Transcript from Talk on Faith
(edited and abridged from comments December 29, 2024)
So the thing about faith is that it’s not easy to to pin down. We don’t necessarily have a place for it. If we look at the jhāna factors, all these different parts of the mind fall away gradually as we get into deeper and deeper concentration. Faith is not like that. It’s not one part of the mind. It isn’t a kind of ‘personality’ that we step into that blocks out everything else. When we have faith, we also sometimes have wisdom. We also sometimes have energy. But when we really see faith, it is a feeling that we have, a sense that comes with faith; we see actions.
The topic is interesting to us, especially as Westerners, because it’s exotic. There’s all sorts of Dhamma books, books about Buddhism. But a book about how to get more faith wouldn’t be a very appropriate topic. It wouldn’t have the same draw in Western society; we’re a bit sensitized to the topic. But if we were in Asia, you wouldn’t have a book that is not about faith. You wouldn’t have a book that doesn’t devote a section to delighting in the qualities of the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. It would be silly to have a book about Buddhism without taking the time to delight in objects of faith. It’s a quirk of the society that we’re in. We don’t grow up immersed in the idea of faith, and so it seems something apart from us.
But the reality is that we can’t pinpoint the thing that is faith. We just know it by its qualities and its conditions. We know that there are conditions for faith and there are conditions for the enemy of faith, which is doubt. There are things that support faith. There are things that faith supports. There are things that hinder faith, and there are things that make faith impossible.
It’s not that we only have faith or we don’t have faith. It’s not that when we have faith, it blocks out everything else. It’s more like we can recognize a package of qualities that comes together when it does arise. When it does arise, it supports and encourages a variety of things. When it’s not present, we find that those things are not supported and maybe even hard to get to.
One of the things we see when faith is present is the ability to do things that require faith, like taking the precepts, taking refuge in the triple gem. We do this during every retreat. We do it during every uposatha. We do the refuges and precepts because it is such an essential part of stabilizing our practice. It’s in having faith that practice has results.
During today’s retreat, it’s especially fruitful. If we were to do nothing else, we could just sit here and do the refuges and precepts and chant. And at the end of the day, we could be think, “Wow. It’s been a very faithful, inspiring, lovely, bubbly kind of day.” But again, because of the culture we’re in, it might feel a little odd to not talk a bit about the topic since we are sometimes a little distant from it. The topic came up in a recent online chat, as “I really need to focus more on faith.”
Everything we do that is Buddhist practice stems from our faith. It is an example of us having faith in practice…I don’t think anybody who’s here today needs more faith. Many of you have been coming for years or decades, back to the practice over and over again. Many of you have delightful mind states. You’re just filled with joy and you have all of these teachings that you return to again and again. You have teachers that you return to again and again. All of you don’t “need more faith.” But I don’t think it it does any harm to to talk about it, to talk about this package of conditions. And it might help, when the idea arises, “I really need more faith,” or, “Why do things feel so bleak?” We might be able to reference these ideas, these teachings and be like, “Oh, yeah. Hey. That’s it… that’s the answer.” It’s the solution. It’s the end of the problem.
So in terms of relating to faith in that way, the Buddha is pretty straightforward. In terms of conditions, we have doubt. And doubt is a skepticism, a sense of not knowing the right direction. The simile for doubt is being in a caravan that’s lost in the desert and you’re spinning around looking for some sort of landmark and you can’t see any. Or you’re in a caravan that’s on a journey, but it feels beset by dangers in all directions. “I don’t know where the next one is coming from.” This is an experience that can be a deep seated hindrance, obsessing our mind, or it can just be a little kind of doubt. We read the newspaper and we think, “What is this all about?” Or we think about the course of our lives. We haven’t attained full enlightenment. We’re not rich. We’re not surrounded by people who absolutely adore us. And we wonder, “What has it all been for? Has all my life led to this?” This is a little kind of doubt. We’re attending to things that are uncertain. The effect of habitually attending to those things which are uncertain is… uncertainty.
And this is a basic functioning of the mind. We have vitakka, which is where we put our attention in a moment. And we have vicāra, which is a sort of periphery attention, an accumulation of what we have been putting our mind on. If we put our minds on things that bring up faith, the vicāra, or periphery attention, will get stronger, more faithful, and more certain. But if we direct it in the moment to something that inspires a lack of confidence, doubt arises. The economy, certain countries, the climate… these are destabilizing, uncertain kinds of things.
