Thanissaro: faculties and becoming

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JohnK
Posts: 1332
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 11:06 pm
Location: Tetons, Wyoming, USA

Thanissaro: faculties and becoming

Post by JohnK »

Just sharing this excerpt from the Introduction to the newly updated book,
The Five Faculties: Putting Wisdom in Charge of the Mind by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (revised Oct. 22, 2017).
I wasn't sure of the best sub-forum to post something like this, so here it landed.
It isn't necessarily to generate discussion, but mostly to share.
Here he frames the faculties in the context of becoming and non-becoming.
I have not yet read his book on the paradox of becoming, but this excerpt seems like a concise statement of the basic principle.
...Now, the processes of becoming always entail suffering and stress. Unskillful
becomings create blatant stress, but even skillful becomings create stress on a more
subtle level. This means that your ability to gain awakening and to put an end to
suffering will mean going beyond becoming altogether: going beyond your sense of
your self and your sense of the world. However, to get there, you have to create good
states of becoming. Why? Because the path requires developing, not just letting go.

...To develop all these things requires desire, the desire around which you build a
world in which awakening is possible and a sense of self that’s conducive to
achieving awakening. Because we want a happiness that goes beyond the ordinary, it
requires that we develop skills that go beyond the ordinary as well. These skills
consist of the five faculties which, because they are based on desire, are forms of
becoming. They’re special forms of becoming, though, in that—in the course of
developing these skills—they enable you to understand what the process of
becoming is and how it works. They also teach you how to take the processes of
becoming apart, so that you can get past unskillful becomings and then, when the
time is ripe, go beyond all becomings altogether.

The reason we need to put the faculties in charge of the mind is because, when
you make up your mind to practice, you find that the entire mind is not in full
agreement. Some of the members of the committee are waiting to sabotage your
practice so that they’ll be free to pursue other desires.

...This week we’re going to be looking instead at the Buddha as someone you can
trust—someone who says that there is a way to go beyond aging, illness, and death,
and who shows you how to do it. In particular, he gives you advice on how to develop
the five strengths of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and
discernment so that you put your wisdom in charge of defining who you are and the
way you interpret the world in which you live. When these five strengths reach the
point where they dominate the mind—in other words, when they become faculties—
then you can trust yourself to act in your own best interest... [emphasis added]
https://www.dhammatalks.org/ebook_index.html
Those who grasp at perceptions & views wander the internet creating friction. [based on Sn4:9,v.847]
paul
Posts: 1512
Joined: Tue May 31, 2011 11:27 pm
Location: Cambodia

Re: Thanissaro: faculties and becoming

Post by paul »

‘Processes of becoming’ is a synonym for ‘fabrications’:

“...the Buddha’s strategy of using the processes of fabrication informed by skillful knowledge to free the mind from the fabrications conditioned by ignorance so as to arrive at the unfabricated. This is why he called his strategy a path: Just as a path to a mountain doesn’t cause the mountain, yet following it can take you there; in the same way, the path doesn’t cause the unfabricated, but the act of following the path can arrive at the unfabricated. The dynamic of this strategy explains why the path, as a form of fabrication, is so self-referential: On the one hand, it takes the fabricated nature of experience, which is so often unskillful, and applies right effort to fabricate it in a skillful way. On the other hand, it aims at developing dispassion for all fabrications, which means that ultimately it has to turn attention to relinquishing itself.”—-“Right Mindfulness”, Thanissaro.
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