In Praise of Virtue

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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In forming a judgment, lay your hearts void of foretoken opinions; else, whatsoever is done or said will be measured by a wrong rule; like them who have the jaundice, to whom everything appears yellow.
Sir Philip Sidney (d. 1586)
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
sunnat
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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Within the mind body phenomenon, (commonly called me, I, self), are doors that illwill close and goodwill open. It is wholesome to be open. It allows deeply buried complexes to rise and pass away without clinging to them.

Intellectualism without wholesome practice induces pre-judice and I conceit and closes said doors.

Writings about virtue necessarily become esoteric because it uses the language of reason to express things that are beyond reason.

A measure of faith is needed to adhere to the precepts. The value of doing so will become clear through practice, not reason.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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sunnat wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2020 6:16 am Within the mind body phenomenon, (commonly called me, I, self), are doors that illwill close and goodwill open. It is wholesome to be open. It allows deeply buried complexes to rise and pass away without clinging to them.

Intellectualism without wholesome practice induces pre-judice and I conceit and closes said doors.

Writings about virtue necessarily become esoteric because it uses the language of reason to express things that are beyond reason.

A measure of faith is needed to adhere to the precepts. The value of doing so will become clear through practice, not reason.
So true :twothumbsup:
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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All great men and sages attained success through their self-effort. Reliance on destiny or God is an
expression of ignorance and this is the main cause of failure.

Self-effort must be sustained from a very early age in order that it may be powerful. But self-effort
devoid of wisdom leads to negative developments. A self-effort that has been adopted in a sporadic
manner will be unable to gather enough strength to overthrow past karmas.

The lazy man is worse than a donkey. One should never yield to laziness but strive to attain liberation,
seeing that life is ebbing away every moment. Every day one must think of the impermanent body and
struggle to conquer the animal nature. He must take recourse to association with good and virtuous
people. One should not revel in the filth known as sense-pleasures, even as a worm revels in pus. By
good deeds, good will return to you; by bad deeds, bad will return. Nowhere is there any God, fortune
or fate. One who ignores his present ability for self-effort for fear of his past bad actions, might as well
fear his own two arms, thinking them dangling vipers.
Yoga Vasistha II 5
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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Whene’er a noble deed is wrought
Whene’er is spoken a noble thought
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
And lifts us unawares
Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
And by their overflow
Raise us from what is low!
Longfellow reminds that simply knowing about noble kamma inspires & encourages us in the same direction.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and
certainty. Crime and punishment grow on one stem; punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the
flower of pleasure which concealed it. You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. The thief steals from
himself; the swindler swindles himself. Everything in nature, even motes and feathers, goes by law and not by
luck. What a man sows, he reaps.
Emerson
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs. All individual natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of this element in them. The will of the pure runs down from them into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a lower vessel; this natural force is no more to be withstood than any other natural force. A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person.
Emerson
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
sentinel
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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Emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves.

Je Tsongkhapa
You always gain by giving
sentinel
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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The virtuous will be sure to speak uprightly; but those whose speech is upright may not be virtuous.

CONFUCIUS
You always gain by giving
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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The great division of our affections is into the selfish and the benevolent. If the character of virtue, therefore, cannot be ascribed indifferently to all our affections, when under proper government and direction, it must be confined either to those which aim directly at our own private happiness, or to those which aim directly at that of others. If virtue, therefore, does not consist in propriety, it must consist either in prudence or in benevolence. Besides these three, it is scarce possible to imagine that any other account can be given of the nature of virtue.
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Edmund Burke
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
J.S. Mill
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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252. Easily seen is the fault of others, but one’s
own fault is difficult to see. Like chaff one
winnows another’s faults, but hides one’s own,
even as a crafty fowler hides behind sham branches.

253. He who seeks another’s faults, who is ever
censorious—his cankers grow. He is far from
destruction of the cankers.
Dhammapada
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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Because those who have faith in the right Dharma and those who damage it are constantly in competition, and good and evil people are in conflict with each other, ignorant and deluded people easily become shallow admirers of the heterodox teachings and those who follow the pure and correct teaching frequently encounter unjust persecutions.
Forest of Pearls vol. 1:79
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Re: In Praise of Virtue

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The whole duty of man is embraced in the two principles of abstinence and patience: temperance in prosperity, and patient courage in adversity.
Seneca
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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