The Five Powers

The Five Powers (Sanskrit, Pali: "IAST|pañca bala") in Buddhism are faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. They are one of the seven sets of "qualities conducive to enlightenment." They are parallel facets of the five "spiritual faculties."

Translation

"Pañca" (Sanskrit, Pali) means "five." [See Rhys Davids & Stede (1921-25), p. 387, entry for "Pañca," retrieved 2008-03-11 from "U. of Chicago" at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1:971.pali; and, Monier-Williams (1964), e.g., p. 579, entry "Pañcaka," retrieved 2008-03-11 from "U. of Cologne" at http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/MWScanpdf/mw0578-paJcAGguri.pdf.] "Bala" (Sanskrit, Pali) means "power," "strength," "force." [See Rhys Davids & Stede (1921-25), p. 482, entry for "Bala," retrieved 2008-03-11 from "U. of Chicago" at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1:3245.pali; and, Monier-Williams (1964), p. 722, entry "Bala," retrieved 2008-03-11 from "U. of Cologne" at http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/cgi-bin/serveimg.pl?file=/scans/MWScan/MWScanjpg/mw0722-barAsI.jpg.]

Exegesis

Faith and Wisdom balance each other, as do Energy and Concentration.The Five Faculties are ‘controlling' faculties because they control or master their opposites.The faculties and powers are two aspects of the same thing.

#Faith (saddha) - controls doubt
#Energy/Effort/Persistence (viriya) – controls laziness
#Mindfulness (sati); - controls heedlessness
#Concentration (samādhi) - controls distraction
#Wisdom/Discernment (pañña, prajña) – controls ignorance

Notes

References

* Monier-Williams, Monier (1899, 1964). "A Sanskrit-English Dictionary". London: Oxford University Press. An on-line search engine for the MWD is available from the "U. of Cologne" at http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/monier/.

* Rhys Davids, T.W. & William Stede (eds.) (1921-5). "The Pali Text Society’s Pali–English Dictionary". Chipstead: Pali Text Society. An on-line search engine for the PED is available from "Chicago U." at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/.

ee also

* Bodhipakkhiyadhamma - lists the 32 qualities conducive to Enlightenment, which includes the Five Powers.
* Indriya - "faculty," includes extended discussion of the Five Spiritual Faculties.
* Five Wisdoms

External links

* [http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/conze/wheel065.html The Way of Wisdom - The Five Spiritual Faculties, by Edward Conze]
* [http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma7/5powers.html The Five Spiritual Powers, Dharma talk by Sarah Doering]
* [http://www.encyclopedia-of-religion.org/indriya.html Indriyas] from Encyclopedia of Spiritual Knowledge