Hi Everybody,
Beautiful day. Too nice really to be in and sitting at the keyboard, but I've been totally busy and I promised myself that I would get a blog out today. So we're talking about the meaning of this word faith in Buddhism.
Big subject. Faith is a chameleon of a word, and we're trying to pin down what it does mean for Buddhists, and of course what it doesn't! Both are important.
So in all the major religions with which we are most familiar, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam for example, we all know that the word faith is used to bind together all those elements of the teaching that are beyond the reach of proof, or beyond the reach of experience. And inevitably, in religions that deal with the nature of divinity itself and how it works in the world, and the nature of the unknowable after life, those un-provable elements are very substantial indeed. so faith in these circumstances has a truly immense role to play. The believer is asked to make what we have come to call a leap of faith to accept those elements of the teaching or doctrine.
And the word leap in this context describes very accurately what we are being asked to do, namely to leave the solid ground of our experience and what we absolutely know to be the case, and put our trust and belief in something that is way outside our normal experience, and what's more, will always be outside our normal human experience. That is not of course questioning in any way the sustained and hugely sustaining power of these religions for countless millions of people over several thousand years. I am simply trying to explore the differences in the way we use this key word faith.
It is clear therefore that in all these major religions faith has much to do with the firm belief in the powers of God and of Allah and the decisive role that power plays in the daily lives of ordinary people. That is to say, this kind of faith which is so deeply embedded in western culture has very much to do with entities, powers, people that are outside of oneself.
Indeed I would go so far as to argue that this idea of taking a leap of faith is now so deeply embedded that it has become the essential meaning of the word itself. Whenever we use the word faith in the West we are normally talking about faith in something ' out there,' something very much outside ourselves. And I thinkm it helps to be totally aware of that..
which brings us back to the central fact that since there is no all-powerful creator god ' out there' in Buddhism, the word must carry for Buddhists, a very different meaning.
Which we'll look at next time around.Thanks for reading this far.
See you next time hopefully.
Best wishes,
William
PS The Case for Buddhism is available on Amazon or as a download from Kindle.
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