The Five Spiritual Powers

Deepen your meditation with Bodhi College

 
Faith
Saddhā, also translated as confidence.
Energy
Viriya, also understood as effort, engagement, perseverance, and courage.
Mindfulness
Sati, present-moment recollection: the factor that balances the other powers.
Collectedness
Samādhi, also thought of as unification of mind.
Wisdom
Paññā, also translated as insight or understanding.

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The Five Spiritual Powers Lead to Awakening

Jake Dartington, Christina Feldman and Christop Kock

The key to meditation

Known as indriyas in the ancient texts, the five spiritual powers are qualities that shape our meditation and our lives.

This is a six-part online course exploring the five spiritual powers one-by-one, and understanding how they work together.

Enroll now to begin this exploration.

Progress at your own pace

This easy-to-use course comprises of six units that form a program of instruction, meditation, discussion, and contemplative exercises. Each unit contains around 60 minutes of material to view and practice. There is also the opportunity to cultivate the five spiritual powers in your daily life. You are free to progress at your own pace, and will retain ongoing access to the material.

All audio and written material is available for download, so you can progress offline if you wish.

Live Q & A sessions

In addition to the pre-recorded course program, you can ask questions to Christina, Jake and Christoph directly in two live Q&A sessions offered via Zoom:

  • Live Call with Christina: Monday, October 28th 6pm GMT / 2pm EST
  • Live Call with Christoph: Wednesday, November 13th at 6pm GMT / 2pm EST






Features and benefits

6 hours of video guidance

From talks to guided meditations, discussions, and inquiry practices, The Five Spiritual Powers offers illuminating video content in manageable chunks. You'll also be able to download audio files and text for offline use.



Expert instruction

Christina, Jake and Christoph are members of the Bodhi College faculty. Together, their experience encompasses Thai Forest monasteries, Insight Meditation centers in the US and Europe, and teaching on Mindfulness-Based programs.




A harmonious balance

With this course, we are seeking to understand what we really mean by terms like "mindfulness," "samādhi," and wisdom. We want to see how these qualities interact and how they can work together harmoniously.

A jetty reaching over water towards the sunset
Bridge the gap between intention and daily life

The power of this very practical teaching is that we become sensitive to how we can adjust the factors present in our mind state. We are empowered to fine tune how we show up for our lives: to live our values and our practice.

Understanding through discussion

A strength of Bodhi College is the plurality of voices within the faculty. We don't always agree, and this helps us find a reasonable way forward based on dialogue and discussion. Each unit contains a discussion with a range of viewpoints.

Dishes, washed and stacked
A practical path

The five spiritual powers are a complete pathway to awakening. They are the leverage points with which we steer our meditation, and they are something we can develop and rely on in daily life.

Course Curriculum

Click the arrow below to see the full contents of this six-unit course.

  Introduction
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  Unit 1: Faith, Trust, Confidence
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  Unit 2: Energy, Effort, Engagement
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  Unit 3: Mindfulness
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  Unit 4: Collectedness, Gatheredness
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  Unit 5: Wisdom, Understanding
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  Unit 6: How the Powers Work Together
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  Continuing Your Journey
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Meet The Teachers

Christina Feldman

Christina Feldman

Christina Feldman is a co-founder of Gaia House and a guiding teacher at Insight Meditation Society, Barre, Massachussetts. The author of a number of books, she has been teaching insight meditation retreats internationally since 1976.

She is one of the teaching faculty of the CPP programme, dedicated to the study and application of the early teachings of the Buddha and is engaged in teaching the Buddhist psychological foundations of mindfulness to those training to teach mindfulness-based applications in England, Belgium and the Netherlands. Her most recent book Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Psychology, written with Willem Kuyken, was published in the summer of 2019. 

Jake Dartington

Jake Dartington has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1995. After training as a Dharma teacher with Christina Feldman, he started teaching in 2007. He has a background in Philosophy and Buddhist Studies and has trained as a teacher of MBSR/MBCT. Jake lives in Nottingham, UK where he teaches mindfulness and Insight Meditation. 

Christoph Köck

Christoph Köck was born in Vienna, Austria, and spent 17 years of his life as a Buddhist monk in the Theravadin tradition. He lived mainly in monasteries connected with Ajahn Chah in Thailand and the West. Currently he lives in Vienna, working as a psychotherapist in a private practice. He teaches Buddhism and meditation internationally, and is trained to teach MBSR and MBCT. 

Sample Meditation: A Gesture of Trust

Try the first meditation of this course, guided by Chrisoph Köck.

Testimonials

Praise for The Five Spiritual Powers

I am 65 years old and have taken many workshops and courses. This is probably the best and most useful course on Buddhism I have ever taken. Having the three teachers teach individually and interact was very beneficial. I am so glad I took this course.
It was wonderful to listen to the three teachers and their knowledge was infused with skillful teaching. The subject of the Five Spiritual Powers was inspiring and will greatly support my practice. I intend to retake the course more slowly and with greater focus now that I have it in my Tricycle course folder. Thank you and know that you have created such a great gift of dharma knowledge. I am so appreciative.

Praise for Bodhi College courses

This is a fantastic course, taught by deep thinkers of the dharma. The way they explored this profound teaching is priceless. I've learned a great deal and deeply moved to put the teaching into practice.
This course on a pithy topic with teachers well reversed in the dharma and their respective fields was well worth my investment of time and money. The teachers are clear and engaging, the discussions thought-provoking and the supplemental resources allow easily for continued study.
A very clear, practical, and helpful course. It helped me deal with some unhelpful habits and get a clearer view on how to engage with situations and feelings.
Wonderful! Thank you all so much for a course that has deepened my understanding of mindfulness meditation and that has widened and moved my practice on.
An excellent course! I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the multiple perspectives offered by the different teachers. It is refreshing to see such a complex and rich topic addressed from different angles through the perspectives of experienced teachers, rather than relying on a single point of view.

