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The Five Faculties

Good evening. What I'd like to talk about is one of the foundational teachings in our Insight tradition. I want to teach about a fundamental set of qualities that we activate when we do mindfulness practice. There are qualities that get activated in anything we do in our lives, but these are universal in some way. They are useful both for our meditation practice, and for any activity that we do to try to figure out a wiser or more satisfying way to engage in it.

These are five inner qualities that get activated and come alive in different proportions to each other. Depending on how they come into balance, and what is strong and what is weak, they can affect how we engage in what we do in our life and how the meditation unfolds.

These five qualities are quite useful to memorize for yourself. Learn what they are and have them as a reference point. While at first it might feel somewhat artificial to memorize and think about them, over time it becomes second nature. It is kind of like riding a bicycle. The first time you ride a bicycle as a kid, perhaps it is awkward. There are so many things to take care of: you have to hold the handlebars in one way, pedal at the same time, keep your balance, and figure out where the brakes are. It is a lot to figure out. But after you do it a few times, it becomes second nature. All the little things that seemed so complicated at first begin working together in harmony. At some point, you can take your hands off the handlebars and say, "Hey, look, hands-free pedaling!" because you have everything lined up just right with the speed and balance.

These five qualities that we want to learn and make second nature are called the Five Faculties^[1]. They are: faith (and there are other English words to use for that), engagement (the effort we put into what we're doing), attention or mindfulness itself, concentration (the ability to really focus on what we're aware of), and insight or discernment (the ability to be wise about what we see and experience).

If you know how to ride a bike and you are going to ride from here to Monterey, these five faculties would come into play without you even thinking about it. First, you probably wouldn't take a trip that far unless you had some faith or confidence that you could do it. That confidence is necessary because if you don't have it, doubting your ability is probably going to undermine you. Sometimes doubt becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: "I can't do it, it's too hard." That very mindset drains us, interferes with us, and almost becomes true because of it. There has to be some confidence. Maybe the confidence is not very strong at first, but after you've gone twenty miles or so, you think, "Oh, I can do this." You make it up over the Santa Cruz Mountains and down the other side, and then you have a lot of confidence. It is a whole different feeling to go biking if you are confident.

Then you have to engage. You figure out how to engage depending on the slope and the terrain. You see a hill coming up and realize, "I need to pedal a bit harder now and get some momentum," or "I need to slow down to catch my breath and be ready for that hill." You get to the top of the hill and coast down. Since it's downhill, you don't need to apply any effort anymore. You naturally know to just use gravity and coast down, making sure you don't go too fast. You moderate and monitor your energy levels as you go.

Then you have to be mindful. When you are biking like this, there is a lot of traffic, cars, dangers on the road, potholes, and dogs running out. You can't really slip up. In fact, some people probably have a higher level of mindfulness biking a trip like that than they do when they meditate, because the consequences are so serious if you don't pay attention, and the feedback is very quick. It is like when I was fourteen and biking along, minding my own business, until I ran smack into the back of a parked car with people inside. I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. I was just biking along, looking I don't know where, and boom!

So there has to be some mindfulness, some attention. Sometimes when you're biking, you need to stay really focused—not just mindful, but focusedly mindful. Sometimes you need to carefully pay attention to the terrain, the potholes, the bumps, and the rocks. Sometimes you have to stay focused on the traffic and zero in on what you're doing in a very detailed, concentrated way. If there is a lot of traffic, you have to navigate it carefully. You are probably not going to think about a problem you had on your taxes in April, or what you are going to have for dinner. Those things fall away because of the need to stay focused. Then sometimes you get out on a wide open road where there are no cars, and it feels very relaxed. There you might let your mind roam a little bit and not be so focused.

Finally, you have to have a lot of discernment when you ride a bike. You make all kinds of micro-decisions as you go along about exactly where the tires go on the road, how fast and slow you go, where you fit on the road, when to slow down, and when to speed up. There are a lot of little decisions made, some of which are about sustaining your effort for the long trip, figuring out how to go at a slow and steady pace so you don't exhaust yourself and get to the end.

This is to suggest that these faculties come into play in something as mundane as riding a bicycle. You can do the exercise of seeing them in almost anything you do. If you decide to make bread or cook something at home in the kitchen, those five come into play to some degree. They also come into play when we meditate.

Being able to recognize their presence in us when we meditate allows us to be discerning, to make adjustments, and to create the optimal conditions for the mind to stay present and grounded here and now.

There needs to be faith in what we are doing, confidence in our ability to do it, and faith that paying attention to the present moment is valuable. It is not automatic, as many people discover when they sit down to meditate and realize their mind has all kinds of other things to do. There is a certain compulsion to think all kinds of thoughts and to be preoccupied with all kinds of emotions and feelings. The pull into that world is so strong that sometimes people never know it is the case when they just go about their ordinary lives. It is only when doing something like meditation, where we try not to be lost in thought and preoccupation, that we can realize its strength.

