Part 4 - The Five Mental Faculties

So to gain these seven benefits what you need first is faith or belief in the triple gems, especially in the technique of your meditation: faith or belief or confidence through understanding. Blind faith is not needed here. Faith through understanding is called saddha. That saddha is the first mental faculty. Here mental faculties we call indriya in Pali. There are five indriyas, five mental faculties a yogi must be endowed with. The first is faith, blind faith or faith with understanding. You have to understand the Buddha Dhamma or the technique to a certain extent so that you can have faith in it. Without understanding it you cant have any faith or confidence or belief in it Faith with understanding is the basic requirement of a meditator for success in his meditation. The second need is energy. If you do not put enough energy into your practise you cant realise any mental or physical phenomena. Its called viriya in Pali.

The third need is sati. Its translated as mindfulness, awareness, the third faculty a yogi must be endowed with. It means when you have faith with understanding of the technique or the Dhamma, you put enough energy or viriya in your practise, then you are able to be mindful of any mental or physical process as it really is. Then when mindfulness becomes continuous and constant your mind becomes concentrated on the object of meditation very well. So the fourth one is concentration, samadhi, concentration of mind. When the mind is deeply concentrated on any mental or physical phenomenon there arises insight knowledge or penetrating knowledge or experiential knowledge which penetrates into the intrinsic nature of mental and physical phenomena, specific individual characteristics of the body mind processes. This is the intrinsic or true nature of mental and physical phenomena.

So when you realise any specific characteristic of mental or physical phenomena you have insight. Or when you realise the passing away of any mental or physical processes, or their coming and going, then you come to realise the general characteristic of anicca, impermanence, the general characteristic of mental and physical phenomena. That realisation, right understanding or insight or experiential knowledge is known as pannya in Pali. Pannya is sometimes translated as wisdom. Here insight or enlightenment is the fifth faculty with which a yogi must be endowed.

You should have five mental faculties: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and insight and enlightenment. Faith means saddha. Energy means viriya. Mindfulness means sati. Concentration means samadhi. Insight, enlightenment, panna. So, saddha, viriya, sati, samadhi, panna, these are the five mental faculties a yogi must be endowed with.