Search results for: "The Five Strengths"

  1. The Five Strengths
  2. Conviction & Truth
     … Sariputta if he takes it on faith that the five strengths lead to awakening, and Sariputta says, “No, I don’t take it on faith. I know.” That’s because he had developed the strengths and learned how far they can take him. As for most of us, we’re not there yet, so we have to go on faith. This is something a … 
  3. A Producer Mentality
     … The bliss of concentration, the bliss that comes with discernment, comes at the end of the five faculties, the end of the five strengths. In both cases, the list starts with conviction. The four bases of success start with desire. The noble eightfold path starts with right view and right resolve: right view about what’s going to cause suffering, what’s not going … 
  4. Firm in Your Intent
     … And the same holds for the five strengths, starting with conviction. Concentration in conviction means you have to stay with that conviction. The same with persistence: You have to stick with the program, which is that if any unskillful qualities could arise in your mind, you do your best to prevent them. If they have arisen, you do your best to get rid of … 
  5. Questioning Your Conviction
     … It’s the first of the five strengths, the first of the five faculties. When the Buddha compares the practice to building a fortress at the edge of a frontier, conviction is the foundation post. You have to understand a little bit about construction practices in Asia to understand what that means. Whenever you build a building here in the West, you lay a … 
  6. The Strength of Heedfulness
     … You start by applying these steps to your defilements, but eventually you apply the same principles to the five strengths. You see that they, too, are conditioned. They’ve helped you along—as the Buddha said, it’s like taking a raft across the river, and you when you get to the other shore, you realize, okay, you don’t need to carry the … 
  7. Today Is Better than Yesterday
     … This is where the Buddha’s teachings on the five strengths are useful, because your cynical members, your lazy members, your forgetful members, your scatterbrained members, and your dumb members are the ones who are getting in the way. In other words, the cynical members say, “This isn’t going to work, it’s not worth all the effort, don’t bother.” The discussion … 
  8. Taking the Buddha at his Word
     … What am I going to do? Am I going to go back and find a doctor?” And his answer is, “No, I’m going to depend on the seven factors for awakening and the five strengths to fortify my mind.” That’s how he gets well. In the case of the ajaans in Thailand, there are many stories of their encountering tigers in the … 
  9. A Genius about Your own Mind
     … One of the ways he has of expressing the path is in the five strengths and the five faculties: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are all things we have to develop and in many cases they require a lot of work. Having conviction in the Buddha’s awakening is pretty demanding because it sets forth the possibility that human beings can find … 
  10. The Five Strengths
    When you meditate, you have to tell yourself that you have no other responsibilities right now. You’re here to look after the mind. The mind spends its days looking after all kinds of other affairs—your affairs, other people’s affairs. Just looking after the body is a major issue—trying to find food, clothing, shelter, or medicine—and that’s just the … 
  11. Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength
     … How do you take the example of the Triple Gem and turn it into a refuge inside? That’s what the teachings on the five strengths are about: five steps by which you internalize the qualities of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, and make them your own refuge. All five steps build on heedfulness. You realize that if you can’t depend … 
  12. The Graduated Discourse
     … Heedfulness, of course, is the basis for the five strengths, and the first of the five strengths is conviction. There’s a passage where the Buddha talks about how conviction arises out of suffering. And it’s precisely in this way: You see that you’ve been suffering and you realize that it’s because of your own actions—you can’t blame other … 
  13. Protection
     … He said all skillful qualities come from heedfulness, and particularly the five strengths based on heedfulness that we need in order to defend ourselves, to protect ourselves. The first of the five strengths is conviction. You believe in the Buddha’s awakening, that what he saw on the night of his awakening is true. Not only that, but he gained freedom from the knowledge … 
  14. The Equanimity of a Winner
     … The equanimity of a warrior comes in the context of the five strengths. You have conviction in the power of your actions, and conviction that the Buddha has shown us a good path. It’s a warrior’s path and it’s a victorious path. You have conviction in what he taught and its implications for your actions, that you can do this, too … 
  15. The Best of a Bad Situation
     … What was he going to do? He said, “Here’s an opportunity to test the Buddha’s teachings—developing the five strengths, the five faculties, the seven factors for awakening. The Buddha has said, ‘The Dhamma is medicine.’ Well, here’s a chance to test it.” I remember the story of Ajaan Lee, walking into the forest for three days. He was going to … 
  16. Facing Danger & Hardship
     … So, he tells himself, “I’m going to try to develop the factors for awakening, to try to develop the five strengths, and use them to fight off the disease.” There are cases in the Canon where people recollecting the seven factors for awakening—Ven. Moggallana, Ven. Maha Kassapa, even the Buddha himself—do recover from their illness because of recollecting these things. But … 
  17. Songkran Blessing
     … The strength inside, of course, would be the five strengths, beginning with the strength of conviction that your actions really do make a difference in life, so you want to be careful about what you do. There’s also the strength of persistence, when you stick with the principle that you want to do what’s only skillful, you want to abandon anything that … 
  18. Mindfulness: Get with the Program
     … After all, the Buddha said that it’s one of the five strengths. This is why it accompanies strength of persistence. If you’re really engaged in developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones, there are a lot of things you’ve got to keep in mind: what’s skillful, what’s not; how you can recognize an unskillful quality hiding behind what seems … 
  19. The Bright Tunnel
     … There are the five strengths: the strength of conviction in your own ability to do the practice, conviction in the powers of your own actions. The strengths of persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. Discernment is the one that keeps all the strengths strong, as you begin to take apart exactly where the clinging is, why it is. There are four kinds of clinging. You … 
  20. Dangers Outside & In
     … As the Buddha said, the five strengths are based on heedfulness. You have conviction in the Buddha’s teachings because you realize that these teachings protect you from danger. And you develop persistence: You work on developing the good qualities that the Buddha said will lead to happiness and abandoning the unskillful ones that lead to unhappiness. You have to keep this in mind … 
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