Why cultivate good qualities?
The nature of the mind is such that if certain mental qualities are developed on a sound basis, they not only remain, but they also increase. In fact, once properly developed, the mind’s good qualities eventually increase indefinitely. Therefore spiritual practice brings us long-term happiness and inner strength.
~HH Dalai Lama
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Well said…….we must cultivate good qualities and develop a strong mind which will lead us to happiness. Transforming our mind with good qualities will naturally made us a better person. Our mind is a powerful thing when you fill it with positive thoughts ,our life will start to change. There is a saying …. a positive mind give us a positve thinking. and a positive life A goof mind will eventually increase indefinitely.
Thank you Rinpoche for this wonderful teaching and reminder. It is so important to train and feed our mind with good values and qualities. Our mind is so powerful that it control our action and speech. Therefore, if we develop a good mind and always be mindful on our thoughts and action, we will transform to be a better person. Ultimately, we hope to find happiness and liberate ourselves from suffering.
Rinpoche gave a wonderful teaching about this recently which explained how we can increase our positive qualities.
First, we start by looking at all our qualities – positive or negative. We can also ask people close around us to tell us honestly what qualities they see in us (positive and negative). Then we take stock of where we are. This is not an exercise to make ourselves feel good or bad, but to see ourselves truthfully. In truth, every single one of us will have both good and bad qualities!
Seeing that, we make an assessment. We may have 5 weaknesses but we will also have AT LEAST one good point about us. No one is completely negative and bad! Having even just one positive quality is enough to begin with.
Say for example, our single good quality is generosity. So we can focus on developing just this one quality. We will find that as we focus on generosity and making it grow, we will also develop other positive qualities along the way. To be more generous, we will also need to be patient, understanding, kind, thoughtful, helpful etc. Along the way also, we will start to cut down on our negative qualities because the positive qualities we are developing we cancel out the bad stuff – once we develop patience, impatience will be eliminated; when we develop understanding, selfishness is reduced etc etc
Isn’t this wonderful? That everything good can be made to grow and increase and most importantly, to remain.
there is hope for every single one of us, indeed!
This is a very simple 5-line paragraph, yet this quote is very good for our constant reflection reminder.
When mental qualities are developed, both negative and positive qualities get increased over times. It certainly is a nice thing to have good qualities, but poor qualities over time make people ugly as they get multiplied over times.
As we die, our bodies do not follow us. But our mental qualities follow us from one lifetime to another.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this quote with us. It helps me to curb negative thoughts within me and encourages me to develop good aspects within myself.
For even though we have the same inner nature as Buddha, we have not recognized it because it is so enclosed and wrapped up in our individual ordinary minds, our ordinary minds chasing fro short term happiness if we denial that spiritual practice truly can bring us long term happiness and inner strength.
Buddhists believe our mind continues from one life to the next. It never ages, it never dies. Therefore whatever we imprint ( positive and negative) on our minds will be carried forward continuously.
We have the inner nature that is the potentiality for enlightenment. If we engage in practices that purify all the negativities and at the same time practice and increase the positive qualities, the spiritual practice will DEFINITELY brings us the “long term happiness and inner strength”.
We are the ultimate decision maker of our destiny, no outer creator or destroyer.
This makes so much sense. Developing mental qualities is very important if we want to be happy. For example, if we develop integrity, we will earn people’s respect, we will respect ourselves, our self confidence will increase and we will succeed in our endeavours. When we have integrity, we will deliver what we say.
This quality will extremely important because it will help us develop inner strength and eventually, long term happiness. This is part of being spiritual.
Very true. How i wish my mind can have lots of wisdom and intelligent. With wisdom; its enable me to see things in more kind ways. Not only benefit myself but also people who i everyday met with. To develop a good quality in mind, i think the first thing to do is disciplinary, mean consistency.
We can learn and practice good qualities at any time, young or old. It is never too late. The reason of practicing good qualities is to cultivate it, good qualities which bring us peace and happiness. They are the benefits. If not, learning the good qualities and sharing them to others, what else is there to it?
And to practice good qualities is not when we have troubles or in difficult positions. Like exercising and eating a balance diet, if we don’t do it periodically, we know it brings benefits to us, but we cannot actually experience the benefits, because we haven’t invest the time and energy into it, just like exercising and eating, how can our body experience good health without actually doing it?
Check our mind, observe, daily we focus on people’s good qualities or bad qualities? If we can recognize, it means we have it too, ie Laziness, Bitchy etc.
When thing turns bad, we only look at the negative side and keep going down and never find a way to climb up, because all the while we have been focusing on the bad side and refuse to look at the other side of the coin.
We all have the Buddha nature which means we have the capability to become a Buddha. But to become one as Buddha, we need merits to open up all the good imprints in our subtle mind. Hence holding vows, be kind, prayers, mantra will help us to generate merits and opens up all the good imprint we had planted countless time ago.
Too bad, these days people only want short-term happiness and long term suffering and they think that vows are chains which tie them up but in fact the vows make us free as we are eliminating all the bad qualities in us and we become a better person which does not need to hide.
It is sometimes hard to even define good qualities in ourself. We all naturally love ourself too much, whatever we do we tend to think that we are always right and not others. Holding wrong views that is. Since we can be 100% accurately right, so why not follow someone who truly knows what is right? One of the most beautiful things in Buddhism is to let us know, “you can be a Buddha” too!!! Our lives don’t just end when we’re dead. So by relying in our spiritual practice is the best thing that we can do for ourself in this very life.
Why develop good qualities??
Because .. wealth empowers you to purchase a nice house of your choice and you can decorate it well, enables you to buy clothes that can decorate your body well but NOT you as ONLY your virtue and your very own good conduct can decorate you.
Thanks hap buni, we can be ‘very high class’ in outlook and all but our actions or speech is a dead give away it can be a major turn off even of outwardly you go like WOW. But how much can we be impressed with the outwards it does not last. Our skin will last us 50-60 years, everything gyrates towards gravity anyways. The security we got from our beauty is deceptive and is transient once the beauty fades so does the people who were attracted to that in the first place.