There is a long lasting past in our continuously renewing life stream. All the present impressions and memories come from our past thoughts and actions that are accumulated in our mind. This becomes our inner potential. Once there are right opportunities and timing, this inner potential will react. This reaction will not only become the motivation of our life but also, it becomes the fundamental bases between wisdom and folly, fortune and misfortune.

The teachings of Buddha want us to develop the benevolent side of our inner potential in our daily life. It wants us to have a correct understanding and analysis of things and to be keen in our observation. For our relationships with other people, the teachings tell us to demonstrate the inner potential of compassion and sympathy and to tolerate and respect the feeling of other people and thus become an important social attainment. The common saying of Cultivation of Blessing and Wisdom actually is to develop the benevolent side of our inner potential and to exemplify the true value of our life.

To develop the inner potential, one needs motivation and it is the force of life. Life is a combination of physical body and psychological needs. Many people only know how to take care of their physical body from the standpoint of hygiene, nutrition, exercise and medical needs. They ignore their psychological needs, thus forgetting that our physical body is affected by psychological feeling. Modern medical researches show that negative feelings and stress, if not properly controlled and addressed will cause a lot of illnesses, such as, hypertension, heart disease, duodenal ulcer, self seclusion, violent inclination... etc. Hence psychological health must be paid special attention to.

The habit of false imagination and foolish stubbornness become the obstacle in developing the benevolent side of our inner potential. Buddha guided us to cultivate the following five treasure powers in order to hasten our psychological health:

1. Power of Faith: First, we need to set a goal, avoid hesitation. An ideal example is to believe in the wisdom and good deeds of Buddha. Once we believe in the teachings of Buddha then we must follow and practice. More importantly, we must believe in ourselves that we have the capability to learn and reach the horizon of Buddha. We will encounter difficulties and obstacles in the long run, but we must not surrender. We must realize that we gain experience from those difficulties and obstacles so as to strengthen our faith.
   
   
2. Power of Perseverance: Persistent, always challenge ourselves. Obstacles appear in our way of life and we must live up to the challenge. We must complete not with other people but with ourselves. We must always improve ourselves. We must look back to see if we have improvement day after day and to find out whether we are having the best way to achieve our goal.
   
   
3. Power of Thoughtfulness: all our action and speech are guided by our thoughts. Hence we need to pay particular attention to the direction of our thoughts. There are four guidelines in the teachings of Buddha. First, since our body has its own metabolism, we do not need to be greedy for our body. Second, do not be bothered by our own feelings, we actually can master our happiness and sadness. Third, since our emotional feeling is unstable, we need to contain them. Forth, since nothing is permanent, do not expect eternity. There is a Sutra saying, it is the correct virtue to only think what you should think and evil to think what you should not think. If we can hold the correct virtue, we can face the entire situation and not be moved. And we will not be influenced and tempted by the evil temptations.
   
   
4. Power of Concentration: The main obstacle is the wandering of our mind and heart; we need to depend on meditation in order to concentrate. We can just concentrate on one particular subject and practice the concept of End. Combined, the power of our mind and heart will become a powerful power of awakening and wipe out all the unproductive folly thinking.
   
   
5. Power of Wisdom: Meditation of the power of End can stop our delusions that disturb our mind. But just stopping it is not enough to exercise our wisdom, we need to uphold the true virtue and OBSERVE. Expand our observation into different things. Let the true virtue fill up our daily life. Let the truth virtue be our guild and upgrade our decisiveness. In case of problems in our personal understandings, in our work or family, under the guidance of wisdom, we can easily solve them and differentiate what should do and what should not do.

The practice of the above five different powers depends on our own, we need to maximize our capability to achieve maximum inner potential, and the amount of effort that we have exerted will become our future inner potentials, too.

Being a Buddhist, we need to treasure our good inner potential and we should not neglect the practice of the above precious Five Powers.