The Five Powers (plus one)

Faith (saddhā bala) is better translated as “Confidence” or “Trust”. If you do not have enough confidence in yourself, that you can become a Buddha, you seek these things outside of yourself. When you have faith in yourself, you are very strong. In the Christian Gospels, it is said: “When you have faith, you can move mountains.” This is a poetic way of describing this energy.

If you have put the teachings of the Buddha into practice, and if you have found that the teaching is effective in bringing your mindfulness, concentration and joy, then faith and confidence is born from this. Faith and confidence is not born of ideas, but in the outcome of your practice. When you practice walking and succeed in walking mindfully, you see that you are light, you are solid, and you are free, your confidence is born from that kind of experience.

So this is not superstition; this is not relying on something outside or someone outside of yourself. This can bring a lot of happiness. If you don’t have that kind of faith or that kind of confidence, you suffer. The Buddha is inside. Taking refuge in the Buddha in myself, taking refuge in the Dharma in myself and the Sangha in myself becomes very clear.

Diligence (viriya bala) in your daily practice brings about transformation. In the teaching of the Buddha, diligence is very concrete. There are concrete things you do in your daily life. And if you do it every day, that is called diligence.

The seeds of awakening, understanding and compassion are always in us. They are part of the Buddha-nature. The Buddha-nature is innate. The problem is how to help these seeds to manifest. You need the practice of watering: you water not the negative seeds, like the seed of anger or of confusion; but you water the seed of mindfulness, concentration, compassion and so on.

Every time seeds are watered, they manifest themselves on the upper level of consciousness, which is mind consciousness. Watering joy or compassion decorates that upper level, making it beautiful and pleasant. Watching a movie or engaging in a conversation can also water the seeds of violence and of fear, and cause those seeds to manifest. Diligence, here, is Yoniso Manaskāra (“appropriate attention”). It is the practice of selective watering. We don’t suppress the negative seeds; we simply don’t encourage them, we don’t give them a chance to flower.

Listening to the bell, you begin to breathe mindfully, in and out. This is an example of appropriate attention. In your practice centers and in your family, you should have sounds and sights that can help you touch the wholesome things within yourself, and not to expose the sight or sound that will touch and trigger the negative seeds of anger or of craving in you. This is the first practice.

You need intelligence in order to practice this way. You have your partner, you have your children, you have your friends. Protect them. Create the kind of environment where they don’t touch the things that bring about the watering of the negative seeds. The Fifth Mindfulness Training is about mindful consumption, where we do not set off the seeds of fear, violence and craving in us.

So, if the negative seeds have not yet arrived, do your best to keep them in the store consciousness, with diligence.

The second step is, if a negative seed has been watered and has manifested in the mind consciousness, with diligence, you help it to return home to the store consciousness. There are many ways you can do that.

It’s like when you have a compact disc of digital music, and you have taken the wrong disc to play. And when you play it… well… it is not pleasant. So you press stop, and you change the CD. When the new CD is played, it is very pleasant.

So the Buddha is his time did not have compact discs, so he used the image of the peg, the peg that connects two pieces of wood. When the peg is not good, the joint cannot stand, and you can use a new peg to drive the old peg out. You change the idea, you change the object of your mind consciousness. If an idea is negative, full of craving or anger that manifests, you can use your mindful breathing to touch another seed that is wholesome and invite it to come up. If it is interesting enough, the other seed can go back down. But it should be more interesting, otherwise you will be fighting within yourself.

With skillfulness and with intelligence we practice the second step in order to change the situation, helping the negative ideas to go down to the store consciousness, and helping the positive ideas to come up to the mind consciousness.