Search results for: "The Five Strengths"

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  2. Strength in Humor
     … It’s interesting that the Buddha’s teachings on the five strengths correspond to what psychologists talk about as healthy ego functioning. Heedfulness, of course, corresponds to anticipation, the realization that there are dangers down the road, so you have to be careful in how you act. This underlies all the strengths, but conviction and mindfulness in particular. An important part of persistence is … 
  3. The Triple Training
     … In the five faculties or the five strengths, virtue comes first, then concentration, then discernment. In the seven factors of awakening, you start with mindfulness, which is aiming the mind toward concentration, and then you bring in your discernment before you get to concentration, while all of the factors are based on virtue. There’s plenty in the Canon to indicate that all these … 
  4. Clearing a Space
     … All the five strengths—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment—have to work together. Otherwise your discernment will just start analyzing things and get further and further away from what’s actually happening in the mind. That’s not the kind of analysis you want. You want to keep coming back to what’s happening right here, right now, what you’re experiencing right here … 
  5. A Warrior’s Strengths
     … In this case, the Buddha is referring to all the five faculties, all the five strengths that you need in your meditation—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration and discernment. Your persistence, your energy, the amount of effort you can put into the practice, is the first string you tune. In other words, you look at what your strength is, what can you handle, which is … 
  6. The Path to the Top
     … Sometimes he’d explain it in terms of the noble eightfold path, sometimes in terms of the seven factors for awakening, the five faculties, the five strengths, or the four bases for success, but they all came down to the same thing. Each of them, as you analyze them, falls under the headings of the noble eightfold path. There are slightly different variations in … 
  7. Beyond Inter-eating
     … It’s like those potato chips that they used to advertise saying, “I bet you can’t eat just one.” Try to look instead for ways of feeding the mind to develop good qualities, what they call the five strengths: the strengths of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are the qualities that strengthen the mind. In other words, they provide strength and … 
  8. The Will to Awaken
     … not going to find it. So conviction that your actions really do make a difference, conviction that the Buddha really did gain awakening: these are an important part of discernment. The five strengths that end in discernment begin with conviction. As one of the ajaans in Thailand once said, it’s not the case that discernment begins with perceptions or ideas or concepts. It … 
  9. The Power of Your Actions
     … It’s interesting that discernment, of the five strengths, is listed as the last, but it also plays a huge role right here in the second one. After all, as the Buddha said, discernment begins with that question, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm … 
  10. A Strong Sense of Self
     … The Buddha lists this as one of the five strengths of your mind. The first strength is conviction. In classical terms, this is conviction in the Buddha’s awakening. What it comes down to, though, is conviction in the power of your actions, because how did the Buddha awaken? He awakened through his own efforts, and as he said, it was because of qualities … 
  11. Equanimity
     … This is where the interesting passage comes in where the Buddha says you apply that same analysis to what are called the five strengths or the five faculties: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. You see their origination, too. You see their passing away. You see their allure. You see their allure in helping you to get past a lot of the suffering you … 
  12. The Sublime Attitudes
     … They’re part of the five strengths, the seven factors of Awakening, and the noble eightfold path. The reason the Buddha teaches skillful qualities in clusters is because unskillful qualities come in clusters, too. The three roots of unskillfulness — greed, aversion, and delusion — can branch out into five hindrances, seven obsessions, ten fetters, 108 forms of craving. They grow exponentially. No one skillful quality … 
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