There are many ways of “being good” and many lessons in the Buddha’s teachings that encourage us to cultivate wholesome actions of body, speech, and mind. In a classic sutta, the Buddha lays out a very simple reason to behave towards others with the specific intention to do no harm. With Queen Mallikā SN3.8 (translated by Sujato Bhikkhu) At Sāvatthī. Now at that time King Pasenadi of Kosala was upstairs in the royal longhouse together with Queen Mallikā. Then the king said to the queen, “Mallikā, is there anyone more dear to you than yourself?” “No, great king, there isn’t. But is ..read more

The idea for today’s post comes from an article, “Buddhism and the Virtues” by James Whitehill, published in a textbook, Contemporary Buddhist Ethics, edited by Damien Keown. The central point is that it is difficult or impossible to develop the Buddha’s eight-fold path in isolation. We need some form of community to provide support, encouragement, correction, and some healthy peer pressure to persist. The primary focus on persons, character, and virtuous practices in Buddhist ethics cannot be sustained without community, places where we know each other well enough to call each other into the ..read more

One school of early Buddhism listed six perfections: giving, virtue, patience, energy, jhāna (concentration), and wisdom. We’ve talked about the first five and today we’ll consider the last of these, paññā or wisdom. Wisdom can be cultivated on its own, but more often it’s a result of refining our other wholesome qualities. The more generosity we practice, the clearer it becomes that this is a satisfying and beneficial way to live. The more we are inclined to acting virtuously rather than selfishly, the more obvious it becomes that this is preferable to any alternative, and the more we’re like ..read more

The perfection or pāramī of concentration is also one of the factors of the Buddha’s 8-fold path. It’s an element of practice that many find challenging or frustrating, but it is essential to making solid progress towards liberation. Of course, we can concentrate when we’re focused on something we care about, whether it’s making a meal, or a playing a card game, or completing a project. Can we care about refining our minds as much as we care about anything else? Thanissaro Bhikkhu argues that in order to develop a solid mental base through concentration, we have to first commit to the Bud ..read more

The first three pāramī  or perfections (generosity, morality, and patience) are concerned with our actions of body, speech, and mind; the next three (energy, concentration, and wisdom) are focused inward. By developing the latter three of these pāramī, we strengthen all the interpersonal qualities we want to embody. It’s a reciprocal relationship; the more attentive we are to the wholesomeness (or not) of our words and actions, the more inclined we are to the cultivation of inner peace and wisdom. And the more we nurture our inner resources, the more naturally we will behave in harmonious ..read more

A comprehensive approach to Buddhist practice can be based on the pāramī or perfections. The number of items in this assembled list of virtuous actions varies in different traditions, but in one grouping, there are six: Generosity or gift-giving (dāna) Morality or the five precepts (sīla) Patience and forgiveness (khanti) Courage and vigor (viriya) Concentration (samādhi) Wisdom (paññā) These are categories of action that we can cultivate and develop to a high degree, perhaps eventually “perfecting” them. We’ve talked a lot about the first two paramī, generosity and the five precepts, so let ..read more

Learning to practice mindfulness requires both an effort to cultivate periods of quiet meditation, and also a growing awareness of our words and actions and what effect they have on ourselves and others. This is not a difficult discipline, but a sustainable training; we bring our attention back to our bodies, our breath and what we are doing, over and over again, each time we remember our intention to be mindful. The benefit of becoming aware of our words and actions as they happen is that we are more and more likely to steer them in wholesome directions, avoiding causing harm and inclining to ..read more

What keeps us from embracing the Brahmavihāras, the four types of unlimited love and care recommended by the Buddha? What is the impediment that prevents our hearts from opening wide? Perhaps we’ve been hurt in the past and are wary of making ourselves vulnerable again. Maybe it was the custom in our family of origin to belittle people who didn’t display “toughness”. Whatever the reason, the answer is that some variety of fear blocks us from being as open-hearted as we could be. We might be afraid of being hurt, or ridiculed, or embarassed, or maybe we just keep ourselves too busy to take the ..read more

A very important practice in the Buddha’s teachings is the cultivation of four states of mind called the Brahmavihāras, or divine [mental] abodes, also called the sublime states. The Four Faces of Love: The Brahma Viharas  By Gil Fronsdal (https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-four-faces-of-love-the-brahma-viharas/) The heart has four faces. Each sees the world in a different way and speaks with a different purpose. Yet, as each aspect belongs to the same heart, they are inseparable, like the four directions of a compass. This image of a four-faced heart is borrow ..read more

Mettā, or unconditional friendliness, means looking at others with kindly eyes.  Wisdom is liberating, but along with that we must jettison our defensiveness, our petty irritations, our unwillingness to allow others to be as they are. Our challenge is to bring wisdom and mettā into balance in our intentions and actions. Some of us naturally incline towards mettā, others of us towards wisdom. Our work is to bring these two streams together; to think, speak, and act from a balanced perspective. The precepts on wise speech support this principle: we’re encouraged to abandon harsh speech ..read more