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Dharma Talk
The Five Powers (bala) are five types of energy or strength needed to transform suffering and create peace and liberation, including:
- Faith: Faith is a power; it is both a seed and a fruit. When faith in divine authority and science is shaken, humans need a rational faith in the Five Mindfulness Trainings to protect family and social happiness. True faith comes from insight (understanding); it can be verified and is not the result of propaganda.
- Diligence (virya): Diligence, inner strength, will, and the joy of wanting to practice.
- Mindfulness: The energy of mindfulness is generated through the practice of walking, standing, lying down, and sitting in awareness.
- Concentration: Focusing the mind on an object, helping to see the truth clearly without being dispersed by the external environment.
- Insight: Deep and accurate vision, which is the source that generates and strengthens solid faith.
These five elements are also called the Five Faculties (the five undefiled roots), the foundation that generates the energy of liberation, helping the practitioner not to fall back into samsara. A good spiritual friend is someone who knows how to water the seeds of faith and the five wholesome roots in others, instead of sowing doubt. True love is expressed through patience, accepting to give a second or third chance to those who have made mistakes, because everyone still has remaining roots of goodness that need to be cultivated.
The Honeyball Sutra teaches the principle of non-contention, practicing detachment from sensual desire, and leaving behind false perceptions. When a person is dominated by false perceptions, they need to contemplate their perceptions and thinking across the three times (past, present, future) to understand the causes, avoiding attachment to pleasure or taking sides. According to Manifestation Only teachings, wrong perception is often caused by subjective mind consciousness distorting the image of reality brought in by eye consciousness. Mind consciousness can operate independently (solitary mind consciousness) or together with other consciousnesses (simultaneous mind consciousness), creating three types of objects of perception (dharma objects):
- The realm of things-in-themselves: The truth not yet distorted, still pristine.
- The realm of representations: Images carrying the substance of reality but altered by subjectivity, love, and hate.
- The realm of mere images: Pure images in the mind consciousness, not real (like in a dream or imagination).