What This Concept Actually Says
The Yogācāra school (唯識學, the Consciousness-Only school) has a large number of compound terms, and 勤功用 (vīryābhisaṃskāra, "diligent striving") is one of those that sounds like plain language but is in fact highly technical. To explain it thoroughly, we must first break apart the two characters "勤" and "功用," then put them back together.
The Yogācāra location of "勤" — the diligence mental factor (精進心所)
In the Yogācāra system of the hundred dharmas in five categories (五位百法), "勤" corresponds to 精進 (vīrya, "diligence"), one of the eleven wholesome mental factors (善心所). A mental factor (心所, caitta) is a psychological function that arises alongside the operation of mind-consciousness — consciousness is the subject, and mental factors are its functions and activities. The diligence mental factor is wholesome because it operates only on wholesome dharmas; it never goes over to the side of greed, aversion, or delusion to lend them support.
The intrinsic nature and function of the diligence mental factor are strictly defined in Yogācāra. Its intrinsic nature (體性) is "勇悍" ("courageous vigor") — an inner state of power that is active, non-retreating, and non-fragile. Its function (作業) is "遍策諸行" ("universally spurring all activities") — universally encouraging and driving the operation of all mind and mental factors. In other words, diligence is not an emotion; it is an "accelerating force" that enables all other wholesome mental activities to run and to keep running.
Yogācāra further classifies diligence into several types: 披甲精進 (被甲精進, armored diligence) — like a brave general who dons his armor before battle, having made a vow, he does not retreat; 加行精進 (preparatory diligence) — continuously and sustainedly applying force; 無下精進 (unlowering diligence) — neither self-deprecating nor self-satisfied, neither lax nor impatient. These subdivisions all emphasize the same point: diligence is not a brief burst of charging forward, but a way of applying force that has armor, has endurance, and has steadiness.
The Yogācāra location of "功用" — the driving force of mind-consciousness
"功用" is a term unique to Yogācāra; in plain terms it means operative force, driving force, functioning power. In Yogācāra's description of how mind-consciousness operates, the word "功用" appears frequently — it points not to external physical movements, but to that inner power within consciousness that "is doing, is driving, is producing results."
Understanding "功用" as "action" is the greatest deviation. 功用 is the force behind an action, not the action itself. A person may be sitting in meditation, with no external movement whatsoever, yet inwardly may be using tremendous 功用 to suppress the active manifestations (現行) of afflictions; another person may be walking and working, yet inwardly may have no 功用 at all, merely being dragged along by external conditions.
The compound "勤功用" — the cultivated momentum of diligent striving
Putting the two words together, 勤功用 means: the operative force of diligent, cultivation-propelling striving. What it emphasizes is not a single moment of intensity, but a continuous, directional, mindfully driven process of applying force in practice.
Within Yogācāra's stages of cultivation — the stage of accumulation (資糧位, sambhāravihāra), the stage of preparation (加行位, prayogavihāra), the stage of seeing (通達位, darśanavihāra), the stage of cultivation (修習位, bhāvanāvihāra), and the stage of culmination (究竟位, niṣṭhāvihāra) — "勤功用" is most concentrated in the stage of preparation. The stage of preparation is the phase just before seeing the path, the final sprint toward seeing the path, where one cultivates the four investigations (四尋思) and the four realizations of reality (四如實智), suppressing and eradicating the discriminative appearances of object-grasping and subject-grasping (所取能取, grāhya-grāhaka). This stage is difficult precisely because it requires a fierce, sustained, mindful 勤功用 — not a flash of inspiration, but day after day of actively applying force.
It is especially important to note that "勤功用" is closely related to, yet not fully identical with, what is generally called "diligence." Diligence is the intrinsic nature — the power of courageous vigor itself; 勤功用 is the process by which that power goes into operation. A person may "have diligence" but not be "engaged in 勤功用" — the power toward the wholesome is present in the mind, but it has not been set in motion; a person may also be "engaged in 勤功用" yet lacking the intrinsic nature of diligence — appearing to be very hardworking, but lacking inner courageous vigor, a diligence merely pushed along from outside.
The relationship with "right diligence" (正精進, samyag-vyāyāma)
"Right diligence" in the eightfold noble path (八正道, āryāṣṭāṅgika-mārga) is the guarantee of direction for 勤功用. Diligence without right view (正見, samyag-dṛṣṭi) is merely brute force — it may be very diligent, but it is cultivating in the wrong direction. Only when 勤功用 is paired with right diligence is it an application of force that has wisdom.
A Walk-Through in Daily Life
Let me use the most relatable contemporary example: quitting late-night screen time (戒除熬夜).
