Overview :: Seven Factors of Awakening

Like many Western insight meditation teachers, I share the Buddha’s teachings as I understand them, but don’t always refer by name to specific ‘chapter and verse’.  My students have no interest in becoming Buddhist scholars. This is an important role for someone to fill, assuring safe passage of the Buddha’s words through generations. But my role as a teacher is to help my students to develop a practice that cultivates the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, together known as the Three Refuges. They are: the inner wisdom we each have access to if we quiet down and listen in, the Buddha’s teachings to offer guidance in skillfully using our insights, and the community of practitioners to support each other in this shared endeavor.

In my dharma talks, I always know where I am in the panoply of the Buddha’s teachings, but few of my students and readers know or care. They are focused on developing a practice and understanding to understand and relieve suffering in their lives and the lives of all beings. But just in case you care, we have been spending time in ‘Investigation’, the second of the Seven Factors of Awakening. We have also been cultivating ‘Mindfulness’, the first of the seven factors. In the coming weeks, I plan to share the other five. For now, here’s an overview of all seven:

Mindfulness
In our practice of meditation we cultivate mindfulness, the ability to be present in this moment, whatever is going on in our lives.

Investigation
When we practice mindfulness, investigation naturally arises. We see when something we are doing, saying or thinking is unskillful, causing harm to ourselves and others. We can use the questions we’ve been discussing over the past months, like ‘What is my intention here?’ and ‘What am I afraid of?’ to explore what’s really going on in the complex patterns of our thoughts and emotions.

Our investigation relies on mindfulness to keep us clear and able to question. As we explore the other factors, we will see how each one relies on and adds to the others.

Energy – Effort
Balanced wholesome effort — enlivened but not restless, calm but not slothful — allows us to live our lives engaged but not overwrought.

We use mindfulness and investigation to help us develop stable skillful energy. 

Happiness
This kind of happiness does not depend on getting what we want. This is the joy that arises from being fully present in this life just as it is, with Mindfulness and wise Effort, able through skillful investigation to see how the causes of unhappiness are not in the conditions of our lives, but in how we relate to them.

Tranquility
Through the clarity that arises from Mindfulness, Investigation, wise Effort, and authentic Happiness, we find a sense of inner calm that enables us to weather life’s vicissitudes. This is not to become unfeeling automatons, but to give context to the news in the world and our own lives.

Concentration
This kind of concentration is not gritted-teeth determination, but stems from the wise intention to notice what is arising in this moment in the field of physical sensation. We will do some practices and look at the five hindrances to Concentration. 

Equanimity
There is a clarity and compassion in Equanimity that enables us to hold all that arises in our experience in a spacious and compassionate way. We are not thrown out of balance by the causes and conditions of life. Though mindfulness and investigation we have insight into the ongoing impermanent nature of all things, and we are able to feel intrinsically a part of this flow of life, but don’t drown in it.

As we explore these Seven Factors of Awakening we will see how in our practice and in our dharma discussions, we are skillfully cultivating the qualities needed to awaken from the divisive delusions in which we all get entangled. I will also supply examples and resources for deeper understanding and guidance.

I know sometimes the Buddha’s many lists seem overwhelming, but each one has great value. Try not to think of all those lists. You don’t have to memorize them, and there is no test! Instead let yourself focus on just one aspect of the list at a time, and see how it arises in your own life. Each aspect of every one of the Buddha’s lists is a door through which all the wisdom of the dharma is revealed.