I think it is probably fair to say that it represents that something—not you consciously, but something in your system—has a lot of faith in reviewing the past and planning the future. You have faith in the value of going off into fantasies of all kinds, faith in churning resentments and bitterness, and faith in staying connected to and feeding anxiety. We wouldn't normally think we have faith in those, but if an anthropologist from Mars came and studied human beings, they would say, "Wow, these people worship anxiety! There is no requirement to be anxious all the time, but they just love it. They must have this wonderful thing about anxiety, it's amazing." There are people like that, but there are also people who have a lot of anger, and they must have an altar for anger. They listen to politicians and they really believe in its value.

What we are doing in Buddhist practice is that, as we do it over time, our value system begins to shift. It tends to shift toward being more ethical, more honest, more kind, and more compassionate. This is not because we have to, but because we start feeling and recognizing within us that these things just feel better. They feel right, they feel less stressful, and they feel more productive of having a good heart. It just becomes a natural thing over time that meditators tend to become more ethical. Their values change, but that change of value represents a change in where our faith is, where our trust or confidence is.

At some point, we start getting more and more confident in the value of being present and attentive to what's happening in the present moment. It's not obvious to a lot of people. It wasn't to me when my mother repeatedly told me growing up, "Gil, pay attention!" I became a meditation teacher partly because of the karma of not listening to my mother. I hardly knew what she was talking about, nor was I interested in her instructions as I walked mud across the carpet.

To begin valuing the beauty, the wonder, and the richness of a heightened sense of attentiveness to what's happening here and now becomes so marvelous. This confidence in attention makes it more wondrous and more valuable to feel connected to awareness than it is to anything that awareness knows. If I look at a bell, I can get preoccupied with the bell and think about all kinds of things. But it is actually quite wondrous that I have the ability to see the bell, to understand this is a bell, to recognize it. The very fact of being conscious is a miracle. It is amazing that we should end up in a universe where we are the recipients of this very rich capacity for consciousness. It is important to value staying closely connected to present-moment consciousness because of how rich and wonderful it is, and what emerges from that world. Over time, having confidence in the practice is valuable. When you sit down to meditate, you are less likely to wander off in thought, and less likely to doubt yourself, your abilities, and the value of what you are doing.

Meditation also involves engagement—putting in an effort of some kind, even if the effort is dedicated, ardent effort to stay relaxed. I say it that way because for many people, as soon as you talk about effort, they feel discouraged, upset, or feel like, "Oh no, this meditation is a lot of work." But it is a lot of play; it should be delightful. We learn how to engage our attention with the present moment in a way that does not feel like work, but feels enlivening. It feels like, "Oh, this is a good effort to make. I feel clearer in the process, I feel more relaxed in the process, and I feel more refreshed from it all."

What kind of effort, what kind of engagement, allows us to feel that? One way is to engage with a certain kind of wholeheartedness in the practice, where there is no complacency and no resistance. This is not easy to do. When the mind wants to do so many other things besides being present, and we come back to the present moment and back to the breath over and over again, there can be discouragement: "Wow, this is hard. I can't do it." We might not realize that the very effort we made to come back and wake up again and again begins lighting a spark inside and allows something to grow and develop. Ten thousand times we have to bring our mind back and wake up again, and then slowly something begins to shift and change.

We want to make an effort that does not feel stressful or punitive. Some people, when their mind wanders off in thought, jerk their mind back. For some people, it is like they are playing whack-a-mole with their mind; the way they practice is really harsh. That kind of effort is not helpful. We want to make an effort like biking all the way to Monterey: you want to take your time and ride the bike in a way that sustains your effort over time. How do you engage in meditation so it is not too hard, not too forceful, not too complacent, but has a spark of clarity in it? A clarity which doesn't feel like work, but feels almost like a natural expression of our capacity to be present.

Then mindfulness is the key. This is the capacity not just to be aware and attentive to the present moment, but to have heightened clarity of the present moment so we can recognize in detail, or with greater clarity, what is actually happening. Some people meditate doing mindfulness practice and they soothe themselves into a dull, cloudy calm. It might feel good because it is more relaxed than how they are in a stressed life, but in the long term, that doesn't really sustain the practice and doesn't lead to the greater benefits of this mindfulness practice. We are looking for how to bring some clarity to the present moment.

I love the expression "to wake up." We are waking up to experience, to be awake to what is happening. One of the reasons I like the word "awake" is that it is kind of like opening the windows of attention and allowing the sights, sounds, and smells to come in. Being mindful, for some people, is interpreted as work where you have to stare at things and try to pierce what's going on. To be awake is just to be available with clarity and attention, and to start cultivating a capacity for attentiveness to the present moment in a way that feels nourishing and supportive.

Then there is concentration, the unification of the mind. It means that you are focused on what you are doing in the moment. For meditation, maybe you start organizing yourself to be really focused on being present for the breath, being present with your whole body, and really zeroing in. You focus, but not like a laser; rather, it is like someone gathering everything and bringing it all together—all of who you are. It is more like, "This too is included as I am with the breath. This too, this too is part of it." There is no outside; everything is included for the purposes of holding the breathing, or whatever you are focusing on. Part of concentration is sustaining the attention continuously through time—the continuity of attention: just stay here, stay here, stay here.

