I vow to taste the truth of that which the consciousness births. A few weeks ago, I talked about the seven factors of enlightenment, seven limbs of enlightenment, and the seven limbs of enlightenment are mindfulness, investigation of the dharma or dharmas, energy, joy, calmness, concentration, and equanimity.

[01:12]

And today I want to talk about investigating, number two, investigation of the dharmas. In these lists, Buddhist lists of dharmas, you always have a lot of overlapping because each list is expressed from a certain point of view. So, the same elements exist, a lot of the same elements exist in each list, depending on the point of view. But depending on the point of view, they're expressed in a different way. So, I want to talk about the five controlling factors of mind, which is

[02:20]

one of the, an example of how we practice investigation of the dharmas. So sometimes these five controlling factors are called controlling factors and when they're well established they're called powers. And the five controlling factors of mind are faith, energy, which is an overlapping one, that's one of the factors of enlightenment, and mindfulness, which is one of the factors, and concentration. Those three are overlapping factors. And the fifth one is wisdom. But wisdom has various aspects. Not wisdom in the sense of prajna, but in the sense of paññā, which is knowledge, wisdom, intelligence or knowledge.

[03:39]

Whereas prajna is a bigger sense of wisdom. But apanya is a part of prajna. That kind of wisdom comes out of prajna wisdom. So I'll talk about that a little bit. The main thing about one of the most important factors when we talk about the five controlling factors of mind is how we keep these factors in balance. When we practice, these five factors are always there. In any moment of good, wholesome consciousness, as a matter of fact, these five factors are present. And why they're called controlling factors is because they

[04:44]

Each one is very strong and powerful and they have to balance each other. If one of them gets out of balance, even though each one of them is a good factor, wholesome factor, if one of them gets out of balance or has too much energy, too much predominance, we tend to be lopsided. So I'll explain that a little bit. Faith is a very important factor. Without faith, there really isn't any practice. And faith is like the heart side of, emotional side of mind. The Japanese character, the Chinese character for mind is shin, which means both heart and mind.

[05:53]

So, these two factors, faith and wisdom. One is, faith is like the heart side, and wisdom is like the mind side. But they both are included in the larger term of mind, So when we talk about mind, mind is maybe left and right side of the brain. Faith on one side and intelligence on the other. So faith is the heart side which It's like the fire that motivates our practice and keeps us tuned to the truth.

[06:57]

But faith is being very emotional, is very easy to corrupt. Everybody wants to believe in something. The most natural thing is that everyone wants to believe in something. We have this real need, desire, to believe in something. So, each person finds something to believe in. And people that don't believe in anything have a very difficult time in life. If you don't believe in something, you just wander around. And then you get dissolute, you start drinking, smoking, and you end up on Skid Row, eventually. Or some form of Skid Row. So it's really important to believe in something. It illuminates our mind.

[08:05]

Actually, faith is the great illuminator. So that's why faith is considered maybe so powerful. In most religions, they say, just have faith. If nothing else, just have faith. But what should we believe in? That's the big problem. So if we don't have our attention attuned on absolute truth, then we start believing in various things. We can believe in materialism, you know, or we can believe in God, or we can believe in... I think spiritualism and materialism are the two

[09:08]

sides, the two general categories. And most people, or a lot of people, have a kind of combination of spiritualism and materialism. And the various things we have faith in are limitless. But most things that we have faith in turn out in the end to be phantoms. As life is very illusory, it's very easy to have faith in various illusions that we create with our mind. So, faith is like a naive adolescent who gets seduced by various shining lights that come along.

[10:13]

And if there's too much faith in illusions, we end up following various paths and then getting disillusioned and look for something else. Even though it looks like people know what they're doing, most people are wandering around. Most people, I think, are wandering around, even though they have fairly secure homes and jobs and so forth. I think most people are wandering around. They stop at a certain place with having faith, mostly in materialism. As materialism becomes more stable, faith in the spiritual side tends to fade.

