This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Introduction: Community During COVID-19

So this becomes the first Sunday where we're primarily giving the talk to the online community, people who live nearby and people who live far away. For those of you who are there, there happens to be three people here, and so I'm not completely alone in here. The two of them are the recorders for this event. We did record the talk yesterday when we had canceled a day-long and then did a talk at the usual time, and I was a little bit surprised that I could talk in this format well enough that I feel connected—through the camera that's in the wall over there—to my feeling of the online community that I know is quite extensive.

And now I hope that during this period of time that we stay closed, that this is a way that we can maintain some ongoing connection in the Dharma^[1], in the practice, in the Sangha^[2], and community. That will develop, hopefully, over this next period of time, richer formats for staying connected to the online community. Maybe there are ways of doing video conferencing where we can have conversations, and you can ask questions, and we can be involved and all that. Or I know that with live YouTube streaming, people can make comments, and I don't know if there's some way with that to maybe even ask questions, and we can curate those very quickly on the spot and maybe answer at some point. There are all kinds of things we can do. And then once this coronavirus period is over, maybe some of these things that we're developing can persist and continue as a way of enriching our wider offerings and wider sense of community through the Dharma, through this practice. So I want to thank you, for those of you who are here listening both live and perhaps are going to be listening to this after the recording.

The Five Faculties Part II

And I think what I'll do today is continue with a theme that I started last week, last Sunday, but now I'll probably find some way of relating it to our new situation, now that we have this COVID-19 kind of thinking, the event, the experience, the concern for it right in the middle of our lives. Probably many of you as well, it's something that you're thinking about, especially those of you who might be living in places that are now quarantine areas, or where there are requests for all kinds of limitations in our lives, and/or your self-imposed ideas of being careful and staying home more, but also for everyone who is concerned about it. I talk about the topic maybe in relationship to the current virus. For those of you who don't feel it directly relates to you, or who listen to this long in the future, you can probably relatively simply apply it to something else in your life, some other situation that is comparable. Because the COVID-19 virus is just an important representative of the human condition and the dangers that are inherent in the human condition. The risks that we're always going to be encountering sooner or later, every single one of us, with sickness, old age, death, natural disasters, social change, and all kinds of things that we can expect to come along with this human life.

Buddhist practice is not meant to help us avoid these things and just be protected in our own little isolated practice. But rather, Buddhist practice, I would like to suggest, is meant to make us wise in the midst of all that. So that we carry with us a degree of peacefulness, wisdom, presence of mind, and mindfulness. That we become agents of benefit for the world. That we become the kind of person who is able to have the non-anxious presence that is reassuring for other people and supports other people from not getting swept up in their anxieties, fears, and greed, and all the things that actually make life much more difficult for individuals and for society. So what we learn, what we're facing and practicing with with COVID-19, is really the very thing I would like to say that Buddhist practice was designed to address and really take seriously, and find a way that is for the betterment and benefit of everyone.

The Five Divine Qualities

So the topic that I started last week is the five faculties of faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. I referred last week to them as the five divine qualities or faculties, or the five divinities, I think I said. The reason they're given that name is that the Pali word for them is indriya^[3], coming from the name of the Indian god at the time of the Buddha, the ruler of the gods back in his time, Indra^[4]. Indra was considered to be a friend of humans, a protector of humans, and also a friend of the Buddha, apparently. So it's meant to be thought of as a friendly, supportive being or entity that also has a certain kind of controlling powers, a ruler of the gods. And so this idea of that which controls, or rules, or guides our lives, that which protects our lives, that which is our friend, is applied to these five human capacities that everyone has. And that to engage and utilize these capacities in a way that they are the ones that really protect us, maybe guide us in a certain way, and become our internal support for living a wise and good life, and that we carry those with us at all times.

I think what's profound about this is that these are considered the faculties that come alive, and they're not quite identified as being "me, myself, and mine." It's not the normal way in which we identify, "this is who I am." In fact, the idea is not to take these as being my identity, this defines who I am, but rather to be faculties that we have that are almost like an alternative to basing our lives in some way on any kind of category of identification that human beings take. Whether it's healthy or unhealthy identification that people do, there is something else that supports us, and that also, not coincidentally, are universal human capacities, something we all share and can really identify and see in each other, and support in each other, and really at the same time maybe also be inspired by each other when these are going well and strong.

