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The Five Faculties Part I

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to IMC. Is this loud enough? Everyone can hear, except for people who can't hear that question. Okay.

I just came back from teaching for a week at IRC (Insight Retreat Center), and the people who are responsible for it spent a lot of time discussing the coronavirus. Because people come there and gather to live together for a week at a time, how do we take that into account? What are all the possible scenarios of what might come? In some ways, IRC was kind of leading the discussion in terms of IMC (Insight Meditation Center). And so IMC is just starting a serious discussion now about how to better take care of this building and the people who come here. There are already some efforts toward sanitizing, disinfecting, and things like that, so it's all in progress.

But what I want to say about this is that, hopefully, we live a wise, practical life in the world. But in Buddhism, we also live a wise, spiritual life in the world. And for that, I'm kind of delighted—at least in my little mind—that every time I hear the expression "coronavirus," I hear "Karuṇā virus."

Karuṇā^[1] is the Sanskrit and Pali word for compassion. Wouldn't that be nice if there was a compassion virus that somehow spread and we all got it? But more importantly than just a play on words, I think a really important part of what we contend with and work with in Buddhist practice is the degree to which we are self-focused and the degree to which we are other-focused. What's the balance for that? What's the right place for that here and there?

I think if we think of this play on the words corona and karuṇā as pointing in both directions: For some people, the primary concern around this current pandemic of flu that's being spread is mostly how to protect themselves. It turns out that most of the ways we protect ourselves are ways of protecting others too. I think it's actually helpful to spend more time, perhaps change the balance a little bit, so that you're actually thinking more about others than yourself, and you'll be protecting yourself at the same time.

The way I think about this is that, to the degree to which we can potentially get some virus like this, or any kind of cold or flu, we're also the carriers of it, the transmitters of it. In fact, for most colds and flus that go around, probably all of us are more frequently transmitters or carriers of it than we actually get the thing ourselves.

If that's the case, then I think it's kind of nice to shift whatever balance you have to live your life now in this new corona world, thinking about others and thinking about how to support and care for others. How you wash your hands, how you use commonly touched items, what you do when you have a sniffle—all kinds of ways. How could you be in the world to make it better for others, as opposed to how can I protect myself?

You might end up doing it, and from the outside, it looks like you're doing exactly the same thing. But your heart will feel so much different in terms of this spiritual, Buddhist side. Your whole demeanor and way of life will probably be a lot better if you shift the directionality of what you're caring for. I think it probably has health benefits because to operate under fear—my guess is psychology affects physiology—and fear probably is not a good thing for the immune system, but compassion is. If it's the exact same behavior, choose the compassion side. So when you hear "corona," maybe you'll hear "compassion" and think about how that's how you can live. Is that okay for now on that topic? Okay.

The Five Faculties

Besides that topic, since I was on retreat this last week, I don't have anything new to think about except for the theme of the retreat. So that's what I'd like to share with you. I taught the retreat with two wonderful teachers, Dawn Scott and Nisha Patel. We shared the theme through the week, and we were massaging and working it, and I was inspired by the theme. So maybe by talking today, I can share that inspiration.

The title or that concept that was talked about, in and of itself, might not sound inspiring. The common English term is: the five faculties. Are you inspired yet? [Laughter]

The five faculties are five abilities that we have. They could be called five abilities that are activated and engaged in doing every activity we do in life. But in Buddhist meditation practice, we look at how these five are activated in Buddhist practice. Now, the word for that we translate as "faculties," occasionally you see people translate it as the "five controlling faculties." The word "control" is not very popular in Buddhist circles in the United States. Maybe partly because some people control too much—controlling everything—and learning to relax and not control everything is an important step in people's practice. So it's not that often you hear it translated as "controlling faculties."

What's more interesting is what the Pali name is, the Buddhist word that's been translated as "faculties." It's indriya, and indriya means something like "of the god Indra." Indra is a god mostly of ancient India and Vedic times, and came into Buddhism, or was a well-respected god in ancient Buddhism. Indra had certain qualities; Indra was considered a friend of Buddhists, a friend of the Buddha. He is also a protector god and protected people, associated with protecting people from evil and bringing beneficial nourishment and nutrients into people's lives. So he was a benevolent figure, but Indra was also, for a certain period of time, the ruler of the heavens, the ruler of the gods. So, "of Indra."

