# Instructor Luis

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<summary>Interests</summary>

Improving Happiness

* Exploring methods to develop a happiness which is facilitating independent happiness and morality.

Improving Virtue

* Exploring methods to develop habits that are of moral benefit.

Improving Moral Understanding

* Understanding what is good & bad and their respective causes.

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<summary>Benefits of Practice</summary>

#### Happiness

Month by month I notice a weakening of my negative reactions and a strengthening of my positive responses. Difficulties definitely remain for me, however I have found a way to skillfully be with them and nurture my well-being sustainably.

#### Moral Virtues

* **Moral Intent**
  * Increasingly automatic response to everyone & everything.
    * Near-complete replacement (\~95%) of self-directed anger with kindness
  * Moral intent (kindness) as my logical and mindful choice for interacting with everyone & everything
* **Moral Clarity**
  * Increased ability to understand different moral frameworks
  * Feeling tone (valence) as well as virtue/vice as unit of good & bad
  * Moral Circle expanded to include all sentience
  * Moral Weight given to all habits - animate or innamite
  * Improved humility  i.e., ability to update beliefs via non-attachment and understanding causality
* **Moral Capacity**
  * Energized via releasing exhausting variables such as  compassion fatigue, guilt & anger
  * Increasingly taking action via releasing fear and shame and cultivating sympathetic joy and compassion

Every day I am witnessing and learning from the relationship between skills, happiness and causing good.  &#x20;

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<summary>Influences</summary>

**Happiness** **Practices**

* Theravada Buddhism ([Goenka](https://www.dhamma.org/en/index), [Pa Auk Sayadaw](https://www.paaukforestmonastery.org/), [Mahasi Sayadaw](http://www.panditarama-lumbini.info/))
* Secular mindfulness ([Shinzen Young's Unified Mindfulness](https://unifiedmindfulness.com/), [Stephen Procter's MIDL](https://midlmeditation.com/))&#x20;
* Psychotherapy (EMDR)
* My own investigation

**Moral Theory**

* Theravada Buddhism
* Utilitarianism
* Virtue Ethics
* Effective Altruism&#x20;
* My own investigation

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