Search results for: virtue
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- Views & Vision… Similarly with the recollection of your virtue, times in the past when you could have harmed somebody or done something against your principles, but you decided not to. Your principles were more important. Think about that. You have worth as a human being because of that. The same when you were generous. For many of us our first real experience of freedom was when …
- The Dhamma Wheel… This is one of the reasons why the Buddha lists right speech, right action, right livelihood before he lists the factors for concentration, because the development of virtue makes you honest. You really have to look at what you’re doing, you really have to keep the precepts in mind, and you have to do your best to stick by the precepts. This focuses …
- Inner Negotiating Skills… True happiness is found through training yourself in virtue, concentration, and discernment. It’s something you can do. This is probably one of the most important parts of the Buddha’s teachings—his emphasis on what human beings can do for themselves. You look at the other teachings of his time. So many of them said, “Well, there’s only so much you can …
- Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self… our generosity, our virtue, our meditation. On the other hand, we have to reflect that we’re going to die, too. Where are you going to put your energy, where are you going to focus your time, however much time you have left? Because you don’t really know how much time you have. The Buddha says that the only people who are really …
- Brahmaviharas on the Path… So the brahmaviharas do provide a rudimentary foundation for virtue, concentration, and some discernment. They’re not just something tacked on to the path. But at the same time, you have to learn how to step back from them eventually and see that there’s more work to be done. That’s primarily the function of what’s called transcendent right view: the right …
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 …- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Taking the Long View… The qualities you want to look for are conviction in the principle of karma, virtue, generosity, and discernment. Find people who embody these qualities, associate with them, try to pick up their good traits. If there’s something you don’t understand about how to be more virtuous, how to be more generous, you ask. Now, these four qualities are alsothe qualities that the …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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.
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Victory over Death… One of our strengths, of course, is meditation, training the mind, based on generosity, based on virtue. You develop good qualities of the heart and mind. It’s good to remember when training the mind that the Pali word for “mind,” citta, also means “heart.” So we’re not just training the thinking side of the mind. We’re also training the part of …
- 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 …
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