[11:16]

And when things get really terrible, people rush to the church when their lives start falling apart. So, faith has that quality of really being the pure side of our lives, but easily seduced and fooled. And wisdom, on the other hand, is the balance for it. And wisdom is more the cold mental side, which tempers It says, look, you know, don't go over there. Don't do that.

[12:19]

Don't get caught up in this. Move over here. This is the right path. So faith and wisdom have an alliance and kind of marriage. And they lead each other in a balanced way. If we have too much wisdom and not enough faith, then wisdom becomes very clever. The quality of wisdom is that it can become very clever and cunning. Cunning you can see people's weaknesses or the weaknesses in various things that you meet with and take advantage of them because you don't have enough faith in the law of karma.

[13:27]

In Buddhadharma, it's very important to have healthy faith in the law of cause and effect. That's the most important. You can say, well, you should have faith in Buddha. I don't say not so. But what does faith in Buddha mean? Faith in Buddha means healthy respect for cause and effect. If I do this, then this will follow. If you understand a little bit about the law of karma, the law of action and response. You know that by doing this and this and this, this and this and this will follow. There's more to it than that, but basically that's the law of Dharma.

[14:32]

is the law of cause and effect. If you do something, what we call a good action, then a good result will follow. If you do a bad action, then a bad result will follow. It's quite simple on the surface, but very complex. And it's hard to know always what's good and bad. That's what we call it. We call it good and bad. On another level, it's just what happens, happens. You can't say it's good or bad. But from our human point of view, we have to think in terms of good and bad. So, we pay healthy respect to good actions and avoid bad actions. And this is how we practice. practices of doing the right thing and avoiding the wrong thing. Because everything that you do has an effect.

[15:37]

And eventually the effect comes back to yourself. It's like this piece of cloth. The dharma realm or the dharmadhatu is like a piece of cloth. It's all connected. If you pull on this corner, then it affects the whole piece of cloth. So even though we may feel that our actions are isolated, or they just take place in a very narrow realm, still, everything is interconnected. This is another basic law of Buddhism. Everything is interconnected. If you do something, it affects everything in the whole Dharmadhatu. Even though you may not see that, it may not be obvious, but you can see it in your narrow life, in the narrow confines of your visible life.

[16:47]

You can see that. If you look at it carefully, whatever you do, the result comes back to you either right away, or later on, or much later on. And sometimes things happen to us much later on. And we say, I can't understand why that happened, because the cause was so long ago. So someone who has a lot of wisdom or intelligence, but not much faith, can easily take on a self-centered attitude. They may know a lot, but there's no heart. And so they feel they can do whatever they want.

[17:51]

You know, there are many examples of people like that. And even in Buddhism, there are many examples of people like that, who may have lots of good wisdom and understanding, but their heart factor or faith is undeveloped. So when The mind factor, or the wisdom factor, is too predominant. It leads to manipulation and lack of heart. So we're always working with these two factors, keeping these two factors in balance. Faith must be strong.

[18:54]

You can't really practice for very long unless the heart factor rises. Enlightenment is light. If illumination is turning on the light, no matter how developed your mental understanding is, unless you turn on the light, it doesn't count very much. until you're illuminated with... Faith opens the door to illumination. But these two factors always have to balance each other in any situation. I remember when in my life previous to studying Buddhism, I had lots of faith.

[19:57]

I had a kind of big heart-faith predominance. But I didn't have the other factors to control it, so I'd get very high on faith. But I'd be way up there, you know, and there's none of these other controlling factors to balance it out. So the first time I sat Zazen, I was put down on the floor and everything was taken away. And little by little I realized this is what I needed, this kind of earth practice, controlling the heavenly mind. something to make it work and keep it balanced and focused so that rather than just getting off on some high place, that illumination goes this way in all the details of life, lights up all the details of the life.

[21:15]

And so you don't have these great highs and great lows. Most of us enjoy the roller coaster. You know, we like to get high, and then we don't like to get low, but we do. When you get high, then you get low. It goes in cycles. So Buddhadharma is more like this, with highs and lows. There are also highs and lows. But it's mostly like this. and energy gets used in a more steady way. And then the second factor, the second one is energy. And the fourth one is concentration.

