Life is hard. But virtue makes it fun. It’s like saying that tennis is hard. But getting better at tennis makes it fun. Virtue is the process of getting better at life, so it makes life fun. This is hard to understand because so often, we think that being better at...
I once walked into a beach house with a stunning panoramic view of the ocean, and I made a joke, “This house is very Buddhist: it possesses right view.” Jokes aside, right view is far more important to the Buddhist path than first meets the eye (yes, pun...
(Context: The Awesome Power of Virtue) In earlier posts (for example, this one), I mentioned that the reason we practice virtue in Buddhism is that virtue is highly conducive to our own happiness. It gets even better. In addition to increasing your own...
If I ever give you the mistaken impression that virtue is merely the preparation for meditation, and that meditation is the “real Buddhism”, then you should scold me and call me funny names. In truth, virtue is a powerful and essential component in every step of...
In a discourse called the Discourse of the Great Forty[1], the Buddha taught that you can think the first seven parts of the Noble Eightfold Path as being the “support and requisites” for the last one, right samadhi. He also suggested that there is some...
