In Praise of Virtue

[Nicholas]

Here is a Russell Kirk article on Virtue and the waning of its practice, even its intellectual study:

Kirk Essay “Virtue: Can It Be Taught?”

 

[osgart]

How would you define virtue?

I don't see anybody living very long without honesty, or love.

From beast, to tribal cooperation, back to beasts again I guess.

Even If they don't call them virtues, everybody relies on virtues to live one day of life.

 

[Nicholas]

How would you define virtue?

I don't see anybody living very long without honesty, or love.

From beast, to tribal cooperation, back to beasts again I guess.

Even If they don't call them virtues, everybody relies on virtues to live one day of life.

Kirk covers the ground pretty well:

The concept of virtue, like most other concepts that have endured and remain worthy of praise, has come down to us from the Greeks and the Hebrews. ln its classical signification, “virtue” means the power of anything to accomplish its specific function; a property capable of producing certain effects; strength, force, potency. Thus one refers to the “deadly virtue” of the hemlock. Thus also the word “virtue” implies a mysterious energetic power, as in the Gospel According to Saint Mark: “Jesus, immediately knowing that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?” Was it, we may ask, that virtue of Jesus which scorched the Shroud of Turin?

Virtue, then, meant in the beginning some extraordinary power. The word was applied to the sort of person we might now call “the charismatic leader.” By extension, “virtue” came to imply the qualities of full humanity: strength, courage, capacity, worth, manliness, moral excellence. And presently “virtue” came to signify, as well, moral goodness: the practice of moral duties and the conformity of life to the moral law; uprightness; rectitude.

 

[Nicholas]

Whenever a person raises himself through good deeds, through a higher stirring of his yearning for godliness, for wisdom, justice, beauty and equity, he perfects thereby the spiritual disposition of all existence. All people become better in their inwardness through the ascendency of the good in any one of them. . . . Such virtue in any one person is due to spread among the general populace, to stir each one, according to his capacity, toward merit, and thus all existence thereby becomes ennobled and more exalted.

Rabbi A.I. Kook (d. 1935)

 

[Nicholas]

A bodhisattva maintains a mind of great compassion toward those who are evil.

Nagarjuna

 

[Nicholas]

Rav Kook on modesty & tolerance:

Character Traits

 

[Nicholas]

"Whene’er a noble deed is wrought
Whene’er is spoken a noble thought
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
And lifts us unawares
Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
And by their overflow
Raise us from what is low!"

Longfellow reminds that simply knowing about noble thoughts, words or deeds inspires & encourages us in the same direction.

 

[Nicholas]

Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and
certainty. Crime and punishment grow on one stem; punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the
flower of pleasure which concealed it. You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. The thief steals from
himself; the swindler swindles himself. Everything in nature, even motes and feathers, goes by law and not by
luck. What a man sows, he reaps.

Emerson

 

[Nicholas]

The great division of our affections is into the selfish and the benevolent. If the character of virtue, therefore, cannot be ascribed indifferently to all our affections, when under proper government and direction, it must be confined either to those which aim directly at our own private happiness, or to those which aim directly at that of others. If virtue, therefore, does not consist in propriety, it must consist either in prudence or in benevolence. Besides these three, it is scarce possible to imagine that any other account can be given of the nature of virtue.

Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments

 

[Nicholas]

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Edmund Burke

 

[Nicholas]

"The Buddha has taught that there are three roots of evil: greed, hatred and delusion. These three
states comprise the entire range of evil, whether of lesser or greater intensity, from a faint mental
tendency to the coarsest manifestations in action and speech. In whatever way they appear, these
are the basic causes of suffering.

These roots have their opposites: non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion. These are the three
roots of good: of all acts of unselfishness, liberality and renunciation; of all expressions of loving
kindness and compassion; of all achievements in knowledge and understanding.

These six mental states are the roots from which everything harmful and beneficial sprouts.
They are the roots of the Tree of Life with its sweet and bitter fruits."

From Roots of Good and Evil by Nyanaponika Maha Thera.

 

[Nicholas]

See the nation embroiled in strife!
How this has moved my heart,
How I was stirred, I shall now tell.

Seeing the crowds in frantic movement,
Like swarms of fish when the pond dries up;
Seeing how people fight each other,
By fear and horror I was struck.

Sutta-Nipata vv. 935–36

 

[Nicholas]

Fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.

Shakespeare

 

[Nicholas]

The marks and such of the Tathāgata’s physical form are such that no one in the world could fathom, for, even trying in unison to assess them for countless kalpas, his physical marks and awesome virtue become ever more boundless.

Manjushri in Avatamsaka Sutra

 

[Nicholas]

iI one were to stand at the crossroads, extensively expounding on doing the many good deeds even though he himself still has no genuine virtue; failing to practice Dharma is just like this.

Avatamsaka Sutra

 

[Nicholas]

With inconceivable wisdom and sovereign mastery, bodhisattvas are unimpeded in the phrasings used in speaking Dharma. In giving, moral virtue, patience, vigor, dhyāna absorption, wisdom, skillful means, spiritual superknowledges, and such. They possess sovereign mastery in all practices such as these through the power of the Buddha’s flower adornment samādhi.

Avatamsaka Sutra