The moment you resolve to "be asleep by midnight tonight" is called initial aspiration (初發心, bodhicittotpāda), roughly equivalent to the beginning of the stage of accumulation in Yogācāra. Success on day one, success on day two — this is the 勤功用 of novelty, not difficult. The problem comes in week three: a friend invites you to watch a show after overtime, a video scrolls by, a work email arrives. The inner tug-of-war at that moment — whether to continue keeping the vow or to give in — is precisely where genuine 勤功用 needs to take the field.
Why do most people fail here? Because they think "making a resolution" and "applying force" are the same thing. A resolution is one-time; applying force is a making that must be newly re-created every single time. Each time the temptation to stay up arises, one must re-direct attention (作意, manaskāra), re-apply force, re-spur oneself. This is what Yogācāra calls "遍策諸行" — every time, one must actively let that diligence mental factor spur the other mind and mental factors.
Quitting phone-scrolling (戒除刷手機) is an even more typical example. The contemporary person's phone is a 24-hour continuous dopamine dispenser — algorithms, based on your behavioral data, deliver a fresh stimulus every few minutes. The design logic of this environment is precisely the opposite of 勤功用: what it wants is passive, effortless, instant-gratification reception. To maintain "actively applying force, continuously exerting effort" in such an environment requires a redoubled 勤功用.
Let us walk through phone-scrolling according to the Yogācāra structure:
- 觸 (sparśa, "contact" — the touching of an object): the finger taps the screen open; - 作意 (manaskāra, "attention" — active attention): "Do I want to tap it open right now?" — this is where 勤功用 begins; - 受 (vedanā, "feeling" — reception): after tapping open, pleasure; after not tapping open, anxiety; - 想 (saṃjñā, "perception" — grasping a sign and discriminating): identifying "scrolling" as "relaxation" and "not scrolling" as "boredom"; - 行 (saṃskāra, "volitional formation" — willed construction): deciding whether to tap open or not — this is where 勤功用 is most concentrated; - 識 (vijñāna, "consciousness" — discernment): the discernment of the entire process.
The most common mapping error for contemporary people is to place 勤功用 in the 行 branch — thinking it is only the force of "decision" at that one moment. In fact, 勤功用 runs through the entire process: before contact, one must be vigilant (this itself is skill); at attention, one must be clear (not letting attention be carried off by habit); at feeling, one can be neither seduced by pleasure nor crushed by anxiety; at perception, one can recognize this as "the grasping of signs by the perception aggregate (想蘊, saṃjñā-skandha)" rather than reality; at consciousness, one can discern this as the operation of mind rather than the essence of a self. 勤功用 is the mind-force of the entire process, not a gritting of teeth at a single moment.
Consider another emotion-management scenario: at a meeting, a colleague publicly challenges you, and your first reaction is to strike back or to go silent. At that moment, 勤功用 is — in that second when aversion (瞋心, pratigha) arises, being able to bring the diligence mental factor onto the field, spurring right mindfulness (正念, smṛti) to cover the aversion. Stopping once, stopping twice, stopping ten times, stopping a hundred times — this is what is called 勤功用. A single explosive exertion is only the shadow of diligence. True 勤功用 is endurance with armor.
The key to cultivation — whether the worldly cultivation of the body or the supramundane cultivation of the mind — lies here: it is not by inspiration, emotion, or novelty, but by day-after-day, mindfully directed making (造作). Yogācāra places the four characters "精勤造作" at the core of the definition of 勤功用 precisely to emphasize this "making" — cultivation is an active, continuous project that must be re-launched again and again; it is not a state one arrives at by passively waiting.
Why Contemporary People Need It
The underlying logic of contemporary life is almost structurally opposed to 勤功用.
The algorithmic age is systematically destroying the capacity for 勤功用. Short videos, news feeds, recommendation systems — their design goal is but one: to keep you on the screen as long as possible. This means that every time you are about to stop, about to go do something that requires sustained effort, the system delivers a fresh stimulus to pull you back. This is a kind of reverse training — it trains your brain to become habituated to a pattern of reception that is "low effort, high reward."
Neuroscientific research has found that with prolonged exposure to this pattern, the prefrontal cortex (responsible for planning, restraint, and long-term goals) is relatively weakened, while brain regions associated with immediate reward, such as the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala, are strengthened. This research is a useful reminder — it reveals the physiological basis for why contemporary people "want to engage in 勤功用 but cannot get going." But it must be said clearly: neuroscience describes correlation, not causation — it does not prove that the "勤功用" of Buddhism is something brain science can fully explain — the constructive process of mind-consciousness in Yogācāra has a far more complex structure than neural circuits; neural circuits are only part of its material basis. Using scientific claims as analogies is acceptable; treating science as the final verification of Buddhism requires caution.