If we’ve been habitually attending to those things which bring up faith, then it won’t shake the mind. If either vitakka or vicāra is directed at something that inspires faith, then doubt won’t find purchase. But if we consistently dwell in doubt, then we find it hard to know what direction to go. “What is the next step, what should I be doing now?” If we spend even a little time attending to those things that bring up the sense of faith, even if it’s just in the periphery, we feel okay. We feel, “I have a sense of the direction. I have a sense of what’s good.” So the opposite of doubt is faith, and faith is confidence. Faith is trust, and it’s not an all-or-nothing experience.
In order to come here today, you needed a fair amount of faith. You had to be certain that it wasn’t going to be a waste of your time. You had to be certain that you couldn’t be doing something better. You had to be certain you weren’t going to log in and people would make fun of you. You had to be certain that your house would not burn down because you weren’t there. There were a lot of things you had to have trust in.
To give money to a beggar on the street takes a certain amount of trust. It’s not, “I’m doing this because I know it’s good kamma. There’ll be a reward.” Or even, “I know this will help nourish this person.” You don’t know what they’ll use the money for. But there’s a certain amount of trust that it’s good. It’s worthwhile. If you had zero faith, zero confidence in giving a gift, if you thought the person would throw it back in your face or you would get in trouble for it, then you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t give even a penny to that beggar. So we have faith. There’s some amount of faith anytime we undertake any wholesome endeavor..
But there are some religions and philosophies in the world where faith is not based on fact. You were born into it. You’re taught to do a certain action and you will get the result. Bathe in the river Ganges, your sins will be purified. Just get in the water, your character or your faith doesn’t matter. If you were born into a particular group of people and you don’t do things that will get you excommunicated, you’re good. If you’re willing to sign that you have faith in someone or something as your god or your lord or your savior or whatnot, then you’re good. You’ll be getting into heaven.
Buddhism is not like that. Buddhism is in the camp where faith is absolutely vital. We can get material rewards even if we don’t have confidence in the action. If you don’t have confidence in the results of good action, you might still give money to the beggar, just because you think you’re supposed to. You will still get material good kamma because you gave to help somebody. Even if you have no confidence in your action, you still get some good kamma.
But in terms of the practice, the ability to grow in wholesomeness, to reduce our suffering and increase our sense of happiness and peace, the Buddha is teaching that you cannot do without faith. This is not something that you can get by accident or something that somebody can do for you. The degree that you have confidence in the practice is the degree in which you are willing to try the practice, to do the practice. And this helps us describe what faith brings to the mind. That very trust and stability and confidence is what we’re talking about.
We have the five faculties (the indriyā, which later become the the five powers, five balā, ), and faith is the very first one. The other ones are energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. Each one of these is part of the solution to attaining enlightenment. So we have lots of things we do, like how generous we are, how good we are with the precepts, whether or not we’ve attained the jhānas. The Buddha doesn’t say those are the factors that determine how quickly you attain enlightenment. He says these five faculties are. And faith is crucial because its qualities give stability to the mind. Faith is that faculty which anchors the mind. But faith also provides the ability to let go. None of the other faculties give us the capacity to take a leap of faith, to actually step into the unknown. Faith is the only one which lets us do this. Wisdom can inform us about the right direction to go, energy can inspire us to take that step. We can have tons of energy. But we won’t take the step if we don’t have confidence. So, to some degree, the only way we can get results in our practice is through having this sense of confidence.
And looking at that inspires us to want to have more confidence. But then there’s this funny dynamic: when somebody tells us something is good, we want to get more of it. But desiring faith: does that sound like that is in line with the teaching, or does it go in a different direction? What we find is that the best way to build up faith is to do the practice. And yet the practice is most fruitful when we have faith.
So there’s this kind of feedback loop when we think, “Oh, I would like to have faith. I would like to have more faith.” What we really need to understand is attention and how our faith is conditioned by what we’ve been putting our attention on. And the more we’ve been putting our attention on those things that we have confidence in, the more we have a sense of confidence, the more it occupies our vicāra, the peripheral of the mind. Our mind feels stable and grounded and willing to take a chance on the unknown because there are less unknowns when we habitually focus on what is known, when we have confidence.
The Pali canon was written in the time of the Buddha. And in the time of the Buddha, there were three things that aren’t necessarily here right now. The Buddha was alive. The Dhamma was being actively spoken. There was an enlightened Sangha. You didn’t say, “Thus I have heard the Buddha once said in that one place at that one time.” You’d say, “Hey, did you hear what the Buddha said last Thursday?” It was very current. There wasn’t a question of, “Are there are arahants in the world, enlightened beings?” It was more like you were afraid to throw a rock in the air, lest it might land on an arahant, and that would be very bad kamma. You knew that you were surrounded by beings who were doing the practice and getting results. When we read the suttas, what we tend to find is that faith is not an external thing. It’s not a maybe. It’s “Open your eyes and you will be awash in things that inspire you, things that you just have confidence in.”