Being a Producer vs. Being a Consumer

Now, in talking about this in turn, especially with this era of the COVID-19 virus, it occurs to me that it's a useful, tentative distinction to make between, as a human being, being a consumer and being a producer. Some people live their life more from the sense of being a consumer, a recipient, and the extreme version of that, a victim of life. So it's all about acquiring things, acquiring experiences, acquiring friendships, acquiring all kinds of social niceties from the world around us. It's all, in some sense, all about acquiring, having things, and certainly we actively engage and go out to acquire those things, but it's still about what the world can provide me.

The other end of that spectrum is to be a producer of our experience, a producer of what's important for us. So rather than thinking that it's about the world providing us with what we need, it's about us being the producer in a sense of what we need. Not necessarily the food we eat and the material comforts and many other things we need, but there's something very profound that we can produce from ourselves. So that rather than waiting for people to be our friends, we're the producer of friendship, and we go out into the world to be friends to others, be kind or supportive of others. Rather than waiting for someone to love us, we love. Rather than waiting for someone to be generous to us, we're the one who is generous. We are the actor, the very thing that some people want to receive from the world; we actually take the initiative to allow that to develop and grow in us.

From a Buddhist point of view, this is a related but not equal distinction between doing things which are unwholesome and doing things which are wholesome. Now we let go of what's unwholesome and unhelpful, and we're engaged in producing, in evoking that which is wholesome, that which is good, that which is healthy for us and in the world around us. There is a kind of active engagement in something. Now, when there's something happening in the world like this COVID virus, it's very easy to be afraid. And it's reasonable to have some fear, and I'm not going to belittle anybody's fear around this or say that anyone's wrong for being afraid. But the question is, how do we relate to both this condition what's happening in society now with the risks involved with the virus, and with our fear with it? Are we a consumer, are we a producer? Are we a victim, or are we the supporter or the helper for ourselves in the world?

Practicing With Fear Through Faith

It's easy with fear, and extreme fear, to collapse into the fear. It's easy to form some kind of identity around fear that involves some degree of self-pity, or self-concern, or a sense of helplessness or hopelessness that we collapse into. And we feel like someone is out there supposed to take care of us, someone needs to know what to do, the government or someone, something, and that I can't do anything, I have to just hunker down and hide, and all kinds of versions of being what I'm calling today a consumer. But instead of letting the fear be something we collapse into, or let the fear be the motivating influence or the primary influence on what motivates us, our decisions, how we see the world, and how we live in the world, it's possible to engage in another motivation, another source inside of us which is the basis for our decisions, the way we are in the world, and our motivations. And to switch from something like fear, which can be debilitating, to actively engaging some other approach to being in the world from inside of ourselves is a big part of what Buddhist practice is, especially when we begin it.

One of the simple things for practitioners is that we could come from a place of practice, we could have faith—the first of the five faculties, first of the five divine qualities. We can have strong confidence that there is another way of living. There is a way of living where we don't collapse into fear, or get debilitated by fear, or give in to fear. There are other sources of motivation, so that even if we're afraid, we're really choosing to find, to look forward, to reflect about, and to act on other motivations. Hopefully motivations which are wise and good and really supportive of us. For example, the motivation to practice with fear so that we don't collapse into it, so that we relate to it in a way that is an alternative to being with fear, and to have confidence that that's worthwhile. To have confidence that somehow being mindful and using mindfulness to pull ourselves out from the collapse, sitting up straight, being wise, and finding some other way of relating to it—to be free of it, to be equanimous^[5], to be nonreactive, to find other sources of motivation besides that which is influenced by fear. To engage in practice with it is where we are the producer, the agent of change, rather than the victim of the change that happens.

To have faith that there is another possibility than being swept up in desire and greed, swept up in hate and hostility and blame, swept up in fear and terror and panic about these things, but to find another way. One of the reasons for that is that most human beings are much wiser about and more capable of engaging in and responding to the dangers of our world if they're calm and wise and reflective and can think, and are not blinded by fear and panic. I certainly know that in my life I've made mistakes where I got caught up in fear and then in a hurry decided to do something that later I regretted, that wasn't necessary or even caused harm because I came to a quick decision and acted on the fear rather than being calm. And I have had some experience and I've known some dramatic stories from friends of mine who were able in dangerous situations to remain calm, and to their surprise, novel, very creative responses arose inside that diffused or saved them from the danger that they were in, because they were able to stay calm and present for the experience.