All these first four qualities then support our capacity to be discerning, to become wise about what's happening. We learn to recognize when how we're practicing is creating too much stress or strain, which doesn't work. We learn to recognize when we're being too complacent and letting our mind drift off into thought too much, just comforting ourselves with fantasies about food or something. We learn to be discerning about what we do with our discomforts in the body. Rather than struggling when sitting, not used to the meditation posture, parts of your body might start aching and hurting. What is it useful to do? People who know how to do it might find it useful to bring their mindfulness to the pain as opposed to ignoring it. Other people might say, "Given how much discomfort I have, I think it's better if I mindfully move and change my posture and not continue with the pain." Or some people say, "I move every time I'm uncomfortable, that's what I do my whole life." I think what would be wise is to learn what's going on for me when I'm always moving at every discomfort. Let me see if I can develop some patience. Let me try to understand myself better. What's operating when I move and shift at every little discomfort I have? You might discover you have a lot of aversion or a lot of fear operating.

The discernment part is to understand what's going on, to know how to make adjustments in the meditation so you're more likely to be awake and more likely to be present in a useful way. It is looking at the other four qualities and saying, "Do I need to call upon my faith in this practice? Do I need to engage a little more wholeheartedly here? Is more attentiveness needed? Is more focus and continuity of attention what's needed here?"

By asking those questions and being wise, then with time, you become your own teacher. Just like if you bike from here to Monterey and you do that regularly, after a while you become your own coach who knows what you need to do in order to sustain the journey. Over time, you begin becoming wiser and wiser about what's needed at any given time you sit down to meditate. Every day you're going to be a little bit different. Every day your life experiences are going to affect you in different ways. Sometimes you're going to sit down and be agitated, sometimes you're going to sit down and be tired, and sometimes you're going to sit down and be overwhelmed by things. All kinds of things will come along in this human life of ours.

As you start having a sense of how to check in with yourself around these five qualities, you can begin understanding how to shift and change them, adjusting them to match the circumstance you're in. If you are really tired, you might say, "I need to put more energy in here"—the second quality. If you feel overwhelmed, maybe the concentration factor is the most helpful thing because it settles things down to just keep your focus on a simple thing like breathing. It's a classic thing to do when people are anxious is to take deep breaths; there is something about being massaged by the rhythm of breathing in and out that can be very calming. So when overwhelmed, maybe getting calm is what's needed. If you're really discouraged, maybe try to remind yourself of your faith or think about what might inspire your meditation practice.

It is a life of discernment that we engage in this process ourselves. The wonderful result of that is that at some point in meditation, you become your own teacher. That's kind of the goal to get to, to learn how to be, so you can use meditation as a support for no matter what happens in your life. If you engage in this process of meditation now, you'll be ready for a time when there's a crisis, to be able to have the meditation help you in a time of great challenge. If you wait until the crisis to meditate, you won't get as much benefit.

What I talked about today, these five qualities, might seem like a lot of work, but if you just practice sincerely in your meditation, I guarantee that over a year or two, this will become second nature without even knowing what they are. However, knowing what these five qualities are is not meant to make you busy now, going around with measuring sticks and seeing "how am I doing here?" Rather, it's a little reference point that's there in the back of your mind. You are more likely to notice how this is working, and just let it be a gentle, periodic support to find your way as you go about meditating in a calm, relaxed way.

You can consider, "Okay, I'm a little bit out of balance this way, and out of balance that way. Let me make a small adjustment here: more energy here, more calm here, more concentration. Maybe I should be more discerning; maybe I'm sitting here a little bit too passively, not really engaged with what's going on. Let me see if I can try to understand a little better what I'm feeling and what's needed here in this situation."

So the five faculties are faith, engagement, mindfulness, concentration or calm, and discernment (sometimes called wisdom). Those are my thoughts this evening. Do you have any questions or want any clarifications about these five? Any thoughts about them?

Q&A

Question: I feel like I'm not a very sophisticated meditator, and I'm happy with that. One of the teachers I listened to described consciousness, or whatever is happening when you're meditating, as kind of like a puppy. I like that imagery. So I kind of just watch my puppy do its thing and just come back to the breath in the present moment. But I feel a kind of playfulness, an exploratory attitude towards it.

Gil Fronsdal: Beautiful. The way I've heard the puppy analogy is that you're training the puppy, but you're not punitive to the puppy for not listening. You have to be very patient, and over and over with the repetition, you do it in a kind way, maybe a playful way. You just take your time, are very patient, do it over and over again.

Question: I guess I feel I'm not trying to train my puppy, I'm just watching at this point.

Gil Fronsdal: That's fine. And then the training part comes when you feel that you spend enough time drifting off, and maybe there's a way of having a little bit more ability to stay grounded in the present moment. So at some point, it's not just appreciating the play of the puppy, but it's also trying to help the puppy not to always poop in the house. [Laughter]

I like the analogy of seeing your mind as a puppy.

Okay, well thank you. If you do have questions you didn't ask publicly, you're welcome to stay; I'll be here a little bit. Wonderful to be here with you, and thank you.