Overview
Not everyone who begins the practice of meditation is guaranteed to succeed. The Buddha identified five essential prerequisites—combining physical health, psychological honesty, and mental sharpness—that a practitioner must possess to actively strive and break through to awakening in a short time.
The List
- Saddho - Endowed with Faith: Having deep confidence in the enlightenment of the Tathāgata.
- Appābādho - Free from Illness: Having good health and a balanced digestion that is neither too cold nor too hot, capable of enduring the rigors of intense meditation.
- Asaṭho amāyāvī - Honest and Sincere: Being straightforward and entirely lacking in deceit or hypocrisy. Revealing oneself truthfully to the teacher and fellow practitioners without hiding flaws.
- Āraddhaviriyo - Energetic: Possessing relentless energy to abandon unwholesome states and cultivate wholesome ones, stalwart and not shirking the burden.
- Paññavā - Endowed with Wisdom: Possessing the penetrative insight directed toward the arising and passing away of phenomena, which leads to the complete destruction of suffering.