to the breath. Remember that you’ve got to have a number of tools at hand …
- Defiant Like the Buddha… It’s a path of virtue, a path of concentration, a path of discernment. These are all safe qualities. There’s not only safety in these qualities, but there’s also victory: the defiant attitude that the young prince had when he was thinking that there’s got to be a way out of here. He was actually able to carry it through. When …
- To Have a Purpose… When you develop the quality of truth, that includes the perfection of virtue, the perfection of truth, and the perfection of persistence. When you develop relinquishment, there’s still more persistence, along with the perfection of giving and the perfection of renunciation. Then finally, as you calm the mind, there’s the perfection of endurance and the perfection of equanimity. You’ve got all …
- A Sense of Duty… the fourth noble truth, which boils down to virtue, concentration, and discernment. These are your duties. Now, no one’s imposing them on you, aside from the fact that suffering imposes them. If you really want to get beyond suffering, these are the things you have to do. It’s important that you have a strong sense that if something is a duty, you …
- Chew Your Food Well… If you don’t see the virtue, the value of gratitude, if you don’t see the value of generosity, it’s hard to do anything else on the path. You have to appreciate the good that other people have done for you, and see that something really good does come from being generous. Generosity is not a sham. It’s one of the …
- Return of Wisdom for Dummies… This is why the Buddha’s discussion of generosity would then often lead on to virtue. When you look at your actions outside—the things you do and say—you have to ask yourself, what is your intention? This is the beginning of his teaching to Rahula. First he emphasized the need for truthfulness: He said if you feel no shame in telling a …
- Ego… These pleasures come not only from concentration but also from understanding, from virtue, from generosity, the pleasure that comes from doing something noble with your life. You want to nurture this sense of pleasure and a sensitivity to this kind of pleasure, because when we talk about happiness it’s not just about people running around smiling all the time and being kind of …
- The Origination of Suffering… The practice also involves generosity and it involves virtue. But the fact that you’re doing something here that nobody else can do for you, and that you can’t do for anyone else—that should give you a good sense of priorities. This is work that has to be done within. After all, the true causes of suffering are within, the work is …
Sense Pleasures & Sensuality
… He would start with a talk on generosity, a talk on virtue, a talk on heaven. Heaven, of course, would be a description of the pleasures you could experience up there based on the fact that you’d been generous and virtuous down here. But then the talk would turn: He said, actually there’s a downside to sensuality. He called it not only …- Inner Discontent… You look for what that something right might be, in terms of your virtue, in terms of your commitment, in terms of your mindfulness and concentration. How do you make these things right, or even more reliable than they are now? So it’s not simply a case of learning how to accept things just the way they are. If the Buddha had been …
- Cheerfully Ardent… of suffering is, and where the suffering itself is. The same with the path and the cessation of suffering: You don’t do the cessation of suffering. You do the path: virtue, concentration, discernment. The release that comes—that’s going to be the result. You don’t do release, but to get the path to be the middle path you have to try …
- Reading Your Meditation… the themes of meditation called recollection of generosity, recollection of virtue. In other words, you think about the things you’ve done in the past that have been good, such as times when you’ve been generous. If you bring in a negative narrative, you tend to focus on the foolish things you’ve done. And we’ve all done foolish things. Sometimes it …
- Seeds of Becoming… The Buddha commented on how, in getting to know other people—getting to know their virtue, their resilience, their honesty, their wisdom—you have to focus on the right aspects of their behavior and you have to be observant. That takes a lot of time. Well, the same point applies to your own mind. You have to focus at the right spots, where craving …
- Sensual Passion… This is why we practice the Dhamma, why we listen to the wise people who say that when you want to find long-term welfare and happiness, you look for it in your practice of generosity, your practice of virtue, your practice of meditation; and especially the meditation because, as the Buddha pointed out, if you don’t have the pleasure of concentration, then …
- The Power of Present Kamma… karma come, they don’t have to make an impact on the mind. The Buddha talks about the qualities you want to develop to counteract the impact of past bad karma: virtue, discernment, an ability not to be overcome by pleasure, an ability not to be overcome by pain, and having an unlimited mind, which means developing the four brahmaviharas. Now all of these …
- Scribe Knowledge, Warrior Knowledge… You hold onto the practice of virtue, you hold onto the practice of concentration, you hold onto discernment as your tools. And you feed off the well-being that these things can provide. In this way, he gives you an alternative source of food. And when you’re better fed—the mind is not so worked up around things—ultimately it gets to where …
- Everything You Need… We use the body as we practice virtue, as we practice generosity. And for those purposes, it’s useful to think of it as yours. But then the body has its illnesses. It grows old. It’s going to die at some point. You’ve got to learn how to put it aside, put it down, and not carry it around all the time …
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