Here, in this wonderful way in which the Buddha sometimes reframed or flipped things around—at least as I read it—rather than focusing on the divinity that's outside of ourselves, he's pointing to what's divine, or the divinity inside of ourselves. Metaphorically, these five faculties have such an important role that they are divine, or are divinities associated with this great ruler of the gods. That says a lot about the early Buddhist view of the human being: that we have these wonderful faculties within us that have huge potential. They have the potential to protect us, to be our friends and nourish us, to protect us from evil or bad tendencies. They also have the potential to guide us, to lead us, to move us in a good direction. In that sense, they're kind of like rulers of our inner life.

What I find fascinating about this is the idea that there are five capacities inside of us that protect us, guide us, control in some way, or rule or move us in a healthy, good direction, that are not what we normally would take as being "me," "myself," or "mine." Think about the degree to which we organize ourselves around "self," around our self-identity, about "me" and what I'm supposed to get and what I'm supposed to do, especially in terms of control and accomplishing things: "I'm in charge, I'm going to protect myself, I'm going to get something, I'm, I'm, I'm."

And here there are these five things which are within us, but in some ways, we live in relationship to them. We support them and develop them; they're within us, but they're not "us." To have these powerful things within us, when they become powerful and course through us, we really feel the goodness, the strength, and the power of them as they work through our system. It feels like there's something—maybe it's unfortunate to say "impersonal" about them, that seems kind of dry. Then in California, we have "transpersonal," though there's no longer the Transpersonal Institute of Psychology; it used to be, and now it's Sofia University. So they went from this transpersonal idea to feminine wisdom—one of the five faculties is wisdom! So it is something which is within us, but it's not what we normally identify as "us," and we're developing them.

I'll give you the common English names for these five. As I give this talk, what would be ideal is if, as you listen to it, you identified these in yourself. Not in terms of ideas—"Yeah, I guess I have that, I read about that"—but rather that you recognize it in action, how they operate for you. Some of the words I'll use initially maybe don't speak to you, and I'll offer other words as well. Commonly, the five are faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. We begin with faith, which may be the most inspiring at the moment to talk about, so maybe that's what gets the most press.

Faith

The Pali word for faith is saddhā (śraddhā in Sanskrit). I'm beginning to feel like I'd like to use the Pali and Sanskrit names more than I used to, because I'm appreciating how many people come to IMC who have an Indian background. Especially when I use Sanskrit, those words mean something to them; it's part of their modern language as well. So śraddhā or saddhā is a wonderful term, and it's a concept or an activity of the heart.

When we use the English word "faith," it is often associated for some people with believing in a creed: "This is my faith." To believe something on faith means you have to believe it based on no evidence whatsoever, but you should believe it anyway. That's certainly not what saddhā means in Buddhism.

What I like to point out is that, rather than seeing faith as something we believe, we can maybe see faith as something we believe in. If we look at the original meaning of the word "believe," the etymological source of it in the Middle Ages did not refer to the creed to which you adhered. In modern English, when we say "I believe in God" or "I believe in something," it means that you think it's true. The original meaning of belief was "what you love," "what you hold dear," "what you care for." Then you have a whole different feeling for what belief is: What do you love? What do you put your heart into? What do you do wholeheartedly? What do you care for? What do you hold dear? That has a whole different feeling.

The other thing that belief is used for in English, which I think is a beautiful expression, is when someone tells you they believe in you. What a great expression! To believe in someone means to have confidence in them, to really trust and value who they are, to have clear confidence in the direction their life is going and what they're doing. To have someone tell you, "I believe in you"—imagine a child growing up with no one ever telling them that, and then imagine a child growing up with people believing in them: "You can do it, you can find your way, and you have value."

So, what is it that you love? What is it that you care for? What is it that you value and esteem? In the early Buddhist tradition, the word saddhā had to do most concretely with the kind of faith, belief, and confidence with which you would start your Buddhist practice. As a beginner, you don't know anything about it; you've never meditated, never done any practice at all. It would be like learning a musical instrument or learning a craft you've never done before. You have to have some faith, belief, or confidence that it's worthwhile to learn and that you can do it.