[22:27]

And concentration and energy are a pair. Energy is a great motivating force. But energy has to be tempered with concentration. If energy is not tempered with concentration as a balance, it tends to jump around, and it's called restlessness. restlessness and agitation and inability to settle. And concentration keeps you on the object, keeps you focused, keeps our mind's attention focused so that energy has a a vehicle or a way to express itself.

[23:30]

And concentration is one of the greatest factors in meditation. We're always talking about concentration, good concentration, and good energy, good effort. Effort and concentration are just, that's another marriage, they go hand in hand. So concentration tends to lead toward laziness or torpor, actually, because without a motivating factor, you know, you get spaced out. If you get spaced out, you have really good concentration, you know, dream concentration or, you know, you get very well concentrated, but there's nothing to keep your mind in place. And so, it's a different kind of wandering. It's a more torpid kind of wandering, and you get sleepy and strung out.

[24:35]

So, both of those factors have to balance each other. And mindfulness is right in the middle. You have faith and wisdom on either side, And then you have energy and concentration in the middle. And then right in the center is mindfulness. Mindfulness doesn't need a balance. And it appears in each one of the factors as reminding. Mindfulness keeps the factors in line. It's like the beacon, always going around and around, and its light is always lighting up the various areas.

[25:41]

And when something is out of balance, mindfulness brings it back into balance, constantly bringing it back into balance. And when these factors are really well-established, really well-balanced, they're called the five powers of mind. And they become very strong. But they always have to work in cooperation with each other and harmony. And we talk about mindfulness practice, you know.

[26:45]

What is mindfulness practice? I think most people don't have... they have some idea about what mindfulness practice is. But strictly speaking, mindfulness is re-minding. It's the aid of the mind. And when we sit in zazen, our mind is constantly wandering. And mindfulness is re-minding. It's sometimes called the practice of recollection. to recollect, or to put things back in place. Because our mind is not still, even though we sit still, and our body and mind are really not still. Nothing is that still. And our mind keeps going out in various directions. And mindfulness keeps saying, that's enough of that. It's getting way out over here, too far out over there.

[27:50]

keeps harmonizing these factors. So in our daily life, practicing with these five factors constantly is one way of practicing in your daily life, keeping your mind balanced, keeping the factors of mind balanced. Do you have any questions? I don't know if this is a question or what exactly, but I have a, I think a big anxiety, big wisdom side of it. Rather than, you know, it seems like there's Aren't most marriages in battle?

[29:10]

Faith wants to go one way and your mind wants to go another way. Right. Conflict, you know. Generally speaking, I would say that we really need to know what we want to do. That's really important. What do I really want to do? If you don't know what you want to do, then you're just wandering around. Then we get to a point where Well, OK, you narrow it down. OK, I think this is what I want to do. But then there are also various pulls, emotional pulls, mental pulls.

[30:14]

And so even though we want to do something, we can't do it. Just can't do it. Because even though one part of it says, I really want to do that, another part of it says, I really want to do this, or I want to do that, but I don't want to do all the things that I have to do in order to do that. So, I'm sure you can think of a lot of things like that. So you have to know what you really want to do. And the more you give yourself over, the easier it is. the less conflicts you have. But conflict is part of life. And the conflict can hurt us, but it can also be helpful.

[31:18]

So conflict is not necessarily bad. And whatever we do, every time we make a move, it sets up a conflict, even if it's just a little conflict. And then we have to make a decision. And so the conflict is another balancing factor. We may want to go into something wholeheartedly, but something else says, wait a minute, you know. And that wait a minute is a controlling factor, kind of balancing factor. And so you weigh that. Well, why am I hesitant? What's really making me hesitant? Then you can investigate that. Why? And really investigate what all of the factors are that's making you hesitant. Sometimes we just have a feeling and we don't know. You know, we can't sort it out.

