Search results for: virtue
- Page 52
- 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 …
- Honest & Observant… So you’ve got the virtue of truthfulness, concentration, discernment, the ability not to be overcome by pleasure, not to be overcome by pain, and that unlimited attitude of goodwill for everybody. These are the qualities that will protect you from doing unskillful things in the future, and protect you from a large part of the results of past bad actions, so the mind …
- Cross-questioning… He said, “In the same way, I tell people to follow the practice of virtue, concentration, and discernment. Some people follow it and they get the results. Some people don’t follow it and they don’t get the results. I’m just the one who points out the way.” What the Buddha is doing here is giving the man an analogy to make …
- Inner Wealth Management… If your friends are admirable, they teach you about conviction, they teach you about discernment, generosity, virtue. They themselves are good examples in these areas. When you hang around people like this, you use your wealth wisely. You invest it not only in your pleasure in this lifetime, but also in your well-being in future lifetimes. Now, those are the principles that are …
- The Wheel of Dhamma… Is it good to be generous or is it not? Is it good to be virtuous or is it not? Generosity and virtue are part of the path, so you want to develop them. And as you develop them, you begin to see that suffering falls away: the suffering of being stingy, of having a narrow mind, of not being true to your principles …
- Strong-hearted… You have to be patient, to have endurance, to be determined—all those good Capricorn virtues. And that’s a quality of the heart. The Greeks used to say that we had three energy centers in the body: one in the head, one in the chest, one in the stomach. The head, of course, was your intellect. Your stomach was your appetites. And your …
- Breath Teaches the Bramaviharas… generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill and equanimity. You work on these, and you hope that their influence will spread out into the world. But you can’t determine how many people will benefit from it, just as the Buddha himself couldn’t determine how many people were going to follow his way to awakening. Your duty is to work on …
- A Sense of Yourself… The second quality you want to test in yourself is how much virtue you have. How are your precepts? Where could you improve on them? Similarly with the third quality, generosity: How generous are you with your time, with your energy? An important part of the path is composed of the heart qualities that come with generosity: your sympathy for other beings, your sense …
- The Five Hindrances… Stoke up on those qualities of mindfulness and alertness, virtue, generosity—the things you’re really going to need regardless of what happens. And you can do that only by meditating. These are some of the ways of dealing with the hindrances. If you find them getting in the way of your concentration, keep the fact in mind that they’re not your friends …
- Preparing to Meditate… So, when the Buddha teaches us to reflect on our virtues and reflect on our generosity as a way of bringing the mind to a state where it feels confident in itself so that it can settle down, you’ve got to have some generous actions, you’ve got to have some virtuous actions to reflect on. You can’t just make them up …
- Admit Your Stupidity… The qualities are conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. Of course, the discernment there becomes the internal quality, what the Buddha calls appropriate attention. It’s a matter of asking the right questions, questions that help you understand where you’re creating unnecessary suffering and how you can put an end to that. That, for the Buddha, was the big issue in life, the big …
- Mindfulness Defined… Some people make a virtue out of ignorance, saying that if you read a lot of the texts it just clutters up your mind. There may be times when that is the problem, but other times the problem is that your ideas about what can be done in the meditation are too narrow. When that’s the case, reading the texts can open your …
Non-Reactive Judgment
… In the beginning, we work with generosity and virtue, and we want to be clear about what we’re doing, when we’re in line with our precepts and when we’re not. I got another phone call this morning from someone who, in a fit of real anger, had intentionally killed a mosquito. Even though it was a very small animal, the fact …- Three Recollections… the six recollections are a standard list—recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Saṅgha; recollection of generosity, virtue, and the devas. They fall into two sets. The first three, of course, have to do with the three refuges. The last three have to do with reflecting on yourself—in a positive way. So tonight I’d like to talk about the first three …
- The Middle Way… There’s homage through material things, as we did with the flowers, candles, and incense just now, walking around keeping our right to the Buddha image, as a way of showing respect, the incense representing virtue, the flowers concentration, and the candles discernment. As you may have noticed, there was a breeze tonight. Candles can blow out very easily. Our discernment has a way …
- The Five Strengths… As you develop virtue, concentration, and discernment, they help to loosen up that craving and clinging, so that you’re no long so obsessed with it. This way, the mind gets stronger and stronger because it’s placing fewer burdens on itself. It’s as if we spent the day carrying huge piles of garbage on our shoulders. When other people ask us for …
- Intelligent Respect… It means either virtue or habit. And batta means protocols, practices. Some people say, “Before I came here, I didn’t have any rites or rituals that I was involved in. Suddenly, coming to Buddhism, there are rites and rituals. It doesn’t seem right.” But go back and retranslate the term. Before you came here, you had habits. Here we have other habits …
- Can All Beings Be Happy?… When you’re virtuous and you see the rewards of virtue, you try to encourage others to be virtuous, too. As you gain more conviction in the Buddha’s awakening and see in particular the results of holding to the principle of action, the principle of karma, you do what you can to encourage others to do that, too. Now, you don’t become …
- Load next page...
