What's Virtue Anyway?

In a recent article, Sakyong Mipham discussed courage from the standpoint of vision.  Having a vision for your life that incorporates our Basic Goodness, our Inner Divinity, creates bravery of a certain kind.  The bravery he refers to is the bravery that lets us engage always in virtue. 

Some people think being present to life means doing whatever comes up in front of you.  That is not enough.  We must address whatever comes up in front of us, moment by moment, with virtue.  The virtue I am speaking of is not a simple thing; it involves being clear enough to judge quickly what the situation of that moment requires and then doing it.  It involves knowing ourselves well enough to be able to see through any deception we might throw onto the "screen" in an attempt to justify something less than virtuous behavior.  It involves the strength to act with virtue, to do the right thing, regardless of that deception.

"Deception" is often synonymous with "justification."  We justify things like overspending, gluttony, selfishness and self-centeredness all the time, without even knowing it.  In fact, we often simply do not even see that we are justifying.  That is what we can throw up in front of what is presented.  If we act according to our justification, we often take away from ourselves and others.  That is not virtue; virtue means looking at the situation with clarity and wisdom.

"Virtue" is not something we can glean from a list of terms, although such lists can help us in the beginning to identify certain virtuous actions.  Virtue means being true to our inner nature -- the Divine that each of us truly is.  It means acting as if we truly ARE the Presence of Spirit on earth. 

While the Divine is unknowable, there are certain things we can be sure of:  God/Spirit/Universal Intelligence is rooted in Life and Love; therefore any action that takes away Life from another, or from ourselves, is not Divine in nature.  Any action that is unloving is not Divine in nature.  This all gets complicated in situations where we have to quickly balance the consequences:  for example, if we see a bus heading for an elderly person and a child, and we can only push one out of the way, which do we choose? 

This kind of decision making is always an individual matter -- based upon our knowledge of our self and our Self and the clarity we gain from our spiritual practice.  Any time we act from our Inner Goodness, our True Self, we will act with virtue and wisdom.

This is why spiritual practice is so important -- it is what lets us know ourselves thoroughly and be able to anticipate the justifications and deceptions we carry around with us.  It is what lets us experience our Basic Goodness.  And once we get a taste of that inner truth, virtue becomes our very nature.

Blessings!