{"id":4511,"date":"2018-10-18T11:11:33","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T15:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/?p=4511"},"modified":"2018-10-18T11:11:33","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T15:11:33","slug":"heroic-willpower-virya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/2018\/10\/18\/heroic-willpower-virya\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroic Willpower (Virya)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6>ISSN 1076-9005<br \/>\nVolume 25, 2018<\/h6>\n<h3>Freedom through Cumulative Moral Cultivation: Heroic Willpower (<em>V\u012brya<\/em>)<\/h3>\n<p>Jonathan C. Gold<br \/>\nPrinceton University <\/p>\n<p>Although abstract speculation on \u201cfreedom of the will\u201d is hard to find in premodern Buddhist writings, this is not for Buddhists\u2019 lack of attention to responsibility and effortful moral acts. This paper studies early teachings on the <em>dharmas<\/em> called \u201ceffort\u201d (<em>vy\u0101y\u0101ma<\/em>) and \u201cheroic will-power\u201d (<em>v\u012brya<\/em>), which are key to such quintessential Buddhist lists as the Eightfold Path, the Four Right Endeavors, and the Perfections cultivated by a bodhisattva. A look at effortful action as treated in traditional Buddhist texts helps to show why the western philosophical preoccupation with \u201cfree will\u201d is not self-evidently worthwhile from a practical or moral perspective. Effort on the Buddhist path accumulates into moral strength through numerous and different kinds of enactments at the level of individual mental events. The goal of this model of practice is that one arrives at the ability to transcend the busy, messy work of having to <em>decide<\/em> to act morally\u2014one\u2019s virtue becomes spontaneous. This structure suggests that not only is the capacity for moral choice not a necessary precondition of effective practice or moral significance; it may get in the way.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/files\/2018\/10\/Gold-final.pdf\">Read article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISSN 1076-9005 Volume 25, 2018 Freedom through Cumulative Moral Cultivation: Heroic Willpower (V\u012brya) Jonathan C. Gold Princeton University Although abstract speculation on \u201cfreedom of the will\u201d is hard to find in premodern Buddhist writings, this is not for Buddhists\u2019 lack of attention to responsibility and effortful moral acts. This paper studies early teachings on the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/2018\/10\/18\/heroic-willpower-virya\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Heroic Willpower (Virya)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[125215],"tags":[2720,125237,125238,125239,2690,125240,1317],"class_list":["post-4511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volume-25-2018","tag-bodhisattva","tag-effort","tag-eightfold-path","tag-four-right-endeavors","tag-free-will","tag-perfections-of-bodhisattva","tag-philosophy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5X8HA-1aL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/buddhistethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}