My entire meditative paradigm was changed up through a move to anapanasati sutta practices, having spent the last year or so with an emphasis on vipassana this has been revelatory and caused me to go back to square one on all fronts. I picked up MCTB again earlier tonight; i remember first reading it and Daniel said something along the lines of finding deeper insights each time you read it again, something i've never doubted as it's always happened when i re-read it at anytime in the past, but i almost always jumped straight into the maps and the technical stuff.

What blew me away was realizing that some of the most fundamental aspects of practice receive little discussion on here, even though it's of practical value and not just theoretical or philosophical, and it's something i'd neglected myself too in the past. In fact, when Simon T brought the subject of morality up a while back i pretty much disregarded it as being less important than progress, attainments and the like. Noting is generally emphasized, and i understand why because i've experienced it's effectiveness and value for myself, and jhanas but re-reading the first few chapters of MCTB brought about a big "Ah ha!" moment so i thought i'd post this and see if discussing these aspects will help anyone.

Since this is posted in the Samatha-Vipassana category, I'll leave sila as being present already and focus on the technique-based stuff. I'll link to the bits in MCTB i'm talking about and then we can take the discussion from there, get some input on techniques to develop and balance the faculties, cultivating the seven factors of enlightenment and all the practical stuff that seems to get overlooked or taken for granted.

MCTB - The Five Spiritual Faculties
MCTB - Faith & Wisdom
Some of the points made in this section really hit home for me, and I'm sure we'll all recognize things we could work on and how a lot of the unfortunate tension we see on here, and elsewhere for that matter, from time to time comes about.
MCTB - Energy & Concentration
Getting a grip on balancing this is an absolute beast of a way to make practice more efficient and precise, i didn't really take this into account in the past but implementing it now has proved to be incredibly effective.
MCTB - Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the daddy of all meditative techniques as far as i'm concerned. This is what it's all about.
MCTB - Seven Factors of Enlightenment
I won't link up all the pages from this one, it speaks for itself.

So, what's your thinking on this? Have you come across any specific techniques to develop and balance these thing? How have they changed your practice? Just whatever you think will be useful and practical to people, taking things back to basics and building a solid foundation.

Thanks!