Do you have 'faith' / saddha in "The Dharma" ?
Shoshin
No one in particularNowhere Special Veteran
There you are just cruising along nicely with your practice, then all of a sudden you hit a crises....
Does ones faith in The Dharma (practice) begin to tumble like a stack of cards allowing emotional turmoil to take over ?
Or does the practice kick in and helps you to navigate your way through/over?
In other words....Do you have saddhā, (faith) in the Dharma ? (Do you 'trust' the teachings)
"Great Faith and Great Doubt are two ends of a spiritual walking stick. We grip one end with the grasp given to us by our Great Determination. We poke into the underbrush in the dark on our spiritual journey. This act is real spiritual practice -- gripping the Faith end and poking ahead with the Doubt end of the stick. If we have no Faith, we have no Doubt. If we have no Determination, we never pick up the stick in the first place."
And before one asks...Yes I do...even when "I" might not feel like it....I took that leap of faith many moons ago and there's no looking back...
"Saddhā is usually translated as faith, but it is not to be meant as a dogmatic belief !"
Comments
Personally I have no faith in Dharma. No need. I know Dharma from experience to be genuine, useful and applicable.
To get to such a point requires confirmation through:
Emotional commitment is the fuel that we might call faith/passion/zeal/confidence. When it goes awry we have dogmatism, my dharma is better than your Hinayana, my teacher is more realized than your sand garden and other petty contractions ...
When faith goes well it balances the emotional turmoil of Ms Monkey Mind and her mara troop of gibbering distractions ...
For me, the 4NT and 8FP just make sense. They are logical. No faith required, it's almost like a scientific hypothesis, and the as I test the hypothesis, it proves itself.
I think you have to have faith because doubts will arise, faith will carry a person through those times.
The teachings are only useful to me when it's seen directly. Then the etchings become who I am, rather than what I know.
What I know (intellectually) doesn't help in the heat of the moment. Maybe a little and only if you remember.
Faith, yes. But not unquestionable faith. Those people scare me.
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Who needs 'faith' when you have 'confidence'?
Sadda is intended to be faith through confidence. We listen to the teachings of the Buddha as he expounds the benefits of the Dhamma to his Sangha, and our confidence in his words blossoms as the lotus grows from the mud. When we know and see for ourselves how profound, yet simple this principle is, we gain greater and greater faith in the truth and knowledge, wisdom and experience of living, walking, talking and breathing the Triple Gem.
So it is no hard task to place one's faith in such a structured way of life. We can stride out with confidence, knowing with no shadows of doubt penetrating our perception, that this is what works.
That hits the nail on the head @Earthninja
What I mean by 'faith/saddha in' is after studying the Dharma knowledge is developed ( through experiential understanding-call it somewhat intrinsic) that what is happening at the moment will change no matter what the situation...Allowing one to have confidence, faith, saddha, trust, (whatever one likes to call it) to go with the flow
Phra Payutto says that "sadha" is not "faith" as understood in theistic religions, but rather "confidence," as in "belief based on reason, experience and experimentation."
We learn about Dharma, it makes sense to us, and we trust that putting it into practice will bring about cessation of suffering.
Buddhadharma is pragmatic stuff, meant to be practised and lived.
Up to now, in the hardest moments of my life, it has never failed me, and this is no blind faith in an outside entity that will see me out my predicament.
It is trust in a method that, through experience, has proved its effectiveness time and again.
I think I can have faith in the dharma but I can only have faith if there's some evidence.
It's probably safer to say that I do not doubt the dharma.
That isn't to say I don't have doubts about certain interpretations.
In the suttas it says "Mindfulness is the path to the Deathless", and that sounds like a groovy destination!
Like that Beatles song: "I'm a dharma tripper, one way ticket, yeah...."
I don't have "faith" in the dharma. I am, however, confident my practice works for me...
Pretty much what everyone else said.
It's not always easy when the poo hits the fan in life, but practice makes it easiER. And sometimes for me just reminding myself of impermanence lifts a large amount of burden. It is easier to give myself permission to grieve, or whatever, when I remember it won't last, no matter how horrible it feels at the time.
I find it utterly fascinating how everyone who has replied so far has such an aversion to the word "faith," but use what are essentially synonyms to describe their level of belief in the Dhamma.
It's fine to have faith. Just be willing to doubt it, question it, test it once in a while.
