OK, Protestant virtues. If they are good virtues, why can't they be Buddhist as well? Now you mention hard work, are you going to do this practice without hard work? Are you going to get very far? I don't think so, I think you need hard work. Thrift. OK, being frugal, a nicer word than thrift, this is not wasting the earth's resources, not buying 1400 pairs of shoes, whatever else. Thrift, to be frugal, Protestant ethic, Buddhist Ethic, we're using it out of Compassion to the world, to not waste, to not buy more than we need. So it sounds to me like that would be Buddhist, too. Abstinence? It doesn't say abstinence of what, but alcohol and drugs, Buddhism is into that, it confuses the mind so let's not do it. Abstinence from lying, stealing, yeah, Buddhism is into that. Let's go back to the first one, tidiness. Are you neat and tidy at home? Does it help you in your life? Does it help make things simple, or are you sloppy at home and it takes you 15 minutes to find your toothbrush. So tidiness itself seems to me to be a compassionate thing we do for ourselves just to make things easier for ourselves and easier for everyone else, to be tidy. It seems to me a lot of those Protestant ethics, if they're good wholesome ethics, obviously Buddhism will embrace them.
Interesting thing about Buddhism is that to a certain extent everything is based on Compassion, the whole works. Some of you know about what is called the Five Precepts in Buddhism, although Rosemary and I don't mention them in the retreat. We don't mention them because we feel we're talking about something that's behind all five. If you work with compassion, you won't kill anyone, you're not going to steal, you're not going to have sexual misconduct, and you're not going to become a danger to yourself or others by confusing your brain with drugs or getting drunk. You're not going to do those if you open the compassion door. Then all the different virtues of hard work, frugality and everything else, they're going to be naturally arising, because we're feeding the root cause for them to arise. Out of compassion we don't want to harm, out of compassion we don't want to make a problem for ourselves and for others.