the five spiritual faculties: vigor [4] -- cultivating and keeping good qualities

There are four parts to the four strivings, which can be neatly summed up in the acronym PACK. They are the effort to Prevent unarisen unskillful or bad mental states or qualities from arising, to Abandon any unskillful/bad qualities or mental states that have arisen, Cultivate unarisen skillful or good qualities or mental states, and Keep those good qualities which have already arisen. This is given as a definition for "vigor" in the list I've been looking at in several posts, the five spiritual faculties. I've previously covered faith, and introduced vigor. This post will (almost) wrap up the discussion of vigor, then the next post will move on to what I am choosing to translate as "recollection", "stillness", and "wise discernment", although those first two are usually translated as "mindfulness" and "concentration".

In my last post, I took a look at the first two: Prevent and Abandon. I examined a handful of strategies that I've found helpful in applying these efforts. This post will wrap it up by covering Cultivate and Keep.

( Cultivating and Keeping Good Qualities )