Search results for: "The Five Strengths"

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  2. The Five Faculties Confirmed
     … The next two sets, which are basically identical—the five faculties and the five strengths—contain effort, mindfulness, and concentration, and they add two more faculties: conviction and discernment. These two faculties provide the framework for our practice. It’s because of conviction that we’re practicing, and it’s for the sake of discernment that we’re practicing concentration. The two qualities help … 
  3. A Matter of Life & Death
     … What is he going to do? Is he going to go back and try to find a doctor? He says, “No, I’m going to depend on the five strengths. I’m going to depend on the seven factors for awakening.” In other words, he’s going to learn how to take his practice as his refuge. And that’s a principle we should … 
  4. Look after Your Baby
     … All of this comes under the list of the Buddha’s teachings on the five strengths. You have to strengthen your conviction. You have to strengthen your persistence, your mindfulness, your concentration, and your discernment. Those strengths are listed in a row—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—but that doesn’t mean that you start with just the beginning ones. All five have to … 
  5. The Strength of Conviction
     … This was why, when the Buddha listed the five strengths with the fifth being discernment—the discernment that leads to the end of suffering—the first item in the list is conviction: conviction that your actions do matter and ultimately, of course, that there is a way out. Having this conviction helps you get around problems in your meditation. If the mind has trouble … 
  6. Potentials for Energy
     … In the five strengths or the five faculties, persistence comes after conviction. This goes hand in hand with desire. You want to find an end to suffering. You want to at least alleviate a lot of your suffering. And if you believe that the Buddha was awakened, and that he proved that human beings can do this, that gives focus to your desire—and … 
  7. Taking Charge
     … These are going to be related in one way or another to what are called the five strengths. For to move your life in the direction you want it to requires strength, especially if you’re having to change directions. So you need to have conviction in the principle of action, that your actions really do make a difference. When the Buddha talks about … 
  8. Grasping the Snake
     … You’ve got the four establishings of mindfulness, the four right exertions, the four bases for success, the five strengths, the five faculties, the seven factors for awakening, the noble eightfold path. They’re almost all exclusively lists of mental qualities. Now, that kind of view, you can put to use. You can look at the lists and learn some important things about how … 
  9. Goodness
     … This is why the Buddha teaches the five strengths. There’s the strength of conviction, that your actions really do make a difference. This derives from our conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, that he gained true happiness through his own efforts. And it’s through qualities that were not exclusively his. In other words, the potential for these qualities exists in all of … 
  10. Generosity of Spirit
     … He asks himself, “Am I going to go back into civilization to find a doctor? Well, no, I’m going to stay here and I’m going to treat my illnesses with the five strengths and the seven factors for awakening. In other words, find resources inside that you can depend on. By giving yourself a sense of well-being in the way you … 
  11. In Heedfulness We Trust
     … After all, the five strengths, the five faculties, the Buddha says, are all based on heedfulness. So as we take precautions as we go through daily life, it’s not a matter of worry and fear. It’s strength, protection, confidence, lack of regret—all of which are good qualities to nurture in our hearts and minds.
  12. How to Read the Dhamma
     … He thinks of all the great monks in the past and how they fought off their illnesses with the five strengths and the seven factors of awakening, so that’s what he was going to do too. Or there’s Sister Sona, who said that when she went to see another nun and asked for the Dhamma, the nun taught her aggregates, sense doors … 
  13. Timeless Practice
     … If you practice virtue, concentration, and discernment, and develop all the qualities the Buddha described, either in the five strengths or in the four bases for success or the seven factors for awakening, that path is going to take you to the goal, regardless of what time or age you’re in. It’s your choice. But as Ajaan Fuang once said, to achieve … 
  14. Concentration: A Balancing Act
     … A Balancing Act December 9, 2020 Concentration is one of the five strengths. And of the strengths, it’s the one most explicitly compared to food. It’s food for your mind, food for the other factors the path. So how do you make it nourishing and strong? That depends both on what you bring to it and what you’re doing as you … 
  15. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … In both cases, the Buddha said, what determines whether your practice is going to be pleasant or painful is which kind of contemplation leads you to develop the five strengths and the five faculties: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. “Concentration” in both cases means the jhanas, but the theme leading you to develop those jhanas, and from there on into discernment, is something … 
  16. It’s All in What You’re Doing
     … They were able to cure their illnesses through developing the five strengths, the five faculties, the seven factors for awakening. So he keeps in mind their example. He says, “Even if they didn’t cure their illnesses, at least they were able to cure their minds from the suffering of the illness.” That’s what right mindfulness means: keeping in mind good examples. As … 
  17. Strength of Mind
     … That’s a quality called ardency, which is identical with persistence, the second in the Buddha’s lists of the five strengths: your ardency, your persistence, your energy. Because your mind is so important, you want to really do this well. There are a lot of jobs in the world that you can do and sort of do a good enough job to get … 
  18. Discernment
     … In some of his other explanations—say, in the five faculties or the five strengths—it’s virtue, concentration, discernment. In the seven factors for awakening, the factors themselves don’t contain virtue but there’s a passage where the Buddha says they build on virtue. So, in that case, you’ve got virtue, then discernment, then concentration. So, the order’s not fixed … 
  19. Factors for Awakening
     … Mindfulness always precedes concentration, but sometimes discernment comes first, then mindfulness, then concentration; sometimes mindfulness, then concentration, then discernment, depending on whether he’s talking in terms of the factors for awakening, the five strengths, or the noble eightfold path. It really depends on what kind of mind you have and what kind of mind state you have right now. Because your needs will … 
  20. Change Your Habits
     … Of the five strengths the Buddha talked about, discernment is the big one. Ajaan Lee has a nice quote. He says for a person with discernment, all you need is a machete and you can set yourself up in life. Even if you have nothing else, the discernment is what will see you through. And that is a strength, which means that if the … 
  21. Strong & Heedful
     … The Buddha says of the five strengths, discernment is the one that secures everything else, even though it often comes last. He makes a comparison with putting up rafters for a roof of a house: You put up the rafters and then the ridgepole gets put in place on top of the rafters, and once the ridgepole is in place, then the rafters become … 
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