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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Good works may exist without saving principles, and therefore cannot contain in themselves the principles of salvation; but saving principles never did, never can exist without good works.
Men often talk against faith, and make strange monsters in their imagination of those who profess to abide by the words of the apostle interpreted literally, and yet in their ordinary feelings they themselves judge and act by a similar principle. For what is love without kind offices whenever they are possible? (and they are always possible, if not by actions, commonly so called, yet by kind words, by kind looks, and, where these are out of our power, by kind thoughts and fervent prayers!)
Yet what noble mind would not be offended if he were supposed to value the serviceable offices equally with the love that produced them; or if he were thought to value the love for the sake of the services, and not the services for the sake of the love?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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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Wisdom alone is a science of other sciences and of itself.
Plato - Charmides
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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Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
Tennyson.
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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Three means to fortify belief are experience, reason, and authority. Of these the more potent is authority; for belief upon reason or experience will stagger.
Francis Bacon (d. 1626)
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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Authority intoxicates
And makes mere sots of magistrates.
The fumes of it invade the brain
And make men giddy, proud and vain.
By this the fool commands the wise;
The noble with the base complies.
The sot assumes the role of wit
And cowards make the base submit.
Samuel Butler (d.1902)
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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No punishment is too great for the man who can build his greatness upon his country's ruin.
George Washington
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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Now the tree of life is Virtue in the most comprehensive sense, which some term Goodness. From it the particular virtues derive their existence.
Philo (d. 50)
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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The common and vulgar love for boys, not only robs men of courage, the virtue most useful for life in peace as well as war, but produces in their souls the disease of effeminacy and renders androgynous those who should have been trained in all the pursuits making for valor. And having ruined their years of boyhood, and degraded them to the class and condition of sex objects, it injures the lovers, too, in the most essential respects, body, mind, and property. For the mind of the boy-lover is necessarily aimed at his darling, and is keen-sighted for him only, blind to all other interests, private and public.
Philo in his Contemplative Life, Winston translation
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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Those things on which philosophy has set its seal are beyond the reach of injury; no age will discard them or lessen their force, each succeeding century will add somewhat to the respect in which they are held; for we look upon what is near us with jealous eyes, but we admire what is further off with less prejudice. The wise man's life, therefore, includes much; he is not hedged in by the same limits which confine others; he alone is exempt from the laws by which mankind is governed; all ages serve him like a god. If any time be past he recalls it by his memory, if it be present he uses it, if it be future he anticipates it; his life is a long one because he concentrates all times into it.
Seneca (d. 65)
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 eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it, and that leads to many misunderstandings.
Solzhenitsyn
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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Key verses from chapter 5 of Shantideva's Bodhisattva Guide:
Where would there be leather enough to cover the entire world?
The earth is covered over merely with the leather of my sandals.

Likewise, I am unable to restrain external phenomena, but I shall
restrain my own mind. What need is there to restrain anything else?
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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All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.

Is there need for lengthy explanation?
Childish beings look out for themselves;
Buddhas labor for the good of others:
See the difference that divides them!
From chapter 8 of Shantideva's Guide for Bodhisattvas.
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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Who meditates oppression, his dwelling is overturned.
Babylonian Hymn to Samas.
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 foolish and vulgar are always accustomed to value equally the good and the bad.
Charles Yriarte (d. 1898)
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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From AN 8:53
“As for the qualities of which you may know, ‘These qualities lead
to dispassion, not to passion;
to being unfettered, not to being fettered;
to shedding, not to accumulating;
to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement;
to contentment, not to discontent;
to reclusiveness, not to entanglement;
to aroused persistence, not to laziness;
to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome’:
You may categorically hold, ‘This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher’s instruction.’”
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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