A lack of faith

The modern mind is too fixated on phenomena including words and the concepts they elicit.  It is as if such a mind ruled out a transcendent element from which phenomena, words and concepts are composed.  The modern mind seems to reject, completely, any possibility that transcendence can be accomplished.  I think the reason for this is the modern mind sees nothing beyond phenomena, words and concepts.  In trying, it draws a blank.  This blank is like an impenetrable wall.

I find this problem to be speaking more to a lack of faith in the Buddha’s teaching and Zen.  If one doesn’t first have faith in transcendence how then is transcendence even possible?  We cannot just stop at our mental blank wall.  This wall is, in fact, penetrable from a Buddhist perspective.  But we have to have faith that it is penetrable.  This doesn’t mean of course that faith alone will suffice; that from faith is born absolute confidence.  We still have to get beyond this blank wall of doubt and actually see the true nature of reality which goes beyond even faith in the final analysis.  The Buddha speaking to Bhāradvāja has this to say about faith.

“If a person has faith, Bhāradvāja, he preserves truth when he says: ‘My faith is thus’; but he does not yet come to the definite conclusion: ‘Only this is true, anything else is wrong.’ In this way, Bhāradvāja, there is the preservation of truth; in this way he preserves truth; in this way we describe the preservation of truth. But as yet there is no discovery of truth” (M. ii. 171).

Until we get to discovering, personally, that from which phenomena, words and concepts are composed, in the meantime, we have to preserve the truth (saccānurakkhaṇa) that one day we hope to realize.  That requires faith.  If the  modern person who studies Buddhism can't find the faith, maybe they should reject Buddhism like any other religion because all religion for them is a lie.  Nor should this same person expect Buddhists to try and convince them to have faith.  It would be a waste of time.  Such people only contaminate Buddhism who have little or no faith.

Comments

[Jure]

Faith is vilified today because the forces of evil have sullied its name -

I often see this. Someone finds a "Guru". Then they find something bad about that "Guru". (I know a woman whose "Guru" was found to be molesting children...)

Then they abandon that "Guru", disillusioned. And they're right to abandon, of course! But they throw the baby out with the bathwater, when they then dispense with faith altogether!

There are genuine enlightened people out there who can help us in the beginning, and then we have to do the work ourselves...

And even if we can't find anyone, by devotion and firm seeking a Guru will find us.

Often people think a Guru can only appear in the form of a living person, but that is not necessarily the case.

To some, it appeared as the Lankavatara Sutra. The text itself can be the Guru - not dead letters but something alive. One could place the text in home made alter and light incense to it, treat it as a deity! Why not!

I have heard of someone who couldn't find a living teacher "up to the task" and so he made the Mandukya Upanishad his teacher. He placed it in an alter, lighted incense to it, bowed to it every day - and of course (what's most important) studied it, not in a way a scholar studies it, but in a way someone thirsty for truth studies it, the thirst of someone roaming in a desert for 30 days who suddenly finds an oasis!

[David Brainerd]

What I find amazing is those vigorously opposing metaphysics (aka the transcendant) at the same time peddles particlr physics and big bang cosmology (bastardized metaphysics pretending to br physics) as the onr and only absolute truth.