[32:21]

But I suggest you really sit down or stand up or whatever and look at what So resist what it is, because we tend to think that resistance is bad, but it's not necessarily bad. It's important. So respect your resistance for what it is. You may find out that it's just a phantom, or just something you're scared of. But look at it, without putting it down. Sometimes we tend to ignore our resistance and then we go into something and it'll come up later, you know, and we should have taken care of it before. So, it's good to make sure about what you're doing, but sometimes your resistance is just holding you back and you need something to, you know, slap you on the fanny and get you going and then it all falls away.

[33:24]

But you have to know the difference. That's about all I can say, since this is such a general subject. You had something you'd like to say? Well, I don't feel like I have much wisdom, but I feel like I have, like, faith is something I don't have at all. I mean, there's this kind of, like, tunnel between what you have and what you don't have. Well, I think it depends on what we call faith, you know? Sometimes we have it and don't know it. For instance, just to be able to move around is faith. Just to be able to move around and realize that the next step, you take the next step and the floor is going to be there. We think that that's a solid fact, but it's really based on faith.

[34:24]

It could be that it won't be there, even though it is always there, you know. It could be that sometime you put your foot down and there won't be a floor there. So, you know, you take various things for granted, but that's a kind of faith. The only stuff we take for granted is the kind of faith that we have. So, we get in our car and drive down the road, drive down the freeway. And we know that the signals are going to work, and people are going to stop for us at the crossroads, and that everybody's going to do 25 miles an hour, or whatever it is, down certain streets, and that we're going to come home without crashing into everybody, or everybody crashing into us. Because we have faith that that's all going to happen. So that's big faith. And there are a lot of things that shake it.

[35:29]

I'm afraid they shake it all the time. But that's a kind of faith in things going, you know? And so you sit Zazen, and even though you don't really see that as faith, the fact that you do it is because you have some faith in it. You may not know what that is that you have faith in, but you have faith in something. It's not necessarily a big, you know, I love you kind of thing. That's one manifestation of faith. But just steadiness. Faith. Just what I hear. Pete? If one has confusion about what's happening... Confusion? Confusion. How does one determine what to believe in? I mean, it's so many different... Yes. Well, Those things that only last for a short time, you put less faith in them.

[36:38]

There's a kind of momentary faith you put in things, and a kind of materialistic faith that we put in things. And that's really, you know, materialism is part of spirituality. So we do have a certain faith in them, but the faith in materiality is momentary. You don't have eternal faith in, you know, a piece of broccoli, but you have some faith in You're the interdependent nature. You're interdependent nature. That broccoli, although it's a piece of broccoli, and you eat it, and it helps give you some sustenance, and you and the broccoli are interdependent.

[37:40]

You support each other, even though you're destroying the broccoli. The broccoli is giving itself to you, in some way, even though you're taking it, and it's not complaining. But, maybe it's complaining. But, you know, there's some relationship, and the broccoli is you, and it disappears in you, and then you continue, and then you, something else eats you. You may not like it, but something else eats you. But you're actually giving yourself to that thing that's eating you. You may not know it. You may not realize that you're doing that, because you don't know what this big mouth is. You're marching in this big mouth, but you don't see it. So, you know, we can have some faith in our life and our death, in our nature.

[38:50]

Not in any particular thing. There's nothing that you can rely on as a particular thing. So if you rely on something as a particular thing, you can do that for a short period of time, you know, but not always. Eventually, the thing that you're relying on is not going to be there. So, what's behind all that? What are you really? So if you keep looking in that direction for not this, not this, then you'll find what it is. You have to kind of uncover stuff, you know, and not fall for things. Malcolm? Yeah. It seems this marriage between heart and mind occurs naturally. I think you said Letting go is where it occurs. In my experience, just letting go, there is no separation.

[40:00]

It's the mind itself, I believe, that makes that separation. It's a good point, letting go and letting things take care of themselves. But unless all the faculties are perfectly healthy, then if you try to control things, then you have a problem. I think that's your point. And I think that's a good point. If you try to control everything, you don't control anything. You just end up in a mess. So if you let go and allow... If you create some harmony, then things will control themselves.