Effort and Energy (Viriya)

Of course, some of us will be afraid in all kinds of situations. How do we avoid letting the fear be what motivates how we live, without demeaning the fear or denying the fear? That is an important part of this practice, and it begins by having faith that it's worthwhile to do that, having confidence that there is another way to live, and to start moving into this other way. It could be making a clear decision that how I want to orient my life is from mindfulness, to really be mindful and present and calm in the midst of whatever difficulties that I have. It could be deciding to base one's life on compassion or care for oneself and others, rather than based on greed or fear, anger or blame, to really make this a central focus—like "this is worthwhile, this is how I want to live." And then to have real faith that this is worthwhile. I don't want to live in a world that's defined by my fear, my anger, my greed. I want to live in a world that I see and understand through the lens of my compassion, through the eyes of my wisdom and calm and mindfulness, my equanimity, my care for people, my friendliness.

To have faith in that, to have confidence that this is what is important. It's very hard to come to that kind of faith because of the power of these other forces in us—the power of fear, the power of greed, the power of hate, the power of blame, the power of envy, all these kinds of things that live in human beings as part of our human nature as well. And so the first faculty takes a while to develop. It takes a while to really feel confident that yes, there is another way and this is the way I want to live, and I'll do what it takes to try to grow into that. It's not all or nothing, but we do it maybe in small steps. We slowly grow and develop, "this is the direction I want to go." For some people, it might be that the only time this really gets enacted is when they sit down to meditate. In meditation, they understand clearly, "this is the time where I'm not going to slip into my fear, this is the time I'm going to breathe deeply, I'm going to relax, breathe through it. I'm going to find a stability, yes, inner strength, and equanimity, so that the fear doesn't get the upper hand."

So once we have that confidence, then there's the second of the five divine qualities that we all have, which is viriya^[6]. And viriya is usually translated into English as effort or energy. It's a powerful word in Indian languages; it kind of means heroic effort, strong effort. I was told recently that in modern Indian languages, the shortening of viriya is vir. Vir means soldier, and this doesn't mean that we have to be samurais or soldiers who go out into our life, but it points to the idea that sometimes it's appropriate to engage a certain kind of bravery or a certain kind of determination, or really make a strong effort to practice. In ordinary meditation, maybe whenever everything's good, having this message to be heroic or be like a warrior a little bit might seem overdone, and it's easy to misunderstand it and to get tense and strive in unhelpful ways.

But in this current climate where there's a lot of fear around this virus, and knowing even how to work and how to be, and is it safe... You know, the other day someone lovingly didn't even want to do an elbow tap with me—usually someone I would hug, but with our shoes we did a heel tap. You know, that was lovely, it was kind of nice, and it was kind of fun. But so in this kind of climate where fear can be big, the discussion about brave effort is relevant. We have very strong forces inside of us, and to have the braveness and the courage or the confidence, "Yes, I'm going to practice with this no matter what. I'm not going to keep succumbing to the anger, I'm not going to keep succumbing to my fear again." I have to keep underscoring this does not mean that we deny the fear, push it away. We take it into account, we simply don't put it center stage to be the motivating force for us, but instead heroically, with strength, with conviction, I'm going to base my life on something which maybe is not even popular in my circles, and that is I'm going to put my faith in an equanimous presence to be calm, present from the middle of my experience.

Mindfulness as an Active Engagement

I'm going to put my faith in really being mindful of this, to pause just long enough to really look and see and recognize what it is, rather than going automatically into the expected behavior of anxiety, of worry, of anger, of complaining, or all kinds of things that people do. And that takes effort to do that. Let's make that decision that it's not just something we do sitting watching TV and becoming passive there, there is an active quality. That's why I use for today at least this provisional idea of we become a producer of effort, of engagement. How do we do this? Even in meditation, we have to make the effort to sit down to meditate. For some people that's heroic, to figure out how to do that in their lives. There has to be strong conviction, and it takes a lot of effort to sit down and sit up straight and really be here. And then once we do that, once we're there, then we have to know, "once I'm here, that particular effort, we don't have to keep making the effort to get to the cushion or the chair." And so now what's the effort that's needed now?

