Indriya · Pāli: indriya; Skt: indriya

Indriya is usually translated “faculty”. Bhikkhu Sujato’s note on SN 48.1 derives it from indra, the name of the potent Vedic god, and glosses it as “capability”, with the further sense of “potential, potency”. The Pali Text Society’s dictionary calls it one of the most comprehensive categories of Buddhist psychological philosophy and ethics, a “controlling principle, directive force”.

The word covers more than one set. The Saṁyutta Nikāya’s chapter on the faculties (SN 48) gathers the sense faculties, the faculties of feeling, the faculties pertaining to life and to enlightenment, and above all five spiritual faculties: faith, energy, mindfulness, immersion and wisdom (SN 48.1). Sujato notes that the Abhidhamma later systematised these groups as a set of twenty-two faculties.

The same five are also called powers (bala). In SN 48.43 the Buddha says: “The faculty of faith is the power of faith, and the power of faith is the faculty of faith”, and likewise for the other four. He compares the two names to a river with an island in it, reckoned as one stream or as two. Sujato observes that exactly how the simile applies “is not spelled out”, and reports the Pali commentary’s reading: the faculties consolidate positive qualities, the powers quash negative ones. That explanation belongs to the commentary, not the discourse; the five powers sets out this and the other readings.

The five are shared beyond the Pali tradition. In 84000’s glossary of the Tibetan canon they are the dbang po lnga, with the Sanskrit pañcendriya and the Chinese 五根.