The Buddha talks about those things which inspire confidence. The six recollections he gave to householders are all about inspiring faith. The Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, the other three were virtues (sīla), generosity, (cāga), and the devas, or the capacity for human beings to be reborn based on their good kamma to better places than this. It’s not bad here, but it could be better. The devas are getting the results of very good kamma. So these six things are things that were just understood. If you want the sense of trust and confidence and brightness of mind that delights in wholesome activity, just point your mind at these things. And back in the Buddha’s time, it was really as simple as just opening your eyes- it was all around you.
In our own time, it takes a lot more focused attention. In order to see these things, we either have to move to a monastery where these things are everywhere, or we have to take the time to pick up a book, to turn towards a statue (or even to have a statue), or visit a teacher, or listen to a Dhamma talk. For us, it has to be very intentional. And this is why we sometimes feel a sense of, “Where am I going? How how far have I got? Where does it go from here? What is the next step?” We just didn’t realize that we are where our mind has little-to-nothing to put its attention on that it has confidence in.
It’s not that these six things are the only things that give a sense of confidence. We can have confidence in just about anything. I have faith in this phone to the degree that I think probably the battery’s going to survive till the end of this talk. Is that a good kind of faith? Is that a wise kind of faith? Will that confidence secure me when I read about climate instability or hear about election results or consider what I may be doing in five years? No! The fact that the phone is still working is not a sturdy object for confidence.
The Buddha gives to us those things which are outside of the material world, those things which are rooted in the wholesome.
In the time of the Buddha, we would think about the Buddha himself. These days, because we can’t go visit him, it’s more natural that we think about the qualities of the Buddha. We recollect that it really wasn’t about the person.
We can think about the Dhamma, the Pali texts. There may be some Pali texts that you don’t necessarily agree with, or you don’t understand, or they are esoteric and complicated, and you just don’t get them. But the Dhamma is not just suttas; it’s the idea of truth, the idea of the orderliness of the Dhamma. It’s referring to that which can be seen, which can be known, and which, when studied, will lead you progressively to greater and greater understanding. That is a concept more than a physical thing. We can have a glimpse of the Dhamma and and the Buddha and the the possibility of the mind. We have that experience when we’re reading through a teaching and we have a sense of inspiration, like, “Oh, yeah. I get it.” In that moment, we can check in with our mind and we we can ask ourselves, “Do I think that I’m the only one who has ever gotten this?” And if it is in fact a wholesome understanding of the Dhamma, a wholesome inspiration based on clearing away ignorance, we will find it is not possible in that moment to hold the selfish belief that, “I get it, nobody else gets this. I should be in charge. I am the wisest here.” Instead, we will see that at that moment, “Oh, I finally get it. This is what everybody’s been talking about.” We realize that we are understanding something that is present and available to everybody. And at that moment, it makes sense that there are others who get it.
We think about the Sangha. The idea of the Sangha is actually the easiest one because when when we practice, we can have a glimpse of the practice, a glimpse of the Dhamma. The faith in the Sangha is based on, “Wow, anybody can, this is right here.” And often it’s it’s hard for us. We have to restrain ourselves not to go out and be like, “Eureka, isn’t this great? Isn’t the Dhamma wonderful? Isn’t it so obvious?” Because often people will remind us that it’s not obvious to everybody. And don’t necessarily have faith in me. Because sometimes, I, as a person, I’m going to be more worried about getting lunch or going to the bathroom. I’m not a statue. I am not perfect and I am not without fault.
Same with virtue and generosity. These things, when we do them, they feel very good and they feel very obvious. When we only think about doing them, there’s some trepidation. So the more that we’re willing to just take a precept and just practice with it and get good at it until it can be wholesome, the more we feel the fruits of that undertaking. To to that degree, anytime we think about it, it brings joy and brightness to our heart. After having taken the precepts for a long time, then you think about it like, “Yeah, killing is bad.” And it just brightens you because you know that in the world there are places where killing is still very actively done. And you, you don’t have to worry about it. You don’t live immersed in that culture.
