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.

Balancing the Faculties

Introduction

So again, a really warm welcome to everyone. On the winter solstice, I guess there are a number of astrological events happening today. It's a little bit odd; I was reflecting on how this year has felt off-kilter in so many ways. I felt some reassurance that the planet still has the same tilt and the planet is still going around the sun in the same way. So wishing everybody a nice winter solstice.

Today I'd like to continue this series talking about the five faculties. I have to admit that when I did the first talk on the five faculties, I found it really interesting and didn't imagine that I'd be doing such a series on them. But the more I practice with them, and think about them, and read about them in the suttas, and hear what some other dharma teachers have said about them, the more interesting and alive they've become. So there's a third talk where I'd like to offer maybe just one more way in which we might engage or consider the five faculties.

Transforming Faith into Wisdom

For those of you who don't know, the five faculties are faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. They're usually given in that order. Most of the Buddhist lists are given in a particular order, and sometimes there's some meaning given to that order. In a preceding talk, I talked about how faith is first and wisdom is last. One way we might consider the five faculties is this movement from faith to wisdom that moves through energy, mindfulness, and concentration. Some of you might recognize this as the mental development group within the Eightfold Path. Sometimes we have sīla, samādhi, paññā^[1]—ethics, mental development or concentration, and wisdom. This is putting the path of practice into three buckets. Samādhi has energy or effort, mindfulness, and concentration, and so do the five faculties.

We might consider this idea that practicing with the five faculties, or all practice in fact, is a way of transforming faith into wisdom. Last week I talked a little bit about how one way to do that is to have heedfulness, sometimes translated as diligence or vigilance. In the first talk on the five faculties, I discussed how cultivating the faculties creates the conditions which slant, incline, and slope towards awakening, just like the Ganges river slants, slopes, and inclines towards the ocean.

With all these ideas, there's an emphasis on developing and cultivating the five faculties. Sometimes it's just a natural development in which they unfold in our practice. For example, with a little bit of faith, we're willing to make a little bit of effort. With a little bit of effort, we become a little bit more aware of what's happening in the present moment. When we're a little bit more aware, the mind gets collected; it gets a bit more unified. When the mind is a little bit more unified or collected, then we can see a little bit more clearly. When we can see a little bit more clearly, we start to understand what's really happening, and there might be some insights that arise. When we have a different understanding of what's happening and some insights arise, there's a little bit more faith. We realize, "Oh yeah, some of these dharma teachings that I've heard about or read about are getting verified, or they make sense in a different way." So then we're willing to apply just a little bit more effort, applying our mind to what's actually happening with some increased mindfulness. And there we go. So in this way, cultivating the faculties can just be a natural unfolding. Maybe it's not something that we have to emphasize.

The Story of Ānanda

But there's also a recognition that we can get out of balance if we're always or often emphasizing, "You have to cultivate, you have to develop the faculties." To be sure, there are plenty of sutta passages that emphasize effort, energy, or diligence, and there are lots of different words and ways that this idea gets expressed. And of course, it's true. Just like if you want to learn anything—learning to water ski, practice the piano, or play some new video game—we have to apply some amount of effort.

Of course, we are also a pragmatic and goal-oriented culture in general. We put effort into our jobs, our education, and maybe even our vacations and leisure time. In response to that effort, we generally expect results. We're not just putting in effort for no reason; we expect there to be particular outcomes. But when it comes to spiritual practice, it doesn't become as predictable what the results are going to be. It's perfectly natural that we bring from our daily life the way that we've been in the world. If things aren't turning out the way that we expect or want them to, we feel we just have to try a little harder. But this can really easily get to some over-striving, some straining, getting a little bit out of balance. In fact, that can stall and get in the way of our spiritual practice.

There's this story that the tradition holds of Ānanda^[2]. Many of you may know that he was the attendant of the Buddha and is a really dear character in the suttas. I have a soft spot in my heart for this person, Ānanda. After the Buddha died, there was a collection of the senior members of the sangha that were going to get together and recite the Buddha's teachings to preserve them. But a prerequisite to be able to attend this meeting to talk about the teachings was that you had to be fully awakened; you had to be an arhat^[3]. As an aside, I kind of like this idea that it's a bunch of completely awakened people getting together to preserve the teachings.

