Five Strengths

Translations of pañcabalāni
English	the five powers, the five strengths
Sanskrit	पञ्चबलानि (pañcabalāni)
Pali	pañcabalāni
Chinese	五力 (Pinyin: wǔ lì)
Japanese	五力 (Rōmaji: goriki)
Khmer	បញ្ចពល (banhja bula)
Korean	오력 (RR: olyeog)
Tibetan	སྟོབས་ལྔའི་མིང་ལ་ (Wylie: stobs lnga'i ming la)
Vietnamese	ngũ lực
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The Five Strengths (Sanskrit, Pali: pañcabalāni) in Buddhism are faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. They are one of the seven sets of "qualities conducive to enlightenment." They are parallel facets of the five "spiritual faculties."

Translation[]

Pañca (Sanskrit, Pali) means "five."^[1] Bala (Sanskrit, Pali) means "power," "strength," "force."^[2]

Exegesis[]

Faith and Wisdom balance each other, as do Energy and Concentration. The Five Faculties are ‘controlling' faculties because they control or master their opposites. The faculties and powers are two aspects of the same thing.

Faith/Conviction (saddhā bala) - controls doubt
Energy/Effort/Persistence (viriya bala) – controls laziness
Mindfulness (sati bala) - controls heedlessness
Concentration (samādhi bala) - controls distraction
Wisdom/Discernment (paññā bala) – controls ignorance

Notes[]

^ See Rhys Davids & Stede (1921-25), p. 387, entry for "Pañca," retrieved 2008-03-11 from "U. of Chicago" at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1:971.pali^{[permanent dead link]}; and, Monier-Williams (1964), e.g., p. 579, entry "Pañcaka," retrieved 2008-03-11 from "U. of Cologne" at http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/MWScanpdf/mw0578-paJcAGguri.pdf.
^ See Rhys Davids & Stede (1921-25), p. 482, entry for "Bala," retrieved 2008-03-11 from "U. of Chicago" at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1:3245.pali^{[permanent dead link]}; and, Monier-Williams (1964), p. 722, entry "Bala," retrieved 2008-03-11 from "U. of Cologne" at http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/cgi-bin/serveimg.pl?file=/scans/MWScan/MWScanjpg/mw0722-barAsI.jpg.

References[]

Monier-Williams, Monier (1899, 1964). A Sanskrit–English Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press. An on-line search engine for the MWD is available from the "U. of Cologne" at http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/monier/.
Rhys Davids, T.W. & William Stede (eds.) (1921-5). The Pali Text Society’s Pali–English Dictionary. Chipstead: Pali Text Society. An on-line search engine for the PED is available from "Chicago U." at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/.

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