And the same with generosity. Having lived in communities, having seen what it is to share, you begin to have confidence in sharing. And this is actually something quite wonderful. If you’ve been to the monastery, or you’ve been on a meditation retreat, things are shared. You don’t worry so much about your personal stuff. You have a shared schedule, shared meal, shared facilities. Somebody says, “Okay. We’re not gonna eat dinner tonight.” You might think, “Well, I’ve got to manage my own diet. I’ve got to manage my own meals.” But if you have a good sense of trust, you’re like, “Okay. Yeah. It’ll be fine. Everybody here will be with me. It’ll be okay.” When you are there, it’s so obvious… it’s just, “Wow. This is so much better than the way we do things when we go home and we get in our own little box and it’s expensive and hard to maintain. Wouldn’t it be great if we all just worked together?” It’s obvious when when we’re there in the middle of it, and then we step away and it starts to fade from the mind, then it’s something that’s only going to be obvious when we direct our attention back to being a community. We think back to times when somebody has given us something or we have given something to others and we have shared, and the ease and the relaxation that comes from that. This is the experience of faith. We can have that sense of settlement, security, trust. And when we have that sense of trust, then, well, just about anything’s possible.
All this makes the practice easier and the practice makes faith easier. We want to get in this routine of directing our mind towards these subjects.
To close, we’ll look at a few suttas, starting with the Kesamutti Sutta. Everybody calls it the “Kālāma Sutta” because he was talking to the Kālāmas. The Kālāmas go to the Buddha and tell him, “Bhante, there are some ascetics and brahmins who come to Kesaputta”–the town that they’re in–“They explain and elucidate their own doctrines, but disparage, denigrate, deride, and denounce the doctrines of others. Then other ascetics and brahmins come to Kesaputta and they too explain and elucidate their own doctrines, but disparage, denigrate, deride , and denounce the doctrines of others. We are perplexed and in doubt, Bhante, as to which of these good ascetics speak truth and which speak falsely.”
So this is the kind of difficulty we find ourselves in. Just like the Kālāmas, there’s so much out there saying, “This is right. This is what’ll make you happy. This is the truth. This is the way to do this.” And if we habitually put our mind on all of these things, we’re not stabilizing our mind on any one of them. If we allow ourselves to kind of be led along, then we will begin to feel doubt because these don’t offer a great amount of security, faith, and trust. Only a little.
So the Buddha says, rightly, “It is fitting for you to be perplexed, Kālāmas. It’s fitting for you to be in doubt. That has arisen in you about a perplexing matter. Come, Kālāmas, don’t go by oral tradition, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of scriptures, by a logical reasoning or inferential reasoning, by a reasoned cogitation, by the acceptance of the view after pondering it, or by the seeming competence of the speaker because you think, ‘The ascetic is our guru.’ But when, Kālāmas, you know for yourself: ‘These things are unwholesome, these things are blameworthy, these things are censured by the wise, these things, if accepted and undertaken, lead to harm and suffering,’ then you should abandon them.”
And the Buddha goes on to talk to the Kālāmas about greed, hatred, delusion, about breaking the five precepts. And he says, “When you do these things, do you experience suffering?” And they say, “Yes.” “Is it for your harm or welfare?” And they say, “For harm.” And he says, “That being so, should they be undertaken or abandoned?” And the Kālāmas say they should be abandoned. And now this is not just about wisdom. This is not just about how to evaluate things. This is also how you build faith. The Buddha is directing them, “Hey, look at these things and decide for yourself based on your experience, based on what you have seen. Did this produce suffering or did it produce happiness?” And they said, “Well, these things produce suffering.” And that instills in us a sense of confidence, an important sense of confidence in causality, which is an underpinning of mundane right view: “I believe that unwholesome actions have unwholesome results, wholesome actions have wholesome results.”
And the Buddha goes on to talk about non-greed, non-hatred, non-delusion, and the keeping of the five precepts. He says, “Are these things wholesome or unwholesome?” And they say, “Wholesome.” “Are they blameworthy or they are blameless?” “Blameless.” “Are they censured or praised by the wise?” And they they say, “They’re praised by the wise, Bhante.” “Accepted and undertaken, will they lead to your welfare and happiness or not? Or how do you take it?” “Accepted and undertaken, Bhante, these things lead to welfare and happiness. This is how we hold it.”
So the Buddha says, “Thus, that’s why I said don’t go by oral tradition or (etcetera). But when you know for yourself these things are wholesome, these things are blameless, these things are praised by the wise, these things when accepted and undertaken, they lead to welfare and happiness, then you should live in accordance with them.”
