Virtue
Virtue and morality are the mother and father of the Dharma growing within us, providing it with the proper nourishment and direction. Virtue is the basis for a harmonious world in which people can live truly as humans, not animals. Developing virtue is at the heart of our practice. It is very simple. Keep the training precepts. Do not kill, no stealing, do not lie nor committing sexual misdeeds or taking intoxicants that will make you heedless.
Cultivate compassion and a reverence for all life. Take care with your goods, your possessions, you actions and your speech. Use virtue to make your life simple and pure. With virtue as a basis of everything you do, your mind will become kind, clear and quiet. Meditation will grow easily in this soil.
The Buddha said, "Refrain from what is bad, do good and purify the heart". Our practice, then, is to get rid of what is worthless and keep what is valuable. Do you still have anything bad or unskillful in your heart. Of course. So why not clean up your house?
As true practice, getting rid of the bad ones and cultivating good is fine but limited. Finally, we must step over and beyond both good and bad. In the end, there is a freedom that includes all and undesirable from which love and wisdom naturally flows.
Right effort and virtue are not a question of what you do outwardly but of constant inner awareness and restraint. Thus, charity, if given with good intention can bring happiness to oneself and others as well. But virtue must be the root of this charity for it to be pure.
When those who do not understand well in the Dharma act in an improper manner, they look left and right to make sure no one is looking. How foolish. The Buddha, the Dharma, our Karma are always watching. Do you think the Buddha cannot see that far? We never really get away with anything we are doing.
Take care of your virtue as a gardener takes care of his trees and plants. Do not be attached to big and small, important and unimportant. Some people want short cuts - they say, forget concentration, we will go straight into insight; forget virtue, we will start with concentration. We have so many excuses for our attachment.
We must start right here where we are, directly and simply. When the first two steps, virtue and right views, have been completed, then the third step, uprooting defilement, will naturally occur without deliberation. When the light is produced, we no longer worry about getting rid of darkness, nor do we wonder where the darkness has gone. We just know that there is light.
Following the precepts has three levels. The first is to undertake them as training rules to us by our teachers. The second arises when we undertake and abide in them by ourselves. But for those at the highest levels, the Noble Ones, it is not even necessary to think about precepts of right or wrong. This true virtue comes from wisdom that knows the Four Noble Truth in the heart and acts from this understanding.
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