5 – THE FIVE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES

The five spiritual faculties are said to be like a cart with four wheels and a driver.

If any of the four wheels is too small, wobbly, or not in balance with the others,

then the going on the spiritual road will be rough.

The four wheels symbolize

faith, wisdom, energy, and concentration.

If the driver is not paying attention there will also be problems.

The driver symbolizes Mindfulness.

This is a really useful teaching and quite a fine list.

The trick is that

faith and wisdom must both be strengthened and kept in balance,

as must energy and concentration.

Mindfulness may always be increased,

so for this one the sky is the limit,

but no need to obsess about it.

FAITH AND WISDOM

Let’s start with faith and wisdom.

Lack of faith

can lead to cynicism, giving up, half-hearted effort, and bitterness.

Excess faith can lead to blind adherence, dogma, sectarian arrogance,

being disappointed or disillusioned when you realize that

your teachers do not meet all your expectations,

an inability to realistically examine and revise your approach to spirituality

when necessary, and many other problems.

Insufficient wisdom can lead to

stupidity, blindness, gullibility, and narrow-minded or

agenda-motivated interpretations of the teachings.

Wisdom can become distorted by the intellect

and this can lead to harmful or treacherous cleverness

and vanity about our insights,

which can lead to spiritual bullying and megalomania,

rather than mature, heartful wisdom.

Lack of wisdom can lead to an overemphasis on

acquiring knowledge over practice and direct experience,

and desperate attempts to think your way to enlightenment.

You can see that:

an excess of intellect is often a sign of a lack of faith,

and an excess of faith is often marked by a lack of wisdom.

When faith and wisdom are in balance

there is a heartfelt steadiness,

a quality of balanced and genuine inquiry, an ability to persevere,

and with these an unmistakable humility.

Faith at its best produces deep gratitude for life in all its richness,

for its lessons, difficulties, and blessings, and for the chance to awaken.

It provides enthusiasm, galvanizes energy, serves as a support in times of trouble, and

allows us to move forward without holding back.

Faith allows us to realize that some truly brilliant, dedicated, and wise people

have come before us and left effective methods and maps that we can follow

to achieve what they achieved.

Wisdom at its best comes from

deep and direct perceptual investigation of life, as it is,

right here and right now, and goes

far beyond the reach of reason and rational thought,

transcending the paradoxes that these inevitably create.

In the end,

wisdom and faith converge.

ENERGY AND CONCENTRATION

The same principles apply to energy and concentration;

they must both be strengthened but also in balance.

With insufficient energy,

there is sloth, torpor, dullness, and tiredness.

When there is excess energy, the mind and body may be

restless, agitated, jumpy, strained, tense, and irritable.

With excess energy,

we may be completely unable to focus at all because

we are overemphasizing effort

at the expense of focusing on the object of meditation.

~~~

With insufficient concentration,

the mind won’t stay with its chosen meditation object

and tends to get lost in thought or snagged by stories.

With excess concentration,

we can become strained due

to focusing too narrowly and tightly for reality to “breathe”.

Again,

too much energy is related to a lack of concentration and vice versa.

When this balance is right,

the posture is straight and steady but not rigid,

and the mind is bright and focused steadily on objects

and their back-and-forth interplay.

As the balance of energy and concentration matures,

it may feel, strangely, that there is little energy or much concentration.

Things may be perceived clearly and with very little effort.

Experience may seem quite spacious and inclusive

rather than narrowly focused and concentrated.

These surprise many people,

and they may cling to a less mature phase of developing concentration,

which feels narrow and tight, and the less mature phase of developing energy,

which feels effortful.

When energy and concentration mature, the feel is

spacious and easy, natural and clear, gentle and broad, rich and subtle,

all at once.

Everything is just showing itself all the way through on its own.

MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness is in a category all by itself,

as it can potentially balance and perfect the remaining four spiritual faculties.

This does not mean that we shouldn’t be informed by the other two pairs,

but that mindfulness is extremely important.

Mindfulness means knowing what is… as it is…

right now.

It is the quality of mind that knows things as they are.

Really,

it is the quality of sensations manifesting as they are,

where they are, and on their own.

However,

initially it appears to be something we create and cultivate,

and that is okay for the time being.

If you are trying to perceive the sensations that make up your experience clearly

and to know what they are,

you are balancing energy and concentration, and faith and wisdom.

Due to energy,

the mind is alert and attentive.

Due to concentration,

it is stable.

Faith here may also mean acceptance,

and wisdom here is clear comprehension.

Mindfulness means being very clear about our human, mammalian reality

as it is.

It is about being here now.

Truth is found in the ordinary sensations that make up our experience.

If we are not mindful of them or reject them because we are looking for

“progress”, “depth”, or “transcendence”,

we will be unable to appreciate what they have to teach,

and be unable to do insight practices.

It is aptly said that:

when balanced and perfected,

the five spiritual faculties as they apply to insight training

are a sufficient cause for Awakening.

~~~

This article was Inspired by

Buddha’s step by step instructions to obtain Enlightenment

as refined by The Arahant Daneil M. Ingram.