[41:09]

If you just let go, you may get lost. So you have to have some context for letting go and some awareness. If you don't have any awareness, then various factors will easily get out of balance. So awareness, which is mindfulness, is really important to keep. You don't have to keep controlling everything. It's true. I agree with that. But why do things get out of balance? Not necessarily because you're trying to control them, but because we get excited about certain things. And we neglect other things. So the things that we neglect, the factors we neglect, allow the other factors to get out of hand. Exactly.

[42:11]

Yeah, I think so. I read something early on in my Zen Buddhist readings, and I can't remember where, but I remember what I read, and it didn't make sense, as much sense as it does this morning, when you balanced, or when you said that faith is to be balanced by wisdom. And what I had read was that they assume that Zen Buddhism should have great faith, and you should also have great doubt. And it seems that faith, you don't just have to have blind faith, though. There's ways that one can test out, can test the faith that you hold. An extreme example would be a mountain climber that trusts that the rope that he uses is going to hold him. And someone else can come along say you can use this rope to go home to.

[43:45]

And this is kind of extreme. Somebody else could have a different kind of rope and you'd try it out and crash down. You wouldn't have a chance to test it again. But in other ways, you test out I think that's true. You're always testing things out. But when it comes to doubt, doubt is also a balance for faith, you know. But under the aegis of wisdom, doubt is a kind of wisdom in that sense. But it also can be an unwholesome factor when it's skepticism. So doubt has various facets to it, depending on how you're using it. In the sense of faith and doubt, in Zen, doubt doesn't have the connotation of skepticism.

[44:55]

It has the connotation of you don't take anything for granted. You move with faith, And at the same time, you don't take anything for granted, which means the world around you. You don't hold to any opinions. Doubt is the... In Zen, sometimes we say mountains are mountains, before you practice, before you have any understanding, mountains are just mountains and rivers are just rivers. And when you enter into practice in a whole, in a good way, then everything, all of your understanding and preconceptions come apart and mountains are no longer mountains, rivers are no longer rivers.

[46:03]

Nothing is what you what our preconceptions say they were. We let go of all of our preconceptions and just allow ourselves to see things freshly for what they are. And that's the stage of doubt. It's not that you have doubt about the teacher or the teaching or this and that. Doubt here means, not that you're doubting things, but you're not taking anything at face value. And then after that, once you integrate the doubt with the faith, then mountains are mountains again, rivers are rivers again, yes, that's right, but with a difference. I was just wondering

[47:03]

Isn't this assuming that there is some objective reality? In other words, if the world is partly made up, found and made up, why do we need an epistemology underneath an ethical system? In other words, if... We don't. Just all we need to do is, like, How do we put our shoes, where do we put our shoes when we come into Zen Do? That's, ah, anything. Where am I actually putting these? How does it relate to all the other shoes? You don't have to think about all that stuff. Once you know, how to put your shoes in relation to all the other shoes. Then you can think about that.

[48:10]

But until you can do that, it doesn't make sense to think about the theory. I just wanted to talk about energy, the energy, in that I find that I lack energy, in that And then I, I guess the goal is that everything in your life you do, you do well and it's awesome. But I find it difficult to do housework and feel like I'm doing awesome. You know, I understand it. So, you know, I wish that I could do that. I wish I could do what I need to do when I need to do it and not feel that way. I guess it's a question of self-discipline. Well, I think that when Yeah, discipline is important, but there has to be something besides discipline, you know, otherwise that's compulsiveness.

[49:17]

Discipline turns into compulsiveness when there's nothing else. So, it's like the compulsive ashtray cleaner, you know, the house is spick and span, but there's something missing, you know. So there must be some spirit behind it. So my suggestion is, if you practice more, it will help you to have that kind of spirit. I hope. I think so. I think you already have it, but it's... You opened up. Okay. Thank you.

[50:17]

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