Five Strengths

Close your eyes and watch your breath. You might say, “Why watch the breath?” Well, the Buddha gained awakening watching his breath, so there must be something there. Of course, that something is not in the breath itself. It’s in getting the mind to settle down and be with one thing. Then you can watch it.

At the same time, you make it strong—because we live in this world where there’s so little that we can depend on. Things seem to be eroding all the time. But the Buddha says that if you can train the mind, you can find something really solid inside, something that gives it strength. Even along the way to that something solid inside, you need strength.

You start with conviction. Conviction that, yes, the Buddha did discover something really important when he was watching his breath. So you watch yours, and you put some effort into it, because you look at the effort that he put in—all the sacrifices he made on his way to awakening.

Even though we don’t have to follow him in making all the false starts and go down all the wrong paths that he followed before he found the right path—still, sticking with the right path requires some persistence. You’re going to have to keep it in mind, because as you go through the day, you encounter all kinds of values that are opposed to the Dhamma—opposed to your well-being, basically. You have to remember that the Buddha gave primary importance to your mind, to your own independent source of goodness inside. Keep that in mind and strengthen it with concentration. Learn to apply your discernment.

These five qualities—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment—are strengths from the mind that allow your goodness to be independent of the world. So work on them. Look and see whichever one is weak so that your mind is totally self-reliant.

Sometimes we’re told that the idea of an independent self is a bad thing, that people tend to be selfish if they try to be independent. But that’s not necessarily the case. If your goodness depends on the goodness of other people—well, you look at the goodness of other people: How much can you depend on it? You’ve got to find a a more reliable resource inside. And fortunately, you do have these resources inside that you can draw on. It’s simply a matter of exercising them.

It’s like exercising the body. You have the potential for strength in the body. If you don’t exercise it, that potential just goes to waste. But if you do exercise it, you find that you can make yourself strong. If you exercise the strengths of your mind, then even though the world may be washed away, be swept away, your goodness doesn’t have to be swept away, because it comes from something solid inside.