A reflection on the faculty of energy and how to apply it skillfully. Energy for investigation that leads to wisdom, energy for devotion and aspiration that uplifts the heart, energy for mindfulness of body that results in calm and insight.
We sometimes think that if we are experiencing aversion in our practice, that insight must be out of reach. Yet the Buddha teaches us that the path unfolds through understanding suffering. When we bring mindfulness to aversion itself, the understanding that develops can be very freeing.
These 5 faculties when cultivated and developed merge in the deathless. Faith, energy, concentration, mindfulness, wisdom. These are faculties we all have, but they may be poorly developed. Guidance is given for how to touch into these and strengthen them.
Practicing meditation, we inevitably encounter the wandering mind. Rather than considering this experience to be a "problem", if we explore this phenomenon with mindfulness, we can learn a lot about our minds.
The mindstates behind violence--anger and fear--are universal and natural. If they possess us and drive our actions, we suffer. If we learn to meet them with a mindful awareness--if we step out of judgment and angry reactivity--we serve our own freedom and the possibility of peace on earth as well.
The mind of a Buddha is at peace because of the absence of reactivity. Can we discover that place of rest in our own minds? Mindfulness of vedana, the feeling tone of experience, exposes the ways we try to control our experiences from our likes and dislikes. What does it mean to open to the way things are?
Through mindfulness of breathing we can develop a deeply unified mind, heart and body. The beauty of the breath takes us into meditative absorptions, heals the mind and body, and opens insight and full liberation beyond the patterns of suffering.