That faith gets you going. Once you get it going for a while, you start learning your musical instrument or your craft, and after a while, you get the hang of it. You develop a skill, and then it's no longer faith that you can do it. Now you have evidence that you can do it, and you have evidence-based confidence: "Yeah, I can do this." I remember having to learn how to snap my fingers as a teeny kid, and that was hard! Now I don't have faith I can do it; now I have confidence—at least for now, before the arthritis gets worse. [Laughter]

Buddhist practice is the same way. Having faith is how we get started. If you go take a simple class in mindfulness now at a local YMCA or community center, it doesn't take a lot of confidence or faith to do it. Your doctor prescribes it, your therapist prescribes it, your mother prescribes it! So people try it out without really high expectations for what it'll do for them. Maybe it's just a matter of a little bit of stress reduction, which is great.

But classically, the Buddhist path was much more than just a little bit of stress reduction or pain relief. It was really a path for liberation. To really step onto that path for its full potential—of freeing the heart from whatever afflicts it, freeing the heart from any ways in which it's contracted, limited, held down, or caught and tangled in its web of preoccupations and self-concern—to really find freedom from that is a phenomenal path to be on. It's the path of a lifetime. To step onto that as a beginner takes a higher degree of faith or confidence than it does to just go to the YMCA for a little bit of mindfulness.

So saddhā has a very important role. How does it get triggered? How does it get awakened enough so that it really becomes something that enlivens us or engages us? "This is what I want. This is what I believe in. This is what I will put provisional faith into in order to try it out."

Some people get that from meeting someone else who somehow embodies the qualities of the Dharma, practice, or freedom that really inspires them. That was certainly my case in the early years of practice. I would meet these people and say, "Wow, this really speaks to me. This really resonates with something inside of me. This is something that I want." More than wanting it, it was something I believed in, I loved, I held dear. It spoke to something about who I actually am, or what seemed to be a place of being at home or being in this world in a complete way.

For some people, it's hearing teachings or reading teachings. Sometimes the teachings are so clear for them. I've had people tell me, "The scales fell from my eyes" just from reading a book, and their whole life was changed in a radically different way.

Some people hear a Dharma talk, and that Dharma talk somehow does something to them: "Wow, I had no idea." One of my favorite little stories, which is not too uncommon, is people going to a Dharma talk, and the talk is about suffering (these Buddhists and their suffering!). They are so inspired, and it's life-changing, because they grew up in a situation, society, culture, family, or school where no one ever talked about suffering. It was all hidden, pushed away, denied, and avoided at all costs. Or explanations were given for it that just didn't make any sense, and it wasn't understandable.

And then to hear teachings where suffering is put center stage: We address this, we look at this, we take it seriously. We're the people who really look at suffering, not to suffer better, but rather to work through it to the other side. This idea of liberation from suffering is the simplest way of talking about liberation in Buddhism. Some people hear this, and it is life-changing: "Wow, you can do this. Someone's finally talking about it. Finally, my life makes sense." That's all, it makes sense: "This is what I want to do with my life." And then some people will change their lives and do something totally different.

One of my favorite little stories of someone suddenly being changed by their encounter with Buddhism is a friend of mine who was out riding his motorcycle. He used to just putter all over the state on his motorcycle as a young man. He drove down this long dirt mountain road and came to the end of the road, and it was Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. He'd never known anything about Buddhism, but there it was, and he didn't leave! Later he left, but he became a Zen priest, a teacher, and the whole thing. People encounter things, you know.

For some people, their faith is—I don't know if it's a "negative faith"—but they come to a point in their life where not only have they given up faith in everything else, but they've reached rock bottom. Nothing else matters anymore, nothing else works. They're just in total desperation: "Nothing makes sense anymore, nothing works. I might as well try this Buddhist thing." They put themselves into the practice, and then something begins to cook and to work for them.

Some people are inspired because something they hear or see in the Dharma resonates very deeply with something inside, something they already know in themselves. Something they've touched and experienced that maybe they don't have words for, and they say, "Oh, here it is. This is what I've been looking for. This is what I've been trying to find a place to express in my life, or to touch into again."

It's not uncommon for people to have spent a lot of time in nature as kids. I've met people who grew up in the countryside on farms and were left alone to roam around and spend hours in the woods. They touched something there that was so important for them. When they come to Buddhist practice, that's what they connect with. Sometimes it's in small things we experience as children. Not a few people come to Buddhism and rediscover, not their "inner child," but the inner goodness they experienced here and there as a child.

