Search results for: "The Five Strengths"
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- More than a Slice of Mindfulness… That’s its position in the seven factors for awakening; its position in the five strengths and the five faculties. Every list of Dhammas that talks about mindfulness and concentration puts mindfulness before concentration. Mindfulness is what you do to get into right concentration. The descriptions of right concentration are basically telling you what you’re going to experience as the mind begins to …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Strength from Within… Of course, the Buddha’s teachings on strength are very important here—the five strengths: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. You notice that the three middle strengths there are basically identical with the section of the noble path that deals with meditation practice. So the meditation, of course, will be our real strength. But in addition, you need conviction and discernment. Conviction here …
- Compunction… These two qualities are also listed in the five strengths of a person in training—in other words, the strengths of someone who’s given rise to the Dhamma eye, the first taste of awakening. These are qualities that get built into that person’s character from that point on. They’re also listed as treasures, and in the Buddha’s image of the …
- The Practice is Wherever There’s Mindfulness… Basically, what you have here is a combination of two of the five strengths: persistence and mindfulness. The two of them together form the practice. They’re fed by conviction. That’s what keeps you going, because there are lots of times when the skillful thing is one thing and what you would like to do is something else—or the skillful thing seems …
- Own Your Actions… Things like the five strengths, the four bases of success, the establishings of mindfulness: These are all activities. The noble eightfold path is a path of action. So focus on what you’re doing. And it’s in the process of understanding what you’re doing that you’ll see how the Buddha’s teachings actually apply to help you do things more skillfully …
- Heedfulness All the Way Through… You can see this most clearly in a set of dhammas the Buddha calls the five strengths, which are identical with the five faculties. You start with conviction. Formally, this is conviction in the Buddha’s awakening. But what does that mean in practice? One of the main things it means is that we have conviction in the power of our actions. After all …
- Generating Energy… When the Buddha discusses persistence in the five strengths, it builds on conviction. That’s one of the mental ways of giving rise to more energy. Another is in the context of the seven factors for awakening, where persistence builds on mindfulness: keeping something in mind. So what are the ways of giving rise to conviction that are going to energize you, and what …
- Heeding the Deva Messengers… The Buddha’s teaching that’s most connected with heedfulness is the teaching of the five strengths, or the five faculties: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are the qualities we need to develop as strengths within ourselves. We have to have them take charge in our minds so that we’ll have the strength to do what’s right, to do what …
- Take Heart… In the five faculties or the five strengths, the list starts with conviction. You’re convinced of the Buddha’s awakening. And what does that mean? One of the things you’re convinced of is that he did it through the power of his own actions. And as he said, it wasn’t the case that he had anything special that other people couldn …
- The Same for Everyone… In the five strengths, mindfulness comes before concentration, and discernment comes at the end. The different listings relate to the fact that we do have different propensities and each of us has different strengths and weaknesses—and sometimes our strengths and weaknesses change over time. But the basic elements are all the same. What this means is that the path is not a matter …
- Thinking Your Way to Stillness… So what do they do? They resolve to develop the factors for awakening, the five strengths, the five faculties, four bases of success, and to use those qualities as their medicine. There’s also a set of verses about a monk who doesn’t get any alms. He asks himself: “What are you going to do?” And his answer is, “I’m going to …
- Developing the Path… You see this in some of the other ways that the Buddha lines up the factors of the path, as when he talks about the five strengths and the five faculties. For discernment to become a faculty—in other words, a dominant factor in your mind—you have to actually develop conviction, persistence—which includes developing virtue—and then mindfulness and concentration. In other …
- In Earnest… This is why the Buddha said to feed the mind in a different way, a way that gets it so strong that eventually you don’t have to feed anymore. The five strengths—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—are healthy food for the mind, food that teaches it to be more and more independent, less and less reliant on its old kinds of feeding …
- The World of Conviction… This is one of the reasons why the Buddha talks about the five strengths or the five faculties. These are qualities that nourish the mind and nourish the kind of becoming that you want as a practitioner as you go through the world. Both lists—the strengths and the faculties—begin with conviction: conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, that he really was awakened …
- Generating Power… After all, concentration is one of the five strengths. And if our discernment is going to have the strength it needs to penetrate all the veils of delusion we’ve put up in the mind, it’s going to require good strong concentration, good committed concentration to do the work that leads to release.
- Cut the Currents… He says it’s the basis for all skillful qualities; it’s the basis for the five faculties, the five strengths. His very last statement to the monks before he passed away was to bring about consummation through heedfulness. Even though it’s a very important topic, though, there’s only one place where the Buddha defines what it means. It means you watch …
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