Ānanda had been the Buddha's attendant and had heard so many of the talks. He had this tremendous memory, so of course they would want him to be there, but he wasn't an arhat. He wasn't completely awakened. So on the night before this meeting, the First Council, he strives and he strains to become awakened. He meditated strenuously and did everything that he knew how, just really, really trying hard to become awakened. He wanted to attend this meeting. But try as he might, he could not become fully awakened. He couldn't make this breakthrough to being an arhat.

So he decided to just go to bed, to lie down and sleep. The tradition holds this story that he sat down on his bed and picked up his feet, but his head had not yet hit the pillow. Right at that particular moment, he becomes awakened. Right when he's relaxing after all this strenuous effort, right when he lets go of that effort, is when he becomes awakened.

This is a way that points out that there needs to be a certain amount of effort, but if there's too much effort, we can't become awakened. We can't have the insights. Instead, we get tight and tangled up. I've heard stories from a number of different meditators, and I myself have had this experience, that when we're sitting down and really trying in some way—really striving—then there's just a headache, or a feeling of disappointment and frustration. Things that are the opposite of well-being and spaciousness. But then, maybe with the transition of going to walking meditation during a retreat, or maybe there's some kind of shift saying, "Okay, this isn't working, I've got to try something else." With some kind of shift is when there can be this movement of going forward.

The Simile of the Charioteer

Regarding the faculties, I'm pointing out that we can talk about cultivating the faculties and moving faith towards wisdom, but we can also talk about cultivating the faculties by having them in balance. There's a story that I've heard from a number of teachers—I'm not sure if it's in the suttas or not—a simile of a charioteer with four horses. There are two pairs of horses. One pair of horses is faith and wisdom. I'm sure there's a technical term for it, but they are connected; there's a yoke that connects these two horses. Then there's the next pair that are energy and concentration, and they're connected. The charioteer, the one who's setting the pace and guiding where the horses go, is mindfulness. So energy and concentration are to be balanced. Faith and wisdom are to be balanced.

This visual, this simile, uses our imagination in a way that helps us to understand things differently than if we just talk about it. I know that I've used this actually sometimes in meditation—just this fleeting image of having four horses trotting together, and mindfulness keeping an eye out on where we're going and what we're doing. The Buddha, of course, used so many similes. He was a master at similes; it's really impressive. They're very effective as a way to learn something, to remember something, and to engage with something in a way that uses more than just our thinking—maybe it uses our visual sense. The simile of the charioteer is one which can help remind us to support these different elements of the five faculties in balance.

The Simile of the Citadel

But there are some other similes that we might use. One is the simile of the citadel for energy. I'm going to describe the way that we might consider or think about energy. I'll say that remember this was thousands of years ago in a particular cultural milieu, and the Buddha is teaching in a way that was relevant for those times. The specifics may not be relevant today, but what's being pointed to is, and maybe we can change some of the ideas around it.

This is the simile of the citadel, a fortress that protects a city. The simile for energy is: "Just as many kinds of armed forces reside in a citadel—such as elephant riders, cavalry, charioteers, archers, bannermen, assistants, food servers, warrior chiefs, princes, chargers, heroes, soldiers," and the list goes on. "In the same way, a noble disciple is energetic."

Just like there are these armed forces that reside in a citadel, we might use a different example today. For example, if you were to run a retreat center, there would be the registrars, the kitchen manager, the managers, the yogis that have 40 different jobs, the teachers, the website designer that allows people to know what's happening for a retreat, and for online retreats, people managing the Zoom. I think you understand. There are so many different disciplines, so many different skills and areas of expertise that come together, and they have very different jobs or tasks.

In the same way, energy is kind of like this. There can be this movement of wanting to do this particular task, or wanting to do that particular task, or going to do this. Just in the same way, we have that inside of us too. Maybe it even feels like we have a whole committee that wants different things: "I want to eat yummy things, but I want to eat healthy things, and not too much sugar." I think we all have this experience. So energy is a way in which there can be a sense of wanting to do something, getting things done, but it may not be completely organized or prioritized. Instead, this can be a committee of workers inside of us.

The way that this might show up in our practice is maybe if there's excess energy, the mind can feel a bit buzzy, restless, agitated, jumpy, strained, or irritable. Energy and effort are sometimes used synonymously in the suttas. We might say that if there's too much effort, there can be a real sense of activity having a feeling of frustration, like, "Dang it!" That kind of attitude that may not be obvious, that's just behind the scenes pushing whatever it is that we're doing. There's a wanting it to go better or faster, or this idea of pushing the river. So there's a way in which there can be too much energy or too much effort, and it's not balanced.