For me, I remember it was after I started doing meditation retreats. During my meditation, sometimes I had this experience in my chest, a feeling of wholeness, warmth, and a certain kind of poignancy of goodness. I realized, "Oh, this is the experience that I had as a little kid, maybe seven, eight, or nine years old, that I called 'the edge of the pillow.'" It always happened as I was going to sleep at night. I was laying on the edge of the pillow, I guess, and I'd just be laying there peacefully, and this feeling would well up inside my chest—this warmth, this wholeness, this goodness. I used to just feel that. I didn't know what it was; I didn't have any context for it. It never occurred to me to do anything with it or think too much about it, except I just thought, "There it is, the edge of the pillow experience, how nice."

And then, twenty years later or so, meditating on a week-long retreat: "Hey, wait a minute! I remember this." I hadn't thought about it for many years. "Wait a minute, there it is! That's the experience." That certainly inspired my faith: "Wow, this is good. I'm touching something that's accessible in a way that I never knew you could access." You can't exactly access it on will, but you can do something that touches into this childhood feeling. So there are many things that inspire faith, the faith that gets us started.

Unshakable Confidence

Some people prefer to call it confidence, and some people translate it that way. However, I'd like to reserve "confidence" for confirmed faith. As we engage in practice, what started us in the practice begins happening to us. We experience for ourselves: "Oh, this is right, this is true, this works." Like starting to learn a musical instrument, and after some time: "Wow, yes, it's true! I can learn an instrument! It took many hours, but I could do it." And so: "I can meditate. I can live an ethical life. I can cultivate my compassion and kindness. I can do these things, and I am doing it." That gives birth to a little bit of confidence. Not just, "Yeah, I can do it, and I'll get around to it when I retire," or "I'll do it on my deathbed." It awakens a kind of enthusiasm: "Yes, I can do it. This is not only worth doing, this is maybe worth putting at the center of my life." Then it becomes confidence.

There's actually a Pali word for this kind of confidence. There are two kinds of faith. There is saddhā, for which I reserve the word "faith," and then the confirmed confidence is called aveccappasāda^[2], which has the meaning of "confidence born of knowledge." Confidence comes from knowing something for yourself. Now you don't have to believe it in terms of taking someone else's word for it; you know it. And if you know it, now you can believe it in the sense of loving it, of caring for it. You have something you care for, it's valuable, and now you believe, love, and care for it. Bhikkhu Bodhi^[3], the great translator of our texts, translates aveccappasāda as "unshakable confidence."

For myself and other people who have been practicing for a long time, you get this sense of unshakability: "I know this for sure, this is true, this is really possible. This really is something that I want to organize my life around." It's not uncommon for people, at some point as the practice deepens, to understand this movement towards freedom. This movement to no longer operate under any kind of attachment, clinging, or selfishness that so much of life is organized around. "This is not what I want to base my life on anymore. This doesn't make sense to keep at the center of my life. I'm now going to practice in the direction of putting the Dharma at the center, putting the practice at the center." In a very personal way, I hope that means something like, "I'm going to now center my heart's capacity for freedom, my heart's capacity to live with goodness—without greed, hate, and delusion; without selfishness; without being closed, tight, or caught up in my entanglements." It's not easy to do that, but that's what I want to be involved in, and that's what I want to put at the center of my life.

There's a range of what faith and confidence can mean for people, but as it gets stronger, it becomes a force inside of us. It's not just a policy that we have: "Okay, what should I do today? Well, I think I'll have faith. Check it off the to-do list, yes I have faith." Rather, it's something that is integral to what we are realizing for ourselves, what we're experiencing for ourselves, what we're actually seeing in ourselves. We see the change, the movement of practice, what it's like to show up and be mindful and hold things in a way that does not perpetuate the clinging and selfishness that can exist.

It becomes a force, a power that protects us, that guides us, that is our friend that wants the best for us, that's going to protect us from our own bad tendencies. In ancient India, they called it something of the deity Indra. Now you can begin to appreciate why we might want to interpret this as something so special that we will happily borrow the English word "divine." We could call it our inner divinity, the divine quality of faith that we have.