And one of the forms of effort is mindfulness, awareness. The third of these divine qualities. Now, learning what mindfulness is, is, I think at least for me, a lifetime endeavor. I don't feel like I have come to the end of understanding all the ins and outs, all the qualities of mindfulness, mindfulness practice in particular. And part of the delight and joy for me of doing this practice is how it keeps opening up. I understand mindfulness, I understand myself being mindful in new ways all the time. And so whatever I say today, please don't take this as the final word or this is the only thing it is, but mindfulness is an engagement. There is an effort that is needed for mindfulness. Initially when we sit down to meditate, when we're new to practice, when the practice has a momentum to it, the mindfulness becomes more and more something we allow for and are not the producer for. But that's when it has momentum. But when the momentum is not there, we have to do a certain kind of effort to evoke it, and we have to do it again if the mind wanders off and we have to bring it back again. It takes some kind of effort, but what that effort is is part of the task to discover as we do practice.

Meditation practice is kind of like a laboratory where we're discovering what kind of effort we need in order to be properly mindful in the current situation, and how I am today. And now there are times when that effort needs to be maybe strong and fierce. I've had situations where my mind was consumed by anxiety or anger, and I kept being swept away in it, and it took a fair amount of effort to keep coming back, keep showing up for it. And there are other times where I've made too much effort, I was trying too much and I kind of overrode or overshot the situation, and had to learn to not make effort. I had to learn to relax and be calm and just kind of be at ease and let go, and be much more receptive and allow the experience to come into mindfulness. So it all depends on what's going on in my mind. But the idea that somehow there is some effort involved, even the effort to be receptive and allow the experience to come into awareness has some quality of effort, some quality of engagement. And to learn how to do that engagement that's in harmony with the state that we're in. If we're relaxed and it's time for receptive relaxed awareness, how do we engage and come back to that, awaken it, recognize it, so that that's in harmony with the very way that we want to be?

Unconscious Attitudes in Mindfulness

One of the things about mindfulness that is interesting is all the things that are associated with it, all the beliefs and attitudes that come along with how we're mindful. It's hard to see how much extra stuff we bring along in our mindfulness, little attitudes, almost subconscious or unconscious attitudes towards it. For example, if you're sitting quietly and maybe it's something as simple as the room you're sitting in is warm, and so you're aware of heat in your body and a temperature against your skin someplace, that warmth you're feeling is a present moment experience. And if you recognize and feel that warmth, you are mindful, you're aware. But based on some of the ways I've practiced in the past to be mindful of things, I've been capable of sitting there and clearly knowing that it's warm, but having all kinds of little subconscious attitudes going along with it like, "I'm not really mindful because I'm being mindful of the wrong thing." That somehow the warmth doesn't really count, but the only thing that counts is really some kind of zeroing in on breathing, and that's the present moment that really counts. Or a subtle attitude that, "I'm not really doing the practice the way it's supposed to be, I'm not really present," because I have some unarticulated idea that if I'm doing mindfulness it's certainly not the right mindfulness, not what everyone else is doing or what it's really supposed to be like.

So even though I'm aware of my warmth, I'm not really aware of it in the right way, and I better know what the right way is. Or I might have the subtle attitude, "Yes, I'm aware of the warmth, but I'm supposed to be really zeroed in, and there's some kind of magic or special kind of way that I really connect to it and it really becomes dramatic and clear, and I get concentrated and it has a clarity to it that's powerful and enlightening, and I'm just kind of with it... I don't know quite how I'm supposed to connect better with it, but it certainly has to be with greater clarity than I have now." So I don't know if this speaks to any of you, but these kinds of little attitudes are maybe evoking ideas for you to reflect on yourself and what you bring along as a little bit extra with it all.

