The Tree of Enlightenment

on the path begins. is progress is sustained through investigation
– in this case, the investigation of factors.
Energy occurs here, as it did in the four roads to power, the
five controlling faculties, and the five powers. Energy is essential
to sustain the progress one makes along one’s spiritual path.
All too often, our efforts are sporadic; we make a great effort for
a short period of time and then relapse for a much longer time.
If progress is to be sustained it must be steady, and energy contributes
to steady, consistent progress along the path.
e fourth factor, interest, which is also one of the five factors
of absorption, is suffused with happiness, although it can
best be understood more as interest than as joy or rapture per se
(see Chapter 34).
Tranquillity in this context is the tranquillity of mind that
results from eliminating the afflictions of ignorance, ill-will, and
attachment.
Concentration is synonymous with one-pointedness, which
is one of the five factors of absorption.
Equanimity is the elimination of the mind’s tendency to wander.
Like so many Abhidharmic terms, equanimity functions on
a number of levels. At the level of feeling, it can be indifference.
At the level of the cultivation of the Four Immeasurable meditations
(brahmavihara), equanimity is even-mindedness toward
sentient beings – the absence of attachment to near and dear ones,
and the absence of aversion to enemies. In the analysis of personal
experience in the teaching on the five aggregates, equanimity
is the neutralization of the eight worldly conditions (happiness
and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, and fame and
infamy). Here, in the context of the seven limbs of enlighten-
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