Faith is only one of these five divine qualities inside. Each of the other ones can also be developed and understood, and they really have this beautiful force and momentum that lives in us and grows over time. We don't have much time to go over the next four, but maybe I can do that next week. I want to add that for each of these, to awaken a sense of how we can relate to them or the role they can have in our lives, there are five actions we can take. There are five ways of relating to them:

1. Faith: We can trust faith.
2. Energy (Effort): We can enjoy it. Most people don't think of making an effort as enjoyment, but this energy, this effort, we can enjoy. That becomes a power.
3. Mindfulness: We can love mindfulness. It is something we really can love. After all, mindfulness loves you if you give it half a chance.
4. Concentration (Samādhi): We can revere concentration. It is something to have reverence for. That speaks to the specialness of what samādhi is.
5. Wisdom: Wisdom is something to heed, something to listen to. You have within you the capacities, powers, momentum, and divine qualities of wisdom, understanding, and discernment that can guide and support you in the direction you go in life. It's your wisdom; it's not like someone else is telling you what to do. When that wisdom quality has been evoked, our relationship to it is to heed it, listen to it, go along with it, and let it guide you.

Five divine qualities inside.

Occasionally in English, people call them the five spiritual faculties. They are five faculties that you use in probably every activity you're involved in. It's a fascinating exercise to take an ordinary activity, like driving a car or cooking a meal, and see how each of those five ordinary, very human faculties comes into play. Sometimes they come into play because you realize that one of the five is missing or weak, and that's why you're getting tripped up in how you're doing the activity. You'll see that they are all there. Some things you do are so natural and easy that you don't realize these faculties are operating or present until you get injured or sick, and you can't do it. People think of walking as nothing, but when you have injuries in your leg, walking is not that easy. It becomes a whole other thing. You realize, "I used to have a lot of faith in my ability to walk. It was so easy, I never had to think about it. But now I'm not so sure I can."

Anyway, it's interesting to choose some activities during this week and analyze the presence of these five faculties. You might find it very interesting and enlivening to see how these five play out. If you don't understand the other four yet, come back next week!

We have a couple of minutes if you have any questions.

Q&A

Speaker 1: I'm just recollecting that in the Dhammapada, it says it's especially important to cultivate the five faculties. It's one of the most important things that we can do. I think you're hinting at the balancing of the five, how they balance each other out: faith and wisdom, energy and samādhi, and mindfulness is sort of the anchor in the center. So I just wanted to add that comment.

Gil Fronsdal: Great, thank you. Can you move the mic right back?

Speaker 2: What is concentration?

Gil Fronsdal: Come back next week! If I can get to two of them, then I can get to concentration next week. But the simple idea for the purposes of these five faculties is that the third one, mindfulness, is our ability to be aware or to recognize what's happening. Concentration, or samādhi, is the ability of our whole system—not just our control tower—to sustain that awareness through time. So there's awareness, and then sustained awareness, and those two aren't radically separate. Many people can have moments of mindfulness, but to have the awareness continue in a smooth, easy momentum of its own that really keeps us in the present moment with our experience—that's the function of samādhi. Great, one last one.

Speaker 3: Do you mind expanding on the difference between having unshakable confidence and no attachment? It seems like they're kind of at odds. I have unshakable confidence that it's good to keep my hand open and not grip anything...

Gil Fronsdal: There can be powerful confidence in the value of non-clinging that actually supports us to be relaxed and not cling. It's interesting you ask this, because the word pasāda in "unshakable confidence" also has the meaning of "serene" or "peaceful." It's not a zealous confidence; it is unshakable and strong, but built into it is this feeling of serenity.

At the retreat, one of the teachers was talking about the energy factor (effort), and she said that the effort needed should be "relaxed and relentless." There again we have that paradox you're pointing to. We have this idea that these things can't coexist. But being unattached doesn't have to mean having no energy; it can come with a tremendous upsurge of wonderful, healthy vitality that flows into doing things wholeheartedly.

So we're going to stop... yes?

Speaker 4: [Unintelligible]

Gil Fronsdal: Richard says that when you pass the mic these days, we want to clean our hands afterward because who knows what came your way! That's true. One of the ways of living a generous, compassionate, caring life for others is to pick up a new practice. They say that you can be fully, totally awakened or enlightened in any activity that you give yourself over to wholeheartedly. Really do this activity like it's the only thing you're doing at that moment, the most important thing to do. Do nothing else, just be there for that. Who knows, you might be the next Buddha if you do that with washing your hands! Wash your hands like this is the one thing that needs to be done. Don't do it impatiently. Don't think about what's next. If you just want to get through washing your hands quickly so you can do the "important" things in life, I guarantee you won't get the full practice potential of washing your hands. You'll shortchange yourselves.

So go forth into the world and make it an enlightening practice. Have all five faculties come into play as you wash your hands. Enjoy your week. Thank you.