Finding "Yes" to the Present Moment

Maybe a whole other attitude to have that is more useful is the attitude that if it's present moment experience like the warmth I'm feeling, that it's just right whatever way that I'm experiencing and knowing it. That is being mindful. And you can maybe even say to yourself, rather than using a mental note of 'warmth', you can say to yourself as you experience the warmth, you can say to yourself the word 'calmly', 'softly'. You can say 'yes', just 'yes' to the warmth. "Oh yes, this is how it is." As if, of course this is mindfulness, this is my mindfulness this moment. There's nothing wrong with it, there's nothing that has to be different, I don't have to do this any different. "Yes, this is how it is now." Maybe it's a little bit vague the feeling of warmth, maybe it's no specific place in the body, maybe it's not as clear as your mindfulness has been at other times, but "yes, this is how it is now." "Yes," and then come back to this "yes." "Oh, yes," rather than some equivalent of "no, no, this is not right." But "yes," and then building on that, "yes, this is how it is now, this is how obvious the experience is."

It's not like a magic key of some subtlety you have to go find, just "yes" to the experience as it is now this moment. It might change over time, that "yes" might help greater clarity, that "yes" might create a receptivity that allows you to experience it in a deeper way, and maybe some of the subtlety becomes more obvious. But we're not sitting there to have the subtlety or to have the clarity, we're sitting there just to say "yes" and be aware in the way we're aware at this moment. We're there to experience, to enjoy, to really savor, almost to value how it is at this point. "Yes, for now it's like this. I don't know what it's going to be for the next moment, but the next moment will come and then yes to this. Look, what's that? Now it's like this." So to keep coming back to that.

Mindfulness is a powerful act to really do it consciously and with some kind of appropriate effort is an alternative to succumbing to fear, succumbing to some of these unhealthy movements that we collapse into or identify with. We are beginning to use an ancient metaphor, to blossom, be the lotus that blossoms out of the muddy water. We are stepping back in a way from being entangled and caught up in our inner life in a way that's not useful. We're not denying the inner life, we're just stepping back to see it more clearly, and that makes all the difference. It allows us to begin having a calm, to have more choice in where we come from. More choice about the motivations and commitments and values that we feel are most important for us, how we want to live our life, that are an alternative to fear, for example, being caught to be motivated by the fear, by the anxiety.

Concentration (Samadhi)

So then the fourth divine quality inside of us is samadhi^[7], usually translated into English as concentration. I think samadhi can be defined or explained in different ways, but one of the meanings of it is when the awareness we have of the present moment is continuous through time. There's a stability and steadiness in the awareness, that the awareness starts becoming centered. We become centered in the awareness through the awareness. So the awareness we have starts becoming encompassing or unified or whole, because we're centered in the middle of it as opposed to, for example, centered in the middle of our thoughts and distractions and preoccupations and stories and our fears that we have. And so the samadhi is what allows us to really steady centering in the midst of our experience, of what we're aware of. And to develop that steadiness and to settle into it allows over time for all the distractions to kind of settle down, and the capacity for the mind to be at rest in what is sometimes called one-pointedness. To be at rest at the center of our experience, which might be the breathing, might be something else, but really kind of at home or at ease and unified, composed in our experience.

To do that, to have this continuity of awareness over time, to be centered in our experience takes effort, takes courage, takes commitment, takes conviction that that's valuable to do. That it's valuable to come to a whole different—radical when samadhi is strong—a radically different experience of body and mind than the divided, the scattered, the fragmented experience of body and mind that can exist when we're over-identified with our thoughts, stories, and concepts, and fears, and greed, and all that kind of stuff. And what feels really beautiful about samadhi when it gets strong is that it feels like there's an integral feeling of wholeness. Now it's kind of like "now I'm really whole, now I'm really present with all of me in a rich and balanced way." And to come out of samadhi or to carry with us that sense of wholeness into our life is one of the great gifts of meditation.

Some people will just identify very strongly that "now I'm calm, and that calm is what now I can bring into my life." Other people will have a sense of wholeness and integrity that they come into life in a much fuller way, that they are really fully present rather than kind of just partially present for what their experience is. And samadhi, that fullness, allows for this idea of being a producer much more fully. You can bring more of yourself into the production of your life, more of who you are into being friendly with people, into being compassionate and caring, into being equanimous and kind, into being wise, into living life in a way that you're an agent for living in a world that you want to live in, that you're happy to live in. That you feel like "this is a good world. I'm not waiting for the world to be a good world and everyone else has to arrange for it, I'm actually in a certain kind of way creating my world as I live in it."