It would seem that when we normally hear the word 'faith' we automatically associate it with the Abrahamic idea of faith, which in most cases is just another term for believing in something without proof... "Blind faith" so to speak...
However : Faith as you say means different things to different people...
"Different strokes for different folks"
Yes, maybe it's time to reclaim the word.
I can have faith that somebody can turn their life around even if they have yet to do so. This kind of faith I can see as a kind of trust.
When I hear about schools of thought that are faith based, I assume their teachings cannot be proven to be true.
I'm not sure what you mean by "level of belief" when it comes to the dhamma.
I have no belief in the dharma... a teaching can hit home and make sense, be put off for later contemplation and discernment or I forget about it.
For me, Buddhism is a process and so a teaching is either conducive to that process or is a good example of what isn't.
I can trust a teaching if it doesn't hit home if it truly seems like the one teaching has benefited but there is at least evidence there.
To me that is a far cry from faith so why not just call trust "trust"?
Yes. But wouldn't it be advantageous to recognize what faith means to oneself and not be put off by such associations?
And as a sort of an aside, my father is both a physicist and a practicing Protestant. He has told me before that his faith is not blind, as he has in his own way tested the tenets of Christianity and found it to be the belief system that gave him the most spiritual enrichment.
To assume that 'faith' means 'blind ignorance' is not giving credit to where it is due for believers in faith-based religions.
As I mentioned in my anecdote above to Shoshin, "faith" doesn't always equate to believing in something blindly. So to say that it's time to "reclaim" it suggests that the word "faith" has been used incorrectly, when in fact it may be our own understanding of the word that may be skewed.
Yes, faith is a kind of trust. It's your own problem if the word "faith" leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
To subscribe to a philosophy or belief system, we all need a degree of belief/faith/trust in the teachings to be effective in whatever we seek them for.
I just wanted to point out the bias many of us have against the word "faith" when there really not need be one at all.
Actually, it isn't my problem at all because as I said, I don't use the word. It doesn't bother me at all if it works for you. Since it was brought up, I just said I didn't understand the need.
Trust and faith have different meanings to me and I'm pretty sure @Shoshin was asking about our personal deal. I admire that we can build bridges with other religions but I don't see Abrahamic faith as compatible with any kind of faith I find in Buddhism.
I have to do mental gymnastics to get it to work by positing a faith that means something different than believing with no objective proof.
Trusting the dharma of the 4NTs and 8FP is not the same as having faith that Jesus died for my sins or that Buddha could fly for example.
I don't see any bias, I see a square peg being forced into a round hole but it doesn't affect my practice so pound away.
To me there are two kinds of faith: little faith and big faith. Little faith is believing some particular thing such as "Jesus was born to a virgin" or "I broke a mirror so something bad will happen".
Big faith is more like positive acceptance: it is the view that everything will work out somehow, that there is a more grand scheme at work. This kind of faith helps us stop being preoccupied with particular difficulties we are facing at the moment, makes it easier to see the bigger picture and enables us to go on in the right direction when the going is tough. In the face of uncertainty of life it keeps our spirits up.
I find this "big faith" invaluable to my Buddhist practice. Without it life would be completely unbearable for me. I feel that this is a quality of mind that needs to be cultivated constantly. In fact, in Chinese Zen they talk about 3 pillars: great effort, great questioning and...great faith. I think the faith that they're talking about is something along the lines of what I described.
@shadowleaver - Yes, this is what I'm talking about! Thanks for sharing
I can't add a thing except there seems, on the surface of my experience, no need to have 'faith' in the Dharma. I'm cursed with a skeptical mind set that nags and spews, and even it says 'damn this is reasonable'.
The truth tends to gradually chip away at the 'faith', leaving it exposed to the truth...
I think in Buddhism there is refuge. That doesn't mean you blindly believe all kinds of things but it does mean that in times of doubt you might remember your refuge.
My teacher has said that faith is like being very simple. Entering the teachings and perhaps 'give it a try'. But be simple.
Some of our posters (to illustrate not belittle) are perfect examples of over thinking things rather than just be simple. It is like there is a voice running constantly 'should it be like this.. should it be like this?'. Which the point is not that you should not question things but I am bringing out the qualities of agitation and over thinking.
Maybe I'm not expressing this best? But everyone comes again and again to this question of faith as I undestand it today as 'simplicity' (not over thinking) and there will be plenty of time to ponder on it again and again. Perhaps 'dont over-worry' is another way to think of it?
“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” ~ T.S. Elliot