Week 1
Becoming Your Own Guide – Week 1 (9/8/25) Take Home Practice
Each day during your formal meditation practice, after a period of at least 5min using the instructions of your choice. Take 10min and if you can notice how each of the 5 spiritual faculties is presenting itself. They are:
- Saddha (pali): Confidence, Trust, Faith
- Virya (pali): Energy, Vigor, Courage
- Sati (pali): Mindfulness, Awareness
- Samadhi (pali): Collectedness, Steadiness, Gatheredness, Concentration
- Pañña (pali): Wisdom, Discernment
If you are doing formal practice, there is at least some trust/confidence/faith present, some Energy, some Mindfulness, some Collectedness, and as soon as the mind is taking an interest in feeling and identifying these, there is certainly some Wisdom/Discernment present. Notice how they appear to you, feel to you, or present to you in this moment.
Those of you who are newer to meditation or returning after a hiatus might use basic instructions on mindfulness of breathing or hearing (find these anywhere you like) and may wish to start small this week, practicing for a total of 15min, 5min of using basic instructions then noticing each of the 5 spiritual faculties ~10min.
Those of you who find it beneficial for a longer formal practice session, please do so. Give yourself at least a third of your overall time to practice before beginning an investigation of how each of the faculties is operating/presenting.
There are many tools nowadays that can help you track the time to do this. One among these is the app Insight Timer. No intended endorsement here, just some direction for those who are unsure how to find a way to set a timer for mid-way through your meditation period.
If you wish, you may find it illuminating over time to keep a notepad next to your place of formal practice, and to make a very very brief note, at the end of each meditation session describing how each of the 5 faculties felt.
There is no right or wrong way to do this. We are simply endeavoring to explore the terrain of our meditation practice through highlighting these particular textures or realms of our experience. Be interested in what you may discover!
Week 2
Becoming Your Own Guide – Week 2 (9/15/25) Take Home Practice
Formal practice:
Continue with the formal practice from last week. If it feels like it could be valuable, lengthen the time of your formal practice a bit.
As you make a practice of recognizing, and becoming more intimately familiar with these 5 qualities, see if you can recognize any clinging or resistance or judgement, or making of problems to solve in relationship to what is felt or noticed. See this for what it is, no more than a reflexive habit, no need to feed it. And see if it’s possible to explore the experiences of Faith, Energy, Mindfulness, Collectedness, & Wisdom out of a place of Wise View: simply feeling them as they are, for the sake of intimacy with life, and for the sake of deepening understanding through simple presence.
The phrase we used during meditation in class may help “[Faculty] feels like this right now”.
Daily life practice:
The first of the spiritual faculties is Faith/Trust/Inspiration/Confidence. Make a short list of the things you’ve noticed that feed your own inspiration to meditate, confidence in the Dharma, faith in spiritual practice, or confidence in your path. See if you can do something, however small, each day with the intention to feed this root of the spiritual faculties (Saddha).
Week 3
Becoming Your Own Guide – Week 3 (9/22/25) Take Home Practice
This week, continue bringing interested awareness to how the faculties are presenting themselves during your formal practice. We will begin exploring which of the faculties we might find ways to encourage and nurture.
To this end, it is essential to understand:
- Faith supports and conditions the arising and development of Energy
- Energy supports and conditions the arising and development of Mindfulness
- Mindfulness supports and conditions the arising and development of Collectedness
- Collectedness supports and conditions the arising and development of Wisdom
And to understand:
- Wisdom balances an imbalanced excess of Faith
- Faith balances an imbalanced excess of Wisdom
- Collectedness balances an imbalanced excess of Energy
- Energy balances an imbalanced excess of Collectedness
We can consider the trends we’ve noticed in our practice over the last weeks. For example, “is one faculty less healthy and established than the others?”, “Is one faculty carrying most of our practice on its own in an unbalanced way?” Given what trends we’ve seen over time, if we recognize one faculty needs strengthening and development, we can explore creative ways to nurture its supporting faculty. And, if one faculty feels disproportionately out of balance, we can explore creative ways to nurture its balancing faculty.
Most importantly, we need to practice nurturing these qualities out of a generous and caring wise view, and to keep an eye out for fault-finding, problem-solving, fixing-obsessed habits of mind that may want to co-opt this understanding of the faculties for their unwise and unending projects.
Below are a few examples of creative approaches one might take, for your own inspiration. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to creatively support your practice, so as your bring patience, and curious care to witnessing how those creative approaches influence your mind, heart, and body. Here are the examples:
- Hamza notices that moments of Mindful clarity tend to come few and far between, even though he feels a healthy amount of Faith/Confidence. He senses the practice may benefit from a little more strength of Mindfulness. So, to nourish the faculty of Energy/Vigor (Mindfulness’ supporting faculty) Hamza decides to move his daily practice to right after his daily exercise routine, and see what shifts he notices in the coming weeks.
- Elanor notices that while the other spiritual faculties seem obviously present, there isn’t much Wisdom that arises as discernment and understanding with regard to what leads toward suffering and what leads toward freedom. She senses the practice may benefit from a little more strength of Wisdom. So, to nourish the faculty of Collectedness/Samadhi (Wisdom’s supporting faculty) Priya decides to stick with resting her attention on the breath as an anchor, which she loves, but to bring the feeling of meditative enjoyment into the foreground as a way to invite attention to steady itself more wholly on the breath.
- Priya notices that Energy/Vigor tends to course through the body and mind after the first few minutes during their practice— sometimes leading to a restlessness that feels more physical, other times more mental, but in either case, fueled by an excess of energy. They sense the practice may benefit from more balance with regard to Energy. So, to nourish the faculty of Collectedness/Samadhi (Energy’s balancing faculty) Priya decides to spend the two hours before her evening meditation as “screen-free time,” and sets aside her practice of open awareness for a few weeks, replacing it with the practice of Metta.
Ming notices his mind is often preoccupied by thinking about the dharma during meditation. There is much wisdom present in this thinking, and it feels both gratifying and interesting. However, he has a sense that this wise, discerning, at times very analytical thought may be keeping a deeper sense of grounded, steady presence from yielding more lasting freedom of heart. He senses the practice may benefit from more balance with regard to Wisdom. So, to nourish the faculty of Faith/Confidence (Wisdom’s balancing faculty) Ming decides to spend the first 15min of his daily 45min practice period tending to his altar, making offerings, bowing, and chanting.
Week 4
Becoming Your Own Guide – Week 4 (9/29/25) Take Home Practice
This week, we’ll develop our intention to care for, to nurture, and to skillfully steward these five spiritual faculties. We’ll practice feeding this intention each day this week both in our formal practice, but also, importantly, in the whole of our lives. Each day, sometime in the first two hours of your day, you’re encouraged to go through the five faculties, remembering each, and calling forward an intention to care for, or nurture, or to be a good steward of each. Do this in your own way. It doesn’t need to take a long time, but if you like, you certainly can carve out more time and make a small ceremony of it. Do a similar remembrance and intention setting at the beginning of each formal practice period in your week this week So, to nourish the faculty of Faith/Confidence (Wisdom’s balancing faculty) Ming decides to spend the first 15min of his daily 45min practice period tending to his altar, making offerings, bowing, and chanting.