Wisdom and Discernment

And then the fifth divine quality is wisdom. Classically in Buddhism, the best, fullest forms of wisdom that we can experience and have, the wisest ways in which the mind can operate, is a mind that's supported by mindfulness, or supported by all four of the first mental faculties or divine qualities. But in particular, it's supported by the wholeness or the fullness or stability of samadhi, of concentration. There's something about being able to be at rest in ourselves in a calm, full, embodied kind of way that it makes space and room for some of the creative forces of the mind to operate, to really be able to see wisely what's going on in our life. And the greater the wisdom is, the more wisely we can use the choice that we have to make wise choices. A big part of wisdom—the word is translated as wisdom—is discernment. To be able to discern where the freedom is and where the entrapment is, the entanglement is.

And as we go through our life moment by moment in small details of our life and in the big details of our life, "where is the freedom now, and where is the entrapment?" It can be as simple as walking into one's kitchen and saying, "where is the freedom now as I look for something to eat?" I'm hungry, and perhaps with that question and that discernment that we don't go to the junk food that we might have there, or we realize as I gravitate towards the sweets that I've already had plenty of today, I feel the entanglement and the loss of our stability, loss of our freedom, as we collapse into that kind of approach. And we can see with discernment, with wisdom, where the freedom is. The freedom is to say no to that. The freedom is to go get something healthy to eat, "I'm hungry." Or it could be in the large issues of our life, where is the freedom in the bigger decisions? It could be for some people they might have the opportunity to see it when they are choosing a new job. "Is this job the place where the choices I make express my freedom, or my entanglement with something, or my entrapment in some values and ideas and fear of the future? Is this really the direction of what I want to support? Or where is the freedom, and what are the values I want to live by and go by?"

The Five Powers

So then it comes full circle because once we have the wisdom and the discernment, we can see better our values and the basis we want to live by, the commitments we want to live by, what's most important for us, what we want to orient ourselves around. And then we come back to faith. We can then have a lot of faith in what we now newly discovered ourselves. And then with faith we apply effort, with effort there's greater mindfulness, with that mindfulness grows greater samadhi, with samadhi there's then greater wisdom, and this wonderful spiral develops over time until these five faculties really become powerful forces inside of us that have their own momentum, and we feel that we're supported by them and they're guiding us. It's not really something we have to actively engage in, but more allow for. And at that point in Buddhism, they're called something different. They're no longer called the five indriyas, the five divine qualities, but they're called the five powers. We've awoken these powers that exist within us, and even though they are powers within us, they're still not something that we identify as being "mine." They're certainly within us and part of who we are, but they're not to define what we are.

It's very clear with the growing power of wisdom that the movement towards excessive identification—that identification is entanglement with identity—is not a movement towards freedom. And that the movement towards freedom is to disentangle ourselves from being trapped in identity and being defined by identity. So kind of like no longer being defined by what defines us. I think that's an interesting idea.

Finding Freedom During Crisis

So the five divine qualities, how do they relate to a life that has inherent danger in it? That's become abundantly clear right now around the globe. Now I would say it's kind of a shared experience for anyone who's connected to the news, who's aware of what's going on, that the whole globe is thinking about and being concerned with the same thing, the particular virus called COVID-19. And the fact that we all share this particular concern and interest gives a whole new opportunity to us, a whole new motivation perhaps for practicing with this circumstance. If we can practice wisely, engage the five faculties around this current situation with this virus and what's happening in our society, then perhaps we're contributing to the welfare and well-being of all people everywhere, that everyone's noticing and seeing. And if we're able to be a non-anxious presence, just that itself can be a phenomenal support for the people who are anxious.

I hope that during this period that all of you who are interested in this practice will be motivated or inspired or just delighted, happy in the opportunity to have a practice where you can begin exploring and discovering for yourself the possibilities of a non-anxious presence, even while you're anxious. That you base your life on that place inside of you which is not anxious, so that the non-anxious parts guide you in what you do rather than the anxious parts. I hope that you take good care of yourself. I hope that you care for yourself and I hope that this practice and these teachings are supported as we go through this together.

And finally, I'd like to say that given that we're going to be doing more of this online programming, if you stay in touch with IMC's website, probably on the 'what's new' section of the website, we will have regular updates now I hope for the different opportunities and scheduling of things that we're doing to support our now extensive online community. Thank you very much.