The role of faith on a path of insight.

Mike (michaelmonson) and I were discussing in another thread the ways in which faith can be a gateway to gaining insight. I thought this would be something interesting to explore further.

"I know that kuan yin in her many forms is used throughout the buddhist world in a way that is very like Christ - as an anchor to attach one's faith to to enable a real letting go. This doesn't seem very dualistic I guess, but I'm sure here is more to that subject that I could learn." -Mike

I'm assuming that Mike meant to say something like, "This doesn't seem very non-dualistic," but he'll have to verify that for me.

A theme that I see running through a lot of insight/wisdom traditions is the idea of first putting one's faith in something wholesome or somewhat stable as a way to transition to a more profound realization.

We see this in the early Theravada tradition, where cultivating jhana prior to doing further insight work was the most common teaching. By developing this skill, one gains faith/trust in their ability to develop a skill. This leads to the realization that in the same way skill can be used to let go of unskillful patterns in order to develop wise ones, one may also let go of the "wise" patterns to attain release. I've heard this described as first becoming attached to one's own "luminous mind, free of attachments," only to let go of this luminous mind when they are ready to progress.

We this something similar in the Mahayana tradition, particularly in the Heart Sutra. One first trusts that "Form is Emptiness" and rides this out to its realization. But then, in order to progress, one must let go to realize that "Emptiness is the same as form." In other words, emptiness is empty, too.

The Zen tradition proposes maps like the Five Ranks, which show how initial attachment to awakened mind is pathological, and that one must let go of this perspective to truly have no fixed position.

The Vajrayana tradition at times places a great deal of emphasis on having faith in one's guru, or a special deity, or both. But the distinction between self and guru, or self and deity, will eventually collapse as practice continues. But there is an act of willful surrender that aids in this process. The distinction is voluntarily given up. First attach (sort of), then let go.

Not that the role of faith in the insight traditions stops there. I'm sure it doesn't. But this is what came to mind after reading Mike's comment.

-Jackson

"I'm assuming that Mike meant to say something like, "This doesn't seem very non-dualistic," but he'll have to verify that for me." - right. (smiling)

And, there is another mechanism that is similar to faith as an aid in getting to that "letting go" place, or maybe it's often a precurser to faith. And that is, when one gets to a spot when they are maybe just so desperate, or so confused, or so lost, or just frustrated with doing the same thing again and again and getting the same unsatisfying result that they spontaneously just .... stop, surrender, let go, give up trying.

What happens then can be a gateway to many new things, including faith.

(think of an altar call)

(think of the guru bestowing his "blessing" on a pilgrim)

(think of the concept of "serendipity" in science)

(think of buddha getting sick of the usual extreme practices and and saying "fuck it, there HAS to be something else" and sitting down with a completely open mind)

(see with your ears and hear with your eyes)

(think of Krisnamurti's snake in the path)

Thinley Norbu Rinpoche [somewhere, I'm not sure where] wrote about 'learning faith', an idea I've been mulling over for awhile. It seems to leap over the dilemmas involved in regarding faith to be equivalent to belief. It seems to imply that it is not demanded to leap into the dark, but that it is more like caring for a growing seed. You nurture it, and see what develops. 'So far, so good' is remarkably akin to 'being here now.' Or, as the astrologer Caroline Casey likes to say: 'Believe nothing. Entertain possibilities.' Or another way of saying it would be that I have enough faith in myself, the teacher, and the teaching, to give practice a go-- and then be honest about the results. It's a kind of fundamental wholeness, healthiness.

It also bypasses all the [my petty personal preferences here, I'll own them} really irritating displays of piety, adoption of 'sacredly correct' verbal formulations, and other religious conventions-- to me, these phenomena convey a desperate clinging to belief, rather than the confidence that 'faith' implies. In my experience, that confidence is most convincing when it is spoken in a person's personal vernacular, as when telling a story about something wonderful or weird that happened.

"another mechanism that is similar to faith as an aid in getting to that
"letting go" place, or maybe it's often a precurser to faith. And that
is, when one gets to a spot when they are maybe just so desperate, or so
confused, or so lost, or just frustrated with doing the same thing
again and again and getting the same unsatisfying result that they
spontaneously just .... stop, surrender, let go, give up trying."

That's what it means to me. Common usage of the word gets tied up in the baggage of religious systems. I think faith, trust, surrender and letting go are all pretty similar. Whether that is acted out through religious devotional rituals or on a less symbolic level it is sort of the same, no? I mean, those religious rituals of surrender (to a deity, saint, guru, etc.) are intended to create the same mental attitude/state as a non-ritualized "letting go." "It's out of my hands, there's nothing I can do, I surrender to the process, thy will be done..." that sort of thing.

Does that make sense? Sometimes I'm just making shit up and it sounds good when I write it.

