Some Thoughts On Virtue

In the Morning Service, a part of my Kagyu pre-ngondro practices, there is a section with the following lines:

"Action done is never without result.
But action not done is never met.
Development is part of all action.
The results of virtue and evil
are happiness and suffering,
inevitably ripening for the doer...
So, if I am not to achieve my own destruction,
I should as a matter of principle believe in
action and result."

I have in the past spent much time developing ways in which I can become more virtuous. During one period of my life, my little scheme was based on being more godly. I had a plan you see. The cult of christianity teaches that you have God in only after you invite him. Buddhism teaches that you are born with Buddha nature. For both of them, the idea is to realize that nature. A lot of where virtue comes from, that character we want, is based on choices.

For the moment I will tell you that some times making a choice is difficult. Habituations that lead to addictions can make choosing difficult. Inevitably we all run up against that choice though. Do I or do I not proceed with this action? This is what is called the development mentioned above, which we can return to later.

Making a choice requires a bit of ability in looking inward. Many choices, lets say those of addictive nature, are based on senses. Making pain go away, or the rush of the hunt, or the actual buzz of the action itself. All followed by the cycle of addiction. The beginning is being aware that you have a choice. Let's use a popular example, and that is sex. Now, in our American standards, and judeo-christian mythology, we have adhered to a centuries old model of marriage that has a failure rate of 50%. One might think it's time to reconsider the model. But that is where we are. So we consider infidelity from that viewpoint of marriage. Do I or do I not choose to flirt, the real beginning, with this person. You're sitting there having coffee, and you know that it's a conversation based on what is going on, nothing on the personal level. To broach the personal level is where flirting begins. "Gee, you look pretty good for your age." That introduces the male/female difference, the gender/attraction dimension into the conversation. You make the choice to make the comment. Why? Ah, the big question.

What do you stand to gain from this course of action. See it? Action. Action brings result. You make the comment, the other party deflects it, you're either embarrassed or hurt, and the potential of friendship or functional community relationship is thwarted because you were trying to fulfill a need for yourself that in reality, that other person can't fill anyway. And a whole new set of perspectives is set in motion, and that's part of the complexity of karma.


On the other hand, you choose to not make the comment. That sets into motion a lot of other karmic results. You've realized that the consequences of making the comment are not favorable, so you keep thoughts and words to yourself, enjoy the coffee break, and go about your life. What you've just done is transformed a little samsara into nirvana. And a lot of little transformations in time add up to big changes. It's the result of constant practice, just like playing an instrument. A lot of mistakes at first, but learning what you are doing wrong, being gentle on yourself, and in time it begins to fall into place. What it boils down to is, is my behavior a response to attention, or reaction?


If it's a reaction, what is being served? Probing that will provide interesting materials, and as the lojong teachings encourage us, "Work with the greatest defilements first." This is a great place to do tonglen for oneself, and Sogyal Rinpoche has a great section about it in his book, The Tibetan Book of Living And Dying. Not only will this help us in outward manifestations, it cuts to even the subtler forms of our habituations, right to where we can catch the thoughts as they occur, and then allow the mind to relax. All said though, the living in reaction mode is living in samsara mode. It's a lack of attention. And the prescription for that is a sitting meditation practice, where we learn the art of paying attention.


Paying attention gives us the choice of honest virtuous action, and the resultant karmic train. The Merit 109, rolling down the Karma Line. Action born of attention is joyous upon meeting, and once we gain stability in that, then just like the samsaric reaction mode was our nature, then the nirvana attention mode will be our nature, and ultimately we will discover, our true nature. One we can rest and relax in. A nature that has a lot of happy meetings of results along the way, one of happiness, and one of virtue. 


Nirvana is just a choice away.