#precept

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt. ↗

— Rene Descartes

#doubt #first #i #knew #never

I don't know of any cases where as a result of religious precepts a population have found themselves enjoying less food than they would have if they didn't follow this particular religion. ↗

— Marvin Harris

#cases #enjoying #follow #food #found

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow. ↗

— Mary Wollstonecraft

#aspires #believes #dangerous #example #greater

I would like to ofer some exercises that can help us use the Five Precepts to cultivate and strengthen mindfulness. It is best to choose one of these exercises and work with it meticulously for a week. Then examine the results and choose another for a subsequent week. These practices can help us understand and find ways to work with each precept. 1. Refrain from killing: reverence for life. Undertake for one week to purposefully bring no harm in thought, word, or deed to any living creature. Particularly, become aware of any living beings in your world (people, animals, even plants) whom you ignore, and cultivate a sense of care and reverence for them too. 2. Refraining from stealing: care with material goods. Undertake for one week to act on every single thought of generosity that arises spontaneously in your heart. 3. Refraining from sexual misconduct: conscious sexuality. Undertake for one week to observe meticulously how often sexual feelings arise in your consciousness. Each time, note what particular mind states you find associated with them such as love, tension, compulsion, caring, loneliness, desire for communication, greed, pleasure, agression, and so forth. 4. Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party). 5. Refraining from intoxicants to the point of heedlessness. Undertake for one week or one month to refrain from all intoxicants and addictive substances (such as wine, marijuana, even cigarettes and/or caffeine if you wish). Observe the impulses to use these, and become aware of what is going on in the heart and mind at the time of those impulses (88-89). ↗

— Jack Kornfield

#mindfulness #communication

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances. ↗

— James Russell Lowell

#example #impulse #life #person #precept

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done. ↗

— Samuel Smiles

#could #done #example #failure #failures

A man obtains his God-the-Preceptor at the age of twelve years and four months. At the age of twenty four years and eight months he gets and sees Atma, God, in the seventh plane. It takes twelve years and four months in the body for God’s manifestations and realizations in multifarious conditions in the process of transformation of life-power into God. ↗

— Sri Jibankrishna Diamond

#god #preceptor #age

I began to exercise a lot of cinematic muscle with the precepts I had learned in the New York art world. Film was intriguing. I began to think of art as elitist; film was not. ↗

— Kathryn Bigelow

#art world #began #cinematic #elitist #exercise

I cannot remember a time when the Golden Rule was not my motto and precept, the torch that guided my footsteps. ↗

— James Cash Penney

#footsteps #golden #golden rule #guided #i

In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept. ↗

— Quintilian

#everything #experience #more #precept #than