In the same way, there can be insufficient energy, and probably all of us are familiar with this too. A sense of dullness, a sense of tiredness, a sense of just not being willing to be with what the experience is. So if working with the five faculties, there can be a way in which the energy is balanced with concentration. When there's a little bit too much energy, it can bring in some concentration. Or when there's too much concentration, we can bring in some energy.

The simile of the citadel for concentration is: "Just as a king's frontier citadel has much hay, wood, food, water, and medicine stored up for the enjoyment, relief, and comfort of those within." In this way, "those within"—which we heard in the earlier part of the simile as the armed forces of where the energy is going—are supported. It's interesting here to really note that concentration is likened to hay, wood, food, and water that's for the enjoyment and comfort of those within.

So concentration is a way in which we can consider it as a way of having some well-being, some collectedness, some connectedness, some unification. Sometimes when we hear this word "concentration", it automatically triggers a sense that we have to strive and strain. When I say those words, my shoulders go up. But concentration really requires a sense of well-being, a sense of ease, a sense of happiness in order to really blossom. So it's a way in which we can apply our energy and our effort to allow there to be some spaciousness, collectedness, and non-distraction or non-fragmentation. It's a way of opening up and allowing different parts of our experience, maybe our energy that conflicts, to just come and land here.

Balancing Energy and Concentration

I think we all have this experience. When there isn't enough concentration, it might be that the mind just can't quite land on any object; it can't stay with it. Or if there's the wrong kind of concentration, it's when there's a sense of our experience being really fragile and brittle. There's a sense of like, "Go away, I'm trying to get concentrated here." There isn't a sense of well-being. There may be a sense of really being on the object, and being connected to the breath for example, but it's done without any ease or spaciousness. It's really tight and brittle.

But when energy and concentration are in balance, there's a feeling of spaciousness and ease. The experience has a sense of naturalness and clarity. It's gentle, broad, rich, and subtle. We use these kinds of words to describe the experience when energy and concentration are in balance. Often that shows up with the posture. Certainly in the first part of concentration, or later in some of the jhānas^[4], it might be that there's some leaning forward. But just in the beginning, when there's some settling of the mind, the energy often rises up and there's a certain brightness to the posture. It's balanced and steady. The mind has a certain amount of brightness and a certain amount of focus without being heavy-handed, without being like a sledgehammer on the object, but maybe just alighting on the object.

Finding this balance really takes time, and it takes some adjustments. It takes some willingness to spend some time to notice that if there's too much concentration and not enough energy, there might be a sense of fogginess or disconnection. We might feel, "Oh, I'm finally connected to the breath, I've been able to be with a number of breaths in a row," but then there might be a sense of fogginess or sinking mind. You just kind of sink into this fluffy, cottony space. I've certainly spent my time in this experience where there's no brightness, no sense of looking around, no sense of possibility. It's more of a sinking mind, actually feeling like sinking and being sunk when there isn't enough energy.

One way to increase the energy is to bring a little bit of investigation. "What's going on here? It feels foggy and cottony and fluffy, but I also feel stuck, and I can't see clearly. There's no brightness; it's like the lights are dimmed." Just that act of investigation can bring the energy up.

If we have too much energy and not enough concentration—so maybe there's a sense of restlessness—there can be a way in which we might open up our awareness. Gil used this simile before which I found to be really helpful. It's as if you're cramped in an elevator with all kinds of people, really tall people, and you feel kind of diminished and surrounded by them. You feel stuck in some kind of way. And then this elevator door opens into a cathedral. A big beautiful cathedral with really high ceilings and really big space. All of you get out of the elevator and move into the cathedral. Imagining this spaciousness is one way to help when there's a lot of energy. Creating some spaciousness can help there be some more concentration and more ability to be connected to the experience, getting energy and concentration a little bit more in balance.

So when balancing the faculties, we talk about cultivating them and developing them. But sometimes with that emphasis, there might be a little bit too much effort, a little bit too much energy, and we need to balance them. Maybe in another talk—I'm not sure if it'll be the next one—I'll talk about balancing faith and wisdom.

But for now, just wanting to wish you all, as this holiday season is here and bringing 2020 to an end, happiness and well-being. May you find balance in all different areas of your life, and may your practice support you. Thank you.