Question

There are many "sets" the Buddha talked about: Five Spiritual Powers, Ten Paramis, Four Foundations of Mindfulness, etc. Why do you focus on some and not others? i.e. Why do you talk a lot about the Paramis and not the Spiritual Powers? Do you think some are more valuable?

Answer

It's kind of like with a watch. If I hold the watch like this we're looking at the face of the watch and the band. If I turn the watch like this you're just looking at the face. I turn it like this and now you're looking at the back of the watch and the band. Turn it again and you're just looking at the back of the watch.

They're all just aspects of the same thing, though. It's all one. The Buddha Dhamma - the teachings of the Buddha, it's all one, and depending on a person's experience and what they've practiced with the most, what they understand the most, that's what they can explain the best.

The Five Spiritual Powers we virtually never talk about, but its still part of the other stuff. It's still part of Mindfulness, Equanimity, Wisdom and whatever else. We still talk about it but we're not interested in just adding another set of "five's" to give to you because we already cover the aspects of the that teaching in other ways. We could talk about them if we wanted but we think the Ten Paramis are more important, the Four Brahma Viharas are more important, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are very important. So, we are giving what we feel are the most important, but the others are there, we just don't give you the names of them.

Now, if we happen to be a type of person who wants to give you all the names of every single set, then we would be a scholar and not a practitioner. Very few practitioners are going to know all the sets. Scholars will know that. Scholars will be able to tell you many of them, and that's good in its own way, because somebody's got to remember them and write them down. But as to a practice level, we really don't need all that information in our head, because it's endless.

If you really look at it, there are heaps of "one's", there are heaps of "two's", there are the "three's", there are the "four's", there are the "five's", there are the "six's", there are the "seven's", there are the "eight's", "nine's", "ten's", and then there's a section in the scriptures of everything over "ten", they're all together, and you get a "36 of this", and you get "108 of that". It's complicated, y'know!

Learning about these things isn't a problem in itself, and it can be helpful at times have this information. I myself have read lots of it, but trying to keep all that in your brain, that may be too much for the real practice level.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.