The trap of the dopamine system. Neuroscience speaks of two dopamine systems: "wanting" and "liking." What the algorithms hijack is primarily the "wanting" system — keeping you forever "wanting the next one," yet rarely truly "liking" anything in the present. This corresponds closely to what Yogācāra calls the 行蘊 (saṃskāra-skandha, the aggregate of volitional formations) — the 行蘊 is the construction of volition, the force of that "wanting." Contemporary people live pervasively in the 行蘊 of "wanting the next one," yet have almost no mental power to directionally, continuously, and actively want a single thing — this is the absence of 勤功用.
The modern prevalence of depression and anxiety is deeply connected to the lack of a sense of "applying oneself." It is not that busyness fills one up — many people are terribly busy, but busy with things they did not choose, pushed along by external forces. The lack of an active, sustained, directional sense of applying force is a common underlying hue of the contemporary spiritual predicament.
The essence of cultivation is 勤功用. Whatever method you cultivate — mindfulness of the Buddha (念佛, buddhānusmṛti), mantra recitation (持咒, dhāraṇī), Chan contemplation (參禪), calm-and-insight (止觀, śamatha-vipaśyanā), precept-keeping (持戒, śīla), giving (布施, dāna) — all require a sustained, mindfully driven process of applying force. Without 勤功用, a vow is but a thought; without 勤功用, reading a sutra is but one session of reading; without 勤功用, sitting meditation is but a period of stillness. 勤功用 is the transforming enzyme that converts all these "activities" into "cultivation."
Going further: without 勤功用, there is no capacity to take on long-term projects. The path of liberation (解脫道, mokṣa-mārga) itself is a long-term project spanning countless eons — this sounds exaggerated, but even taking a single lifetime as the unit, cultivation is a project requiring decades of sustained application of force. What contemporary people lack most is not knowledge, not opportunity, not resources, but the mindful power itself that is willing to sustain effort.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Misreading one: equating "勤" with "effort."
Clarification: "勤" is courageous vigor (勇悍), an inner state of actively applying force; "effort" in contemporary usage often carries a trace of passivity — "I must make an effort," "I am compelled to make an effort." Courageous vigor is not compulsion; it is armor put on actively. A person forced to work hard and a person who actively dons armor both appear to be applying force, but the state of the mind is completely different.
Misreading two: equating "功用" with "external action."
Clarification: 功用 is the driving force within mind-consciousness; external action is only its outward manifestation. A person may be physically engaged in something while inwardly having no 功用 at all; a person may be physically motionless while inwardly using tremendous 功用 to suppress afflictions. This is the point most easily overlooked by contemporary people in Yogācāra — the decisive battlefield of cultivation is in the mind, not in external forms.
Misreading three: treating "勤功用" as a "state."
Clarification: 勤功用 is a continuous process, not a state one can arrive at. It is not "I engaged in 勤功用 today," but "I am engaging in 勤功用 right now, and in the next moment I must continue." Once you treat it as a state, it implies that you can "possess" it and "complete" it — which is precisely its opposite.
Misreading four: equating "勤功用" with "self-flagellation."
Clarification: behind self-flagellation is self-loathing — "I am so bad, so I must hit myself." Behind 勤功用 are compassion and wisdom — "I see the faults of ignorance, so I am willing to sustain effort." The direction differs, and the results are utterly different: self-flagellation readily leads to breakdown or fanaticism; armored-diligence-style 勤功用 can last a lifetime.
Misreading five: equating "勤功用" with "impatience."
Clarification: impatience is the desire to quickly end the current task; 勤功用 is the willingness to continue walking within the task. An impatient person actually has no 勤功用 — he is fleeing the application of force; a person with 勤功用 can be very calm, yet he has never ceased actively applying force. Confusing the two leads to two extremes: either working by fits and starts (mistaking 勤功用 for an impatient sprint), or sinking into procrastination (mistaking 勤功用 for some special high-intensity state).
Misreading six: opposing "勤功用" to "letting go."
Clarification: without 勤功用 there is no true letting go. "Letting go" is not giving up effort — that is laxity (懈怠, pramāda), not letting go. "Letting go" is non-attachment after effort — I continue to apply myself, but I am no longer held hostage by "applying myself"; I continue to spur myself, but I am no longer weighed down by "spurring myself." The precondition for being able to let go is having something to let go of — 勤功用 is precisely the accumulation of that "something to let go of."
Conclusion
The three characters "勤功用" look plain, yet behind them lies the engine of the entire path of cultivation. Yogācāra links it with the diligence mental factor, the five stages of cultivation, and the growth of wholesome roots — this is no accident: it is the chain that connects "knowing" and "doing." What contemporary people lack least is knowing (in an age of information overload), and what they lack most is doing (the capacity for sustained application of force). 勤功用 is precisely the converter that turns knowing into doing.
Whatever method you cultivate, you can start from this point — first ask yourself: where is my 勤功用 right now? Am I spurring myself on, or am I being pushed along? That question itself is the beginning of a moment of 勤功用.