ABSTRACT
No amount of study or reflection will bring about a full understanding of the three marks and their opposites. What is needed is a total transformation, a new birth, of the personality. This cannot take place without the emergence of five cardinal virtues, i.e. faith, vigour, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom. Sense-based instincts and impulses govern the ordinary worldling in all he does and thinks. As a man progresses in the spiritual life, spiritual forces gradually take over, until in the end the five cardinal virtues dominate and shape all his deeds, thoughts and feelings. 69 The five virtues concern us here only in so far as they determine the tone of Buddhist thinking. From this angle we must pay special attention to faith because its place in the scheme of things further demonstrates the irretrievably religious character of Buddhist thought, to mindfulness and concentration because they clearly show its yogic basis, and to wisdom because it is the chief source of philosophical understanding.