Ona - that makes sense to me, especially since I agree completely.

I've been reading about and thinking about AA and the various 12-step groups a lot lately, along with any methods to deal with addictive behavior. It's interesting that the founder of AA, Bill W., insisted that alcoholics needed a significant spiritual awakening experience in order to get better. And that the AA program was designed to not only provoke such an experience but to create a continuous integration of that experience in the addict during the subsequent recovery process.

In the AA Big Book Bill W. describes his and other people's spiritual experiences and they are all identical to any A&P event I've ever heard of.

Anyway, I think that surrender, letting go, etc. and developing some kind of faith in a power greater than one's SELF creates the right mental atmosphere for healing from an addiction in the same way that those things help to heal anyone's suffering.

However, I know that the recent statements by Charlie Sheen that AA only has a five percent success rate are probably true, and I wonder if the 95 that fail, fail because they aren't able to either get that big A&P like event to bring faith and motivation or, even if they did, their "program" from that point on failed to do the kind of continuous integration that I know is necessary for any kind of spiritual process to work over the long haul.

While emptying my car today I came across a book I forgot I had called 'Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment". It's kind of dry and scholarly, although short and well written, and it has some interesting gems. It's looking at the non-linear relationships between faith, practice and enlightenment in buddha nature schools, like much of Zen/Chan/Son, and contrasting that with the conventional, linear view expressed in other East Asian schools in which first one has some faith, then one can engage the practice, and the outcome of the practice is enlightenment.

Rather, it points to practice as being like a spiral of discovering and expressing deeper and deeper confidence or faith in buddhanature, beginningless enlightenment. The author is kind of hard on Pure Land schools, but there's some great teachings on Pure Land I've encountered which suggest a similarly subtle and profound view of faith, practice and enlightenment. I've heard that Pure Land and Zen-- or more precisely, Chan-- were often practiced hand in hand, and recall that Bankei spent many years practicing Nembutsu (Pure Land) alongside Zazen prior to his initial awakening.

On the issue of devotional practice being dualistic or non-dual, I can speak of personal experience with Guru Yoga in Dzogchen and a little Pure Land practice. In both cases it seems much subtler and more profound than is implied by a dualistic opposition of dualism and nondualism, because in both cases it feels like becoming completely authentic as a deluded and limited dualistic body-mind identity who is connecting with a deeper, more open "mind".

This connection is based on absolutely being authentic as a dualistic body-mind, a "foolish sentient being" in pure land lingo. In the heart of that complete authenticity as a limited deluded being, I find that this somewhat bewildered and blundering klesha-ridden being that "I am" is always already included within a deeper knowing space which is completely free and compassionate, and sees right through "me". It's a nice mode of practicing as long as one is still capable of feeling like a "foolish sentient being" because it completely bypasses the very possibility of spiritual bypassing, yet renders one's baggage translucent and open to a much deeper, and much more deeply caring, level of buddha-mind which-- by virtue of arising in one's mindstream-- is known to be an integral part of what one is as well as the ignorance. I really like doing this style of practice, as well as tonglen, during phases of practice when I am experiencing a lot of difficult sensations and dark thoughts. It helps to let them go by opening a space where they are completely allowed to be, when I can't always discover that space in a more direct way. And it can be worked in the other direction too, discovering a deeper nature of open and compassionate awareness-space, and welcoming all the disturbing feelings "back" into the embrace of that space. Long and the short of is-- I really like not spiritually bypassing!

RE: AA dropouts

After A&P comes that inevitable dark night... that could easily knock a heck of lot of people out of the practice. I am not familiar with whether they offer some method or support or guidance for dealing with that as a specific inevitable phase?

I'm not sure if they specifically address the "dark night" but the program is essentially going to meetings, working with a sponsor, being a sponsor, (service to others seems to be a huge factor) and then working the steps:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Which is really, I think, all about integration and would maybe help someone deal with dark night stuff. I think. Not sure.

It's interesting, though. I didn't realize it was so faith-based. So they help people get to A&P quite easily, with that surrender to God perhaps... but it doesn't have further "spiritual" goals beyond integrating that level of spiritual experience into ones life.. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, I just am pondering whether there's some weakness in the system. Though technically one could keep applying that attitude of surrender through dark nights.

Like, adding: 12a: Having had a spiritual awakening, I understand there will be hard times that follow, and such will cycle for ages, testing my faith, so I will continue to surrender to a higher power even more vigorously when such diffiulties fall upon me...

That sort of thing.

Again, just musing... What do you think?

I just saw that the numbers didn't carry over in my cut and paste. Here are steps 10 and 11, which kind of cover of you are saying Ona, don't you think? (as long as the person is doing this and hasnt gotten complacent)

10 Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11 Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we und

erstood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Ah, I see. Yes, they do... human nature + temptation + complacency will knock some people out of the game anyway.