“No one uses words like ‘virtue’ anymore, Father Joe,” author Tony Hendra said to the monk who became his true father. He recorded this conversation in his memoir, Father Joe (2002).

   In our youth, we associated the word virtue with sexual purity and abstinence. It may have been because when we were boys and girls growing up the virtue of chastity was drilled into us by our parents. They wanted to help us stay out of trouble. As teenagers we were often sensitive to the damage caused by an unwanted pregnancy, especially if there was someone in our class who did not escape the terrible trials of lost virtue.

   I was out of high school when I became more aware of the meaning of virtue in the classic sense. “Socrates and his successors, Plato and Aristotle, taught that virtue is knowledge. (98:2.6, pg. 1079)” I have mentioned before that the Urantia Book (UB) strives to improve and upstep our language. In Paper 16:7.6 (pg. 193), Morals, Virtue and Personality, the authors set out to rehabilitate the word virtue, to restore the forgotten meaning.

   “Virtue is righteousness—conformity with the cosmos,” is the UB definition extending it far beyond the Greek idea, “virtue is knowledge.” I was somewhat perplexed by it as I’d never seen such a meaning attributed to the word before. It’s amusing to look back now and recall the narrower meaning we thought it had as kids.

   The Buddha’s teachings of mindfulness also help me further understand the value of learning courage and self-discipline to achieve self-mastery. Virtue always meant work of some kind but this was more the kind of work virtue entailed. Making decisions: we have free will to make decisions for good or evil. Choosing the good is up to our well-honed judgments and informed actions.

   In my studies of the American Indian medicine wheel and its re-occurrence in Jungian psychology (also used by Robert Bly in his poetic theory), I realized how the four directions of the medicine wheel depicted the self-correcting balance mechanism of all creation. “Morality, virtue is indigenous to human personality (16:7.1).” When our behavior tips out of balance, we can draw on elements from our psyche that will put it back in place. Carl Jung emphasized the value of our “unconscious” resources. The medicine wheel is therefore often used as a therapeutic tool in crisis or drug counseling centers to help patients develop an awareness of their own inherent healing resources.

   In guiding ourselves to the choice of using the medicine wheel concept to achieve mental health, we are actually choosing to align ourselves with cosmic reality. The wheel depicts what the Universal Father has already set in place as part of “human mind endowment (16:7.1).” Morality is inherent to creation, to the universe’s structure. The Father, Creator, provided us with a moral universe. Through our decisions we align ourselves with such a creation, accepting correction, even chastisement, when we are out of balance. We also refer to this as choosing to do God’s will, “and such choosing ability is evidence of the possession of a moral nature (16:7.6).” By faith, we take possession, ownership of the gift we were given.

   If you are Buddhist, you turn the wheel of dharma in the same way, creating good karma by living in balance and obeying the universal law of the dharma, “that which supports,” “all things and events are part of an indivisible whole.”

   Here is the UB quote in full: 

   “Virtue is righteousness—conformity with the cosmos. To name virtues is not to define them, but to live them is to know them. Virtue is not mere knowledge nor yet wisdom but rather the reality of progressive experience in the attainment of ascending levels of cosmic achievement. In the day-by-day life of mortal man, virtue is realized by the consistent choosing of good rather than evil, and such choosing ability is evidence of the possession of a moral nature.” (16:7.6)

   God does not expect us to be perfectly virtuous upon discovering it, but to make progress in our attainment. Decisions and action, completion of decisions, are essential.

 “God the Father deals with man his child on the basis, not of actual virtue or worthiness, but in recognition of the child's motivation—the creature purpose and intent. The relationship is one of parent-child association and is actuated by divine love.” (103:4.5, pg. 1133) And this is what Jesus came to earth to reveal about the Father’s nature and his moral universe.