Search results for: "The Five Strengths"

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2. Play AudioStrength 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 … 
3. Play AudioCompunction
    … 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 … 
4. Play AudioThe 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 … 
5. Play AudioOwn 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 … 
6. Play AudioHeedfulness 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 … 
7. Play AudioGenerating 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 … 
8. Play AudioHeeding 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 … 
9. Play AudioTake 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 … 
10. Play AudioThe 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 … 
11. Play AudioThinking 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 … 
12. Play AudioDeveloping 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 … 
13. Play AudioIn 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 … 
14. Play AudioThe 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 … 
15. Play AudioGenerating 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.
16. Play AudioCut 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 … 
17. Play AudioDiscernment on the Path
     … Discernment is the culminating factor in the five strengths and the five faculties. The other four—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, and concentration—are the rafters that you put up. But they’re not really secure until you put that top rafter at the peak of the roof. Once that’s in place, it holds everything else in position and makes it secure. In other words … 
18. Play AudioOne Thing Clear Through
     … You develop the five strengths: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment. These are a food for the mind that’s special in the sense that it can make the mind so strong that it ultimately doesn’t need to feed. It can see where its greed and aversion and delusion are coming from, and it can abandon them. So you can see that the path … 
19. Play AudioIngenuity
     … So he asks himself, “Now that you’re sick, out alone in this wilderness here, what are you going to do? Are you going to go back?” He says, “No, I’m going to focus on the four establishings of mindfulness, develop the seven factors of awakening, the five strengths, and that’s going to be my refuge.” When there’s no medicine around … 
20. Play AudioFaith in the Buddha’s Awakening
     … This is why one of the major strengths you need in the practice—in fact, the first of the five strengths that the Buddha lists—is conviction. Saddha is the Pali word, sometimes translated as faith. It’s one of those dirty words in Buddhist circles here in the West. Nobody likes to say “faith,” because that’s what we’ve run away from … 
21. Play AudioThe Path to Stream Entry
     … And there is an element of choice as you practice, but in every case, the Buddha says, how do you develop, say, the seven factors for awakening? How do you develop the four bases for success, the four establishings of mindfulness, the five strengths, the five faculties? Through developing the noble eightfold path. You want to get all its factors to come together. In … 
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