Search results for: virtue

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  2. Page search result icon To be Debt Free
     … The Triple Training is training in heightened virtue, what’s called heightened mind, which is basically the mind in right concentration, and then heightened discernment. Then the Buddha goes back and emphasizes again, “and respect for concentration.” There may be several reasons why he emphasizes concentration. One is that there is the tendency to write it off. Everybody says, “Well, the real work is … 
  3. Strong Through Admirable Friendship
     … The same with virtue: There are some people who say it doesn’t matter how much you harm other people as long as you get what you want, or force them to do what you want. But that’s the attitude of people who are crazy about power, who just do what they want without any regard to how it’s going to have … 
  4. Common Sense
     … The Buddha said that above all else, these were the two main virtues he was looking for in a student. He said, “Bring me someone who’s observant, who’s truthful and no deceiver, and I’ll teach that person the Dhamma.” In other words, you don’t deceive others about what you’re doing and you don’t deceive yourself. If you want … 
  5. Insight Is Seeing What’s Worth Doing
     … that on an external level, but you can also interpret it on an internal level. The external level is the practice of merit. Generosity leads to long-term welfare and happiness. Virtue leads to long-term welfare and happiness. Developing attitudes of universal goodwill in the mind leads to long-term welfare and happiness. Those are attitudes and actions you want to develop because … 
  6. To Comprehend Suffering
     … This is why we develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment. These are the tools we can develop that can enable us to understand suffering. Years back, I was involved in a psychology experiment at Oberlin. They had you put your hand in a bucket of ice-water. And there were three groups: The first group was told to pull your hand out … 
  7. Suffering Is a Feeding Addiction
     … You can feed it off virtue. You can feed it off concentration—all the good things that the Buddha set out in the path. This is why the path is an eightfold path. It requires all eight factors for it to do its work.
  8. Willing to Learn
     … Translate the skills of generosity and virtue into meditative skills. Then work on the more refined skills that come from just sitting here with the pain, sitting here with the stress in the mind, and realizing that the physical pain doesn’t have to stress the mind. You’re doing something wrong if you let it stress the mind. It’s not that you … 
  9. Don’t Stop with Acceptance
     … How are you in terms of conviction? How are you in terms of virtue, relinquishment, learning, discernment, ingenuity? The need for ingenuity is one of the reasons why it’s good to read a lot of the Forest ajaans, because they’re very ingenious in how they approach things. Ajaan Maha Boowa makes the point that there are a lot of times when you … 
  10. The Unity of the Path
     … In fact, when the Buddha prepares people to understand the four noble truths and the elements of right view, he starts out with generosity and builds up through virtue, the rewards of these activities, and then their limitations. Simply being generous and virtuous is not enough. There’s more that needs to be done. Learning how to renounce your ordinary, everyday types of happiness … 
  11. High-Level Dhamma
     … The potential for virtue, the potential for concentration, the potential for discernment are all there. But it’s not the case that you go straight to those things without having to muck around with your defilements, because the defilements are going to get in the way one way or another. Because our habit is to deal unskillfully with whatever comes up, then when the … 
  12. Friends & Enemies
     … You get a sense of how other people are feeling, and that becomes one of your own virtues. As you get more sensitive to their feelings, you get more sensitive to your own feelings. This is going to be an important part of the meditation: being really sensitive to what’s going on in the mind, not just brushing off your feelings as being … 
  13. Page search result icon In the Eyes of the Wise : The Buddha’s Teachings on Honor & Shame
     … The good qualities of admirable friends are four: • conviction in the Buddha’s awakening and in the principle of karma; • virtue, in the sense of not breaking the precepts or encouraging others to break them; • generosity, and • discernment. The discernment of admirable friends can be seen in two things: the standards by which they judge you, and their purpose in judging you. If they … 
  14. The Buddha’s Basic Therapy
     … He started out with what’s called a graduated discourse, building on really basic things like generosity and virtue. And even these build on a foundation, which is what’s called mundane right view. The way it’s expressed in the Canon is rather strange: It starts out by saying, “There is what is given, what is offered, what is sacrificed; there is mother … 
  15. Life Well Lived
     … look at your own life. He says there’s a way to put an end to suffering. Have you found it? Do you know how to do it? He gives instructions: virtue, concentration, discernment. Qualities we can develop in ourselves. One of the hardest ones is concentration, because it’s so easy for the mind to wander off. Catching the mind is like trying … 
  16. New Feeding Habits
     … You don’t have to feed off your virtue; you don’t have to feed off your discernment. The goal is that good. The path is a good path. After all, learning to be a person of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—these are all good things: good things to do, ennobling things to do—which is one of the reasons why this is … 
  17. Investment Strategies
     … There’s virtue, the realization that if you learn how to abstain from harmful behavior you’re not going to be weighed down by regret and unfortunate memories, because the regret tends to cause you to want to forget—and the desire to forget, of course, goes against mindfulness. I know people who’ve done things in their lives that they’ve regretted and … 
  18. Hindrances to the Heightened Mind
     … You could think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, think about your generosity, think about your virtue. As long as you’ve got the energy to think, think about good things. And finally, uncertainty: Ask yourself, what’s wise about uncertainty? You’re looking for the allure of these hindrances, that’s basically what it comes down to. Why do you go for … 
  19. Four Determinations
     … heightened virtue, heightened mind, heightened discernment. It’s all for the calm of nibbāna. Now, in the factors for awakening, where some of the factors for awakening are energizing and some are calm, you energize the body and the mind first. If you start out saying, “I’ll just calm things down,” sometimes you put yourself to sleep. So you learn how to energize … 
  20. A Path Under the Trees
     … So, as the Buddha said, you are virtuous, but you no longer identify yourself around the virtues. When the mind is released from these fetters, things are a lot lighter inside. You’ve gained an inkling of what the Buddha was talking about. You don’t have a full experience of awakening yet, but you know that the deathless is true, and that that … 
  21. To Begin the Day
     … As the Buddha said, your right views and your virtue are your most important possessions. For those to be maintained, the mind needs a good solid state of concentration. That’s what we’re working on here. So, now that you’ve established yourself here in the center, look into the center. What have you got here in this body that’s right next … 
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