the five spiritual faculties: vigor [2] -- the four strivings

Buddhism is chock full of lists, as even the casual observer knows. One of the oldest lists is the 37 wings of awakening, which is a sort of meta-list comprising seven other lists (the four establishings of mindfulness, the four bases of power, the four right strivings, the five spiritual faculties, the five spiritual powers, the seven factors of awakening, the noble eightfold path). Of course, these lists overlap a whole lot, and some of them contain the others. So I decided to pick one of the lists, the five spiritual faculties (which happens to be identitical to the five spiritual powers, and it's even possible the two are only treated separately due to a clerical error at the earliest stage of the composition of the canon!), and start a series of posts on it, here.

The five spiritual faculties, or indriya, are, in Pāli: saddhā, viriya, sati, samādhi, and paññā. These are can be translated as faith or conviction or confidence, energy or persistence or vigor, mindfulness, concentration or attentive stillness or meditative composure, and wisdom or discernment. The second post in the series was about faith, and the previous post started the topic of vigor.

My vehicle for this exploration is a sutta from the Saṃyutta Nikāya, in particular, SN 48.10. I like this one because it fleshes out the five spiritual faculties with the other lists implicitly referred to by it. This post will be about the four right strivings, which fall under the general topic of vigor.

So, the full passage on vigor in the sutta, translated by my meager but gradually improving Pāli skills, is:

And what, O monks, is the spiritual faculty of vigor?

Here, O monks, a noble disciple dwells with vigor aroused for the abandonment of unskillful qualities, for the attainment of skillful qualities, strong, fortified, not casting off the yoke in good qualities.

For the non-arising of unarisen evil, unskillful qualities, they generate desire, try, arouse vigor, apply the mind and heart, and strive.

For the abandoning of already arisen evil, unskillful qualities, they generate desire, try, arouse vigor, apply the mind and heart, and strive.

For the arising of unarisen skillful qualities, they generate desire, try, arouse vigor, apply the mind and heart, and strive.

For the persistence, certitude, increase, abundance, development, and completion of already arisen skillful qualities, they generate desire, try, arouse vigor, apply the mind and heart, and strive.

This is called, O monks, the spiritual faculty of vigor.

There's two things going on here, that I'll look at in this post and the next. First, we have a description of what exactly we should be doing so vigorously. To what should our effort be applied? To the cultivation of the skillful, and the abandonment of the unskillful and evil. (Fun fact: The word translated as "evil" is also used to refer to a barren field...so clearly its connotations don't quite line up with the English word typically chosen to render it.)

( Let's unpack that some )