How The Five Spiritual Powers Unfolds


Learn more about the journey you will take on this program.

Unit 1 | Confidence

In the first unit of this program, we will be contemplating the spiritual power of saddhā, translated as confidence, faith, or strength; and reflecting on the role that saddhā plays in the development of our own path and practice. It's our understanding that saddhā is the foundation for the development of all wholesome qualities. What we have confidence in, we dedicate time to. What we have confidence in, we give attention to. What we have confidence in, guides our aspirations, our sense of possibility.

Saddhā, confidence, is not always something that we begin our path with. It develops through experience, particularly personal experience. It develops through listening to teachings that make sense to us, that we begin to value. So confidence is also something that we cultivate, we apply. We look at the moments where our confidence falters and begin to develop a confidence that is steady, reliable, that guides us in our lives and in our practice.

Unit 2 | Energy

In this next section of our course, we will cover the topic of viriya, which translates as something like energy, effort, engagement, courage, persistence. Considering that our experience is a flow that is, to a large extent, habituated according to certain tendencies that we have: where our attention goes, how this attention goes where it goes, what we think, what we say, what we do. Now, if we have a conception that a good life—a fulfilled life, a life that inclines towards more happiness, more freedom—is something that depends on the quality of our hearts and minds, that depends on the quality of our actions in body, speech, and mind. It becomes obvious that we need to engage with that flow of experience, that we need to do something to make a difference. That's the quality of effort: how to skillfully engage in making a difference towards what is good and wholesome.

Unit 3 | Mindfulness

As we move on from considering the qualities of trust, confidence, and the quality of energy, we now come to the third indriya, the third power, which is usually translated as mindfulness. The Pali word for this is sati, and this is very much a quality that can hold together, that can balance, the other spiritual powers (indriyas). We're going to be exploring different dimensions of sati: how it can be a simple awareness; how it can be protective of our hearts and minds; how it can support a sense of investigation; and also make us see things with new perspectives and not be so caught in that which is threatening, negative, or difficult. We will also look at the different ways of establishing mindfulness (sati) in terms of the body, different feeling tones, moods and states of mind, and the different patterns that arise in the mind. So we're really at the heart of our course as we explore sati, as we explore mindfulness: this quality that holds the other spiritual powers (indriyas) together.

Unit 4 | Collectedness of Mind

In this unit of our course, we'll explore the spiritual power (indriya) that in Pali is called samādhi. And in English this means a gathered mind, a collected mind, a unified mind. It's a quality that you sometimes see translated as "concentration" but we'll be offering a different way of thinking about this indriya, this power, as this sense of really gathering and unifying, collecting and stilling the mind. We will explore this in many different ways. We'll explore the different levels of samādhi and discuss the different views on how much samādhi is supportive in our path. We will explore how at certain times they can become very deep and profound states of absorption called the jhānas.

We'll also think about how samādhi is a quality we can cultivate in the midst of our everyday life. We'll also be reflecting on the relationship between this quality and the other spiritual powers, and this is something that we really encourage throughout the course to see these as particular qualities that are skillful and useful to cultivate, but also to stay aware of how they all support each other, how samādhi follows from mindfulness, how samādhi prepares the ground for the arising of insight, understanding, what's called paññā in Pāli.

Unit 5 | Wisdom and Understanding

The topic of this unit will be wisdom, or understanding, in Pāli this is called paññā and refers to a kind of knowing that is informed by knowledge, by understanding, in particular by understanding how we create dukkha (suffering and stress) for ourselves and understanding how we can end that process. So paññā is wisdom, understanding, or insight in the service of freeing ourselves from unnecessary suffering.

Unit 6 | How the Spiritual Powers Work Together

Welcome to Unit six. In this unit, we will take a look at how these spiritual powers (indriyas) work together, how some of them balance out each other, and also, look at some of the shadow sides of these qualities. One of the meanings of the word indriya is a faculty, an ability, which orients us. We could say that all these faculties together, they are strengths, but also sense faculties that orient us and propel us along the path.

One of the things you find in the suttas (early Buddhist texts) is that these indriyas determine, to some degree, the quality of our practice. If these indriyas are highly developed, then our progress on the path will be quick. And these are juxtaposed with the three root defilements: greed, hatred, and delusion. And it says when the indriyas are strong and the defilements are weak, then our progress will be quick and pleasant. If the indriyas are strong, but defilements are also strong, progress will be quick but difficult. If the indriyas are weak and the defilements are weak, then the practice will be pleasant but it will take a long time. And if the indriyas are weak and the defilements are strong, the path will take a long time and it will be difficult. So, what's most important is that we keep going on the path and we have limited control over how long it will take. So developing these indriyas in a balanced way, in a focused way, is what keeps us on the path. And that's what we can do. How long it will take is not up to us.

About Bodhi College

The aim of Bodhi College is to develop fresh ways of understanding the dharma today through rediscovering the core insights of early Buddhist teachings. Courses provide a contemplative education that inspires students to realize the values of the dharma (Buddhist teachings) in the context of this secular age and culture.

In the spirit of the Buddha’s teaching, Bodhi College is committed to a middle way of human awakening that integrates theory with practice, encouraging both personal fulfillment and social engagement.