I found an essay by Tsoknyi Rinpoche (I believe the Rinpoche is of the Phaktru Drukpa lineage of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism) titled "The Meaning of Virtue and Virtuosity." Which got me thinking about the word virtue. Just what is "virtue," anyway?
For me, the first thing the words virtue and virtuous evoke is something like propriety, or conforming to moral standards. A virtuous person often is defined by what he doesn't do (e.g., drink, lie, have inappropriate sex). This sort of virtuous person takes the Thou Shalt Nots very seriously.
And I think, if this is what virtue is, it's lame. You could spend your life not doing anything, and be wonderfully virtuous, but how does that leave the world a better place? Or bring anyone nearer to enlightenment?
Virtue can also be a quality; for example, patience is a virtue. There's an old-fashioned use of the word that means power -- "He was invited to join the Country Club by virtue of his wealth." The root word vir is Latin for "man," and long ago the word virtue meant something like "manliness."
This is important, because the words we use do tend to shape how we understand things. If the English word virtue suggests sober Puritans or gilded greeting card angels, that's going to affect how you understand it in a Buddhist context, too.
And to complicate matters, I looked "virtue" up in an English-to-Pali dictionary, and got sila, as in Sila Paramita, which is the same word translated as "morality." In English, virtue and morality are related but not exactly the same thing. So always keep in mind that meaning and connotation shift around as one goes from one language to another.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche says that newbies to Buddhism get anxious around the word "virtue." It's all those lurking Puritans, I'm telling you. He reminds us that the first "rule" is ahimsa -- do no harm. But here's another language lesson --
"But the Tibetan word gewa, which is often translated as "virtue," has a deeper, more significant meaning. Like the old Middle English word vertue, which was related to the effectiveness of an herb or other plant to strengthen certain qualities inherent in the body and the mind, gewa means making choices that extend our emotional and intellectual strength, illuminate our potential greatness, build our confidence, and enhance our ability to assist those in need of help."
That's a more useful way to understand virtue, I think.
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