Can We Talk About Faith?

Because there is always faith.
It might be faith in our abilities.
It might be faith in the wisdom that’s available to us
every once in a while. It might be faith in cause and effect:
the way that, when we express frustration,
no one is happy, and when we express love, people care.

Or it might be faith that the earth will take care of herself,
No matter what we humans cook up, or, if that’s too big,
that this day will dawn, or if even that’s too big, that, 
when we breathe in, in the next moment,
no matter what else happens, we’ll breathe out.

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 471. I hope you had a lovely Christmas or Chanukah yesterday if you celebrated, and Happy Kwanza today, and that today is peaceful. 

We’ve been exploring the Five Hindrances and so far we’ve looked at desire, aversion, sloth & torpor, and restlessness & worry. The final Hindrance is doubt. 

In mindfulness, there are two forms of doubt. The first is questioning and being skeptical about what we hear, read, and learn – about mindfulness, the law, life. This form of doubt encourages us to investigate the things being shown to us, and to come up with our own felt-sense of right and wrong, true and false, useful & wholesome or not useful + unwholesome. In classical mindfulness this kind of doubt is essential, and forms the basis for the instruction to check things out for ourselves: “ehipassiko” in the Pali. “Come and see for yourself.”  

The second kind of doubt is doubt that holds us back – it’s a Hindrance to our practice, and to moving forward on the path. This kind of doubt shows up in various ways. It shows up as doubt in the relevance of mindfulness: what place does paying attention moment by moment have, in a world moving so fast it seems like we’re being asked to pay attention to a thousand things at once? Why metta, lovingkindness, in a world so divided, or in a profession which by its very definition is divided, adversarial? What does karma – or cause and effect – mean, when we work so hard for justice and belonging and it seems like nothing changes?

This second form of doubt also shows up in doubt in the path itself, a voice that says, “where will all this meditation, this practice, lead?” Or as hesitancy or indecision (“Am I doing this right? Should I be studying with that teacher instead of this one?” or as doubt in the ability to practice at all (“I’m no good at this, I can’t meditate, my mind will never settle”). Or as a foil for wisdom: the reasonable person voice that says, “I’ve got better things to do, there are wiser people I can listen to or read, there are better paths.” I’m familiar with all of these forms of doubt, all of these voices. Maybe you’ve heard some of them as well.

It’s easy for me, anyway, to also see how doubt in formal practice, practice “on the cushion,” can translate into doubt in life, in portable practice. This form of doubt shows up for me in questions like, “I know how to practice metta (lovingkindness) on the cushion, but can I be kind to the other drivers on the freeway – and, since I’ll never meet them, why is that even important? Why should I have compassion for someone who’s deeply misguided or uncaring, or dangerous? How is it even possible to love “others” – and then take your pick: the others in a case, the other side in politics, the other side of the family.

The instructions for working with the Hindrance of doubt are similar to those for the other Hindrances: bella - explore how to be with it, how to let it lessen or attenuate, how to let it go, and how to appreciate it. Mindfulness practice, with doubt as the object rather than as the thoughts and emotions doubt conjures, as the object, since those thoughts and emotions are just that: thoughts and emotions. Such a powerful practice, this investigation of the Hindrance of doubt. For me it’s important to remember to practice with doubt so that I recognize doubt for what it is: not the voice of wisdom, but simply just another impediment to being in the moment with a clear, open mind and heart. 

We can talk more about doubt. But we can also talk about faith, its opposite, and which for me is so interesting and alive. So let’s do that.

 I imagine we all have plenty of faith or we wouldn’t keep coming back to our cushions day after day, and keep coming here week after week to sit together, and keep walking this simple but not-so-easy path. 

Faith is the opposite of doubt and also the first of the Five Spiritual Faculties or Five Powers (yet another mindfulness list), and is followed by effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. Maybe we’ll work with that list in the new year.

Faith as a power – and it’s not power over others or even over ourselves, but a kind of inner empowerment – comes in two waves. The first wave is “bright” faith. Bright faith is the moment, or maybe longer than a moment, when the path of mindfulness first appears to us. The moment we look up and say, “wait, what’s this? What just happened? I’m going to find out.” That moment when the mind and heart are jolted into something like recognition, even though we may have no idea what we’re seeing. 

For me that moment happened after faith had come knocking for years. There were teachers, invitations, circumstances. Each time, signposts pointed both towards and away from mindfulness. And even though I’d been looking, “seeking” as my father always used to say about me, at times desperate to find a way out of pain or at least a different perspective from the one that felt so “off,” still, I took the “away” path. And then I took a random class called Introduction to Mindfulness for no reason other than that I had a free weekend – “mindfulness,” a word that had no meaning to me, with a teacher – my now 30+ year teacher – I’d never heard of. And sitting in the room, facing the ocean, on a purple cushion, in my first-ever meditation, I heard, “begin the meditation now.” And was startled. And even though I had no idea what was happening, it was Juan Jimenez’s poem: my boat struck something deep, and I was sitting in the middle of my new life. Bright faith, and when it comes, doubt – even if we weren’t aware it was there – recedes. 

The second wave of faith is “verified” faith. We sit and pay attention to the breath and the mind wanders and then one day, sitting at our desk or with a friend, our attention is steady, our body, settled, the mind is focused and open. And we connect the dots back to our practice. Or, we practice lovingkindness and then one day we’re in terrible traffic and the thought arises, “may you be well,” and it’s directed it to the person who’s just cut us off. Or we’re sitting in a conference room or on Zoom and we realize the others in the room, the ones on the “other” side, aren’t different from us at all. 

Verified faith. And in that moment – maybe just for that moment but somehow we know the moment will arise again – doubt is gone.