Episode 146: Five Powerful Supports

[This episode originally aired on Nov. 6, 2023] The “five powers” are five supports for your practice • they are: determination, familiarization, seed of virtue, remorse, and aspiration • with determination, you're willing to do what it takes to get from here to there; it is connected with having some sense of why we're doing this all together; with determination, we just keep going • familiarization is becoming familiar with our own potential of awakened heart, becoming familiar with our patterns of confusion and awake • it is getting to know yourself, peeling away levels of deception and confusion to reveal something real and solid • the third power is called seed of virtue; every time we do something beneficial, every time we overcome our hesitation to act in the right way, it plants a seed • we can recognize that our practice is not separate from virtuous and moral engagement in the troubles of our world • the fourth power is remorse, being willing to face our mistakes and to learn from them • remorse teaches us what to let go of, what to learn from, and what to stop doing • aspiration is what we might take up instead • as we aspire to let go of harm and take up actions that are beneficial, we create a strong underpinning for the quality of virtue • these five are called powers because they provide force and power and energy for our practice.