And we have gone over this since several times in several different contexts, but it keeps coming up as as good and useful for that very principle because it encourages us to find for ourselves. And so, today, as we sit and walk, we can, rather than saying, “What should I be paying attention to?”, we can maybe take an inventory of those things in which we have had success in in the practice. Those things which we have tried. And because we have tried them, we have seen that they work. And this is also an activity that we’ve talked about over and over again, over the years now, is that when we review the practice that we have done, we find that we often, “Oh,” we remember what we used to be like. And this gives us a lot of of confidence that it’s working, that it’s doing its job. And when we have that sense of confidence, we might not even recognize the shift. Suddenly it becomes easier to just do the practice.
The question of, “What is the practice?” or “Am I doing it?” falls away, and then we’re just doing it.
The Dajagga Sutta is one that is often chanted. Dajagga means the top, the crest, of a flag. In ancient warfare, flags would denote the units that were charging during battle, and this is how you knew where you were. If you were with your unit, you couldn’t see over the heads of the people around you, but you could see the flags. So you would look to the flags to know whether you were advancing or retreating. You would follow the flags. And in this teaching, the Buddha talks about Sakka, the king of the devas. He said, once the devas and the suras were arrayed for battle, and then Sakka, the lord of the devas, addressed the devas of the Thirty-three (those were the other deva gods).
And he said, “If, sirs, when we devas are engaged in battle, there should arise fear, terror, or gooseflesh for you, then on that occasion, you should look up to the top of my standard. For when you look at the top of my standard, any fear, terror, or gooseflesh you have will be abandoned.” And he said, “If you can’t see the top of my standard, then you should look to the standard of my general, Pajāpati. And if you can’t see Pajāpati’s standard, then look to Varuṇa, the deva-king. And if you look to the if you can’t see Varuṇa’s, then look to Īsāna’s. If you look to the tops of these standards, then any fear, terrors, or gooseflesh you have should be abandoned then.”
And the Buddha said to the monks, “Monks, those who look to the top of the standard of Sakka, Pajāpati, Varuṇa, or Īsāna, any fear, terror, or gooseflesh they have might be abandoned or might not. Why is that? Because Sakka, lord of the devas, is not free of passion, free of aversion, free of delusion. He can be frightened. He can be terrorized. He can be cowardly and quick to flee.”
(It’s funny to think, because Sakka is like any kid. When the battle’s going good, he’s out there in the front, but when things are going bad, he’s the first one to get to safety.)
But the Buddha says, “Monks, I tell you this. If, when you have gone to the wilderness, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty dwelling, there should arise fear, terror, or gooseflesh in you, then on that occasion, you should recollect me thus: ‘Indeed, the Blessed One is worthy and rightly self-awakened, consummate in clear knowing and conduct, well-gone, an expert with regard to the cosmos, unexcelled trainer of people fit to be tamed. Teacher of devas and humans, awakened and blessed.’ For when you recollect me, monks, any fear, terror, or gooseflesh you have will be abandoned.
“If you don’t recollect me, then recollect the Dhamma thus: ‘The Dhamma is well taught by the Blessed One. It can be seen here and now. It’s timeless, inviting verification, pertinent, to be experienced by the observant for themselves.’ For when you recollect the Dhamma, monks, any fear, terror, or gooseflesh you have will be abandoned.
“If you find you cannot recollect the Dhamma, then you should recollect the Sangha thus: ‘The Sangha of the Blessed One’s disciples who have practiced well, practiced straightforwardly, practiced methodically, and practiced masterfully. That is, the four pairs, the eight types of enlightened beings. That is the Sangha of the Blessed One’s disciples. They are worthy of gifts, worthy of hospitality, worthy of offerings, worthy of respect. The unexcelled field of merit in the world.’ For when you recollect the Sangha, monks, any fear, terror, or gooseflesh you have will be abandoned.
“Why is that? Because the Tathāgata, worthy and rightly self-awakened, is free of passion, free of aversion, free of delusion. He is fearless. He cannot be terrorized. He is bold and not quick to flee.” And that is what the Blessed One said. Having said that, he reiterated in verse:
“In wilderness, monks, at the root of a tree,
or in an empty dwelling,
recollect the Buddha.
You’ll have no fear.
“If you don’t recall the Buddha,
best in the world, the bull of men,
then recollect the Dhamma,
pertinent, well taught.
“If you don’t recollect the Dhamma,
pertinent, and well taught,
then recollect the Sangha,
the field of merit unexcelled.
“For those who have thus recalled the Buddha,
Dhamma, and Sangha, monks,
there will be no terror, no horror,
and no fear.'”