The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello everyone.

everyone.

Welcome to this fifth talk on the five faculties, these five kind of inner powers that we have, and whereas in the ancient world they call them aspects of Indra, the

great gods, of divine qualities inside. In a colloquial English we might say that these days

that there are superpowers that we have. They're so important to these five indrias, these five faculties, capacities. So So they all have to do with action not about just understanding and seeing

except that understanding and seeing, except that understanding and seeing

is a kind of action, is an engagement.

And this idea of choicefully engaging, consciously engaging with our life is not something we often

hear in the meditation circles where a lot of it's about relaxing, settling back, being

receptive, not asserting oneself. And those are fantastic ways to engage.

They're a kind of engagement.

There's something we do with choice.

We're activating something to be receptive.

We're activating, letting go. And this here in the five faculties we're emphasizing the

activation of something which is nourishing, helpful, sustaining, freeing for us.

And so to activate confidence in what we're doing.

Not to do things out of habit, not to do things out of just because we should,

not to do things because we're forced to,

but when you come to meditation,

to choose to engage in a conscious,

kind of deliberate way that yes I'm engaging in this I'm going to be here for this but

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