This article is excerpted from a workshop offered by Sharon Salzberg at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies on September 22, 1996. Sharon was writing a book on the subject, to be published by Shambhala.

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Faith is something very personally meaningful to me. It is something difficult to understand, and it is something that is not often spoken about within the context of a wisdom tradition—especially in the West.  <o:p></o:p>

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The last time I led a program on Faith, I heard people express disquietude, uneasiness, and even hostility. Somebody said to me, "I came to Buddhism to get away from all this." And for him, because of his own conditioning or background, the very word "faith" was difficult to hear. It brought up questions of being good enough and having enough faith; it brought up facing dire consequences if he didn't have enough faith or didn't have the right kind of faith. The word faith brought up a lot of fear, rather than faith seeming like an antidote to fear.  <o:p></o:p>

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The word we normally translate as faith from the Pali language, the language of the original Buddhist texts, is saddhà, which literally means "to place the heart upon." Saddhà means to give our hearts over to, or place our hearts upon something. Its meaning can vary a lot, depending on what we put our heart upon or the quality with which we give our hearts over. So there are a number of different ways faith can be manifest.  <o:p></o:p>

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Sometimes faith means trust. In your reflections you can contemplate: Is there some quality within yourself that you trust? Awareness, love, critical thinking? What do you trust? I remember having a great deal of difficulty with my practice at one point in my life and my teacher U Pandita said to me: "You just sit and walk. The dharma will take care of the rest." I was trying too hard to "make the practice work," and the faith that came from simply trusting that the practice would work all by itself has been tremendously helpful for me.  <o:p></o:p>

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Faith can also take the form of inspiration, where all of our being comes together behind something, behind an endeavor. This doesn't feel like a struggle, because we are so inspired to engage in a pursuit. We might be inspired by a teacher or a teaching, but whatever it is a sense of possibility is awakened for us. This initial inspiration is what brings us to a practice or to any deeper exploration, and it helps sustain us in the difficulties we inevitably encounter.  <o:p></o:p>

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Or faith can mean confidence. You might think of a time in your life when you faced a task that was a little bit daunting, but you had a quality of confidence so you persevered. As we begin to practice, there may be a lot of restlessness and sleepiness and resistance and pain and boredom and angst—all kinds of different experiences. It can be very hard. But what allows us to keep going? What allows us to say "Well, maybe this is just the way things are in the beginning, or maybe this is just going to take some time, and I need to devote time to see what happens?" What allows us to take that risk and keep going? This also is a form of faith.  <o:p></o:p>

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Another way we might think of faith is in terms of patience: when we can be present in a situation and allow it to unfold without needing to manipulate it, letting things take their natural course, allowing things time to ripen. You might think of a time in your life when this was very present for you.  <o:p></o:p>

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The faith that inspires us to take a step away from the normal dictates of society, as it defines happiness, success, prosperity or goodness, and perhaps to begin a meditation practice—is courage. We step back from our conditioning, from our past, from our belief systems, and then we step forward to take a look in order to allow the truth to speak to us, in order to be present for whatever might be revealed through our own experience. All this takes courage, and this courageous aspect of faith is by no means insignificant. The purity and simplicity of faith is very powerful. Faith is what begins our energy, our willingness to look; it is what sustains it. It is what allows us to take a risk, to open up to seeing the truth for ourselves, rather than simply going along conventionally or conveniently believing only what we have been told. "We might be inspired by a teacher or a teaching, but whatever it is a sense of possibility is awakened for us."  <o:p></o:p>

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 There is one sense of the word faith that is closer to relaxation. You can just sit and listen to sounds as they come and go—the sound of my voice, for example, or other, even internal sounds. Notice how you don't have to construct or create an awareness of them. You simply have to be quiet, to be present, and the awareness will happen naturally. You can relax.  <o:p></o:p>

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I have been very interested to see the different ways that faith weaves throughout the traditional teachings of Buddhism. There is an evolution in the quality of faith that is not dissimilar to an evolution or deepening of wisdom. And in fact faith and wisdom seem to go hand in hand.  <o:p></o:p>

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First there is what we call bright faith, which is a sense of being able to draw near, to open up, to be inspired, that happens when we meet somebody who is very impressive for us. They awaken some confidence in ourselves about a way of being that might be possible for us as well. We meet a teacher or a great being or a great poet, and somehow the experience is not just about them and who they are—they also serve as a mirror in some way for who we might be. We feel very inspired and moved. There is an emotional quality of wonderment, of excitement, and of confidence. Faith is what allows us to draw near.  <o:p></o:p>

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 But bright faith, while it can be powerful and important, is not very reliable. We might meet one person one day and another person another day, and find ourselves just careening back and forth between these different sources of inspiration, because we are not so centered within our own experience.  <o:p></o:p>

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There is another quality of faith, somewhat more evolved, known as verified faith. Maybe we've met a person or we've encountered a teaching and have gotten inspired; and we've done something about that—we've actually practiced or we've explored something for ourselves, and in doing so we've opened to some amount of experience. The feeling we have about that path or process, the sense of being able to place our hearts upon it, is now rooted in our own experience and strengthened.  <o:p></o:p>

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When I was first practicing meditation, one of the great one-liners my teacher Munindra offered to me was "The Buddha's enlightenment solved the Buddha's problem, now you solve yours." It was important to me to feel that the Buddha's enlightenment did solve his problem, because after all here was the very path he had offered. And I also recognized that I clearly hadn't yet solved mine! But I saw that Munindra was implying a confidence that I actually could solve the problem of suffering for myself. There was some amount of energy and effort and actual practice that was being called for from me so that I could step up to this experience of verified faith.  <o:p></o:p>

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And then there is what is called unshakable faith, where we have experienced something so deeply and strongly that from that point on there is no turning back. It is not that somebody can then appear to us in the role of the inspirer and say, "Well, you know it's really this way, it's not that way" and have us believe that simply because they say so. We know from our own experience that this is how things are; we have a more complete faith in the truth of our own vision and our perception of the truth. This three-fold progression is one way faith is talked about as it evolves through our own understanding.  <o:p></o:p>

 

This essay was donated by the Insight Meditation Society ,  David Berman                                   _____________________________________

Sharon Salzberg has been a student of Buddhism since 1971, and has been leading meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. She teaches both intensive awareness practice (vipassana or insight meditation) and the profound cultivation of lovingkindness and compassion (the Brahma Viharas). She is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and The Forest Refuge, a new center for long term meditation practice.

Sharon has recently finished writing a book titled Faith. She is the author of Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness and A Heart as Wide as the World, by Shambhala Publications; Lovingkindness Meditation (audio) by Sounds True; and co-author with Joseph Goldstein of Insight Meditation, a Step-by-Step Course on How to Meditate, also from Sounds True. She has edited Voices of Insight, an anthology of writings by vipassana teachers in the West, published by Shambhala. Please see her complete list of books and tapes.    For information about Sharon Salzberg's work and retreats please go to www.dharma.org or www.loving-kindness.org.<o:p></o:p>