FAITH: RADICAL EXPRESSION
May 16, 2010 Spirit of Life UU Church, St. Cloud

By Rev. Myo-O Marilyn Habermas-Scher

Introduction:
I did not grow up with a sense of underlying faith. There was a tone of stress and pressure in our home; there was a religious tradition and some practice, but I did not have the experience of faith as Julian of Norwich expressed it, “All will be well and all manner of things will be well.” I did feel something when I chanted in Hebrew, which I liked. And whatever that was that I felt created openness to hearing wisdom throughout my life.

Thus when in the mid 1970’s I heard Katagiri roshi say, “Buddhist faith is: You just grab onto the tree of faith,” I had no idea whatsoever about what he meant. After his talk I timidly raised my hand and asked, “How do you do that?” He looked right at me and said, “You just do it.” I must have looked confused and crestfallen because then he softened his tone and said some things that I no longer recall. However I do remember his true answer, “You just do it.”

What does this mean?

Reflecting on my own childhood faith formation I realize that something was there, and that something was right action. It was not love; it was not peace. Our being alive and doing ethical action was some response to the question of meaning and sustenance. I realize today that this was not nothing, and that it’s quite close to Zen, to what K-r was saying to me.

I think that the basis of what Julian of Norwich, K-r and my family background had to say about faith was actually quite similar-if; I investigate the underlying wisdom thoroughly.

I. Qualities of Faith
The word for faith in Pali (the language in which the Dharma was first taught) is saddha. This means, “to place your heart upon”, suggesting trust or confidence. When we have confidence in what we are doing, we have energy; our minds are more open and receptive. Faith is a gateway because it acts as spark, inspiring us to practice and then later, it sustains our continuing practice and intention to live wisely in compassion and kindness.

We have faith in the path we are on, in the possibility of our own awakening. It is not something fixed or solid. When we see an accomplished spiritual person, we may feel inspired to try to see something for ourselves. I felt so when I first heard K-r speak. I saw something I had not known before. I felt a resonance within me and I was inspired to look into it myself.

When we are inspired, we have a sense of some possibility we call this “bright faith”. Perhaps our hearts have been opened by a certain person or situation. The energy of bright faith opens the gate for us, but it takes our own practice and our own experience to enter the deeper level of faith that is called, “verified faith”.

This is a more mature faith that has become settled in our own understanding of the truth. Our confidence comes from ourselves and from our own understanding. We have our own fuel that moves us to go deeper in our understanding. When we see what’s possible we get some energy and some joy in this possibility. The path is no longer an “idea”. It has become embodied in us.

This faith engenders and is fed by the following seven factors of enlightenment:

Mindfulness (sati)
Keen investigation of the dhamma (dhammavicaya) [3]
Energy/Effort (viriya)
Rapture or happiness (piti)
Tranquility (passaddhi)
Concentration (samadhi)
Equanimity (upekkha)

II. Mature Faith Based in Wisdom (prajna)
Susan shared Rev. Shelley’s talk with me. I really enjoyed it. I appreciated how she laid out the mutually supportive aspects of faith. She said that is was consoling and encouraging as well as sober and buoyant. She might have been pointing out some of the seven factures of enlightenment in fact!

Earlier I said that Julian, K-r and my family heritage of faith actually had a common basis. Now I’d like to look into that basis a bit. What is that? I think the basis is profound wisdom. In Julian’s case and K-r’s case the wisdom had been cultivated and realized. In my personal history, the wisdom was held by the forms, so it was passed down, following the ancient injunction, “L’dor V’dor”, “generation to generation”, to do so, but it was unrealized, dormant.

What is this wisdom?

Dogen zenji, famous Japanese Zen 13th century Zen master, said,

“On the great road of Buddha ancestors there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off. Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana, there is not a moment’s gap; continuous practice is unstained, not forced by you or others. The power of this continuous practice confirms you as well as others. It means your practice affects the entire earth and the entire sky in the ten directions. Although not noticed by others of by yourself, it is so.”

This is radical. It means that this very moment, fully interconnected with all life, time and space, is the complete expression of alive faith itself. It is enlightenment itself- ungraspable by human thinking, but all beings can realize it.

“Faith hold us”, wrote Rev. Shelley. Faith holds wisdom. Wisdom illuminates faith.

In Buddhist practice wisdom is insight into the true nature of reality. We say that true nature is “non-dual”. It is not two; it is not this and that, you and me, subject and object. It is not constructed in the way we think at first glance. It is actually unconstructed, unmediated, One fabric. If this is deeply known, felt and realized, one can meaningfully say, “All will be well and all manner of things will be well,” and have it resonate helpfully for others. This must be so because we are still repeating what Julian said hundreds of years ago.

This is a description of wisdom from a high Tibetan text quote by Joseph Goldstein in The Experience of Insight:

There being really no duality, pluralism in untrue. Until duality is transcended and at-one-ment realized, enlightenment cannot be attained. The whole samsara and nirvana as an inseparable unity are one’s mind.

Although the One Mind is, it has no existence.

One’s mind is transparent without quality. Being void of quality, it is comparable to a cloudless sky. It is the state of mind transcendent over all duality, which brings liberation. Again and again, look within thine own mind.

He also says:
When the Dharma is deeply understood it becomes clear that the essence of all practices leading to freedom is the same; that is, developing a mind that does not cling to anything at all. No preference. No distinctions. No judgments. No clinging. No condemning. The practice is the same whether it is expressed through the words of the Sixth Zen Patriarch in China, or the Indian, Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha.

And I would add, it is the same whether expressed by Julian of Norwich,
K-r, or the ancient Hebrew I learned as a child.

There is a famous Zen text called Hsin Hsin Ming, Verses on the Faith Mind by Seng T’san, Third Zen Ancestor. He agrees with the wisdom we have already heard. Listen:

[Read p. 127 in The Eye Never Sleeps; marked verses]

This faith - in “no-thing”, in the realization of the non-dual has the quality of trust and courage, to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into activity, into investigation, into life. The function of non-duality is compassion.

Seng T’san also says, “To live in this faith is the road to non-duality because the nondual is one with the trusting mind.”

So in Zen practice we don’t speak about having faith in something, but as all the examples suggest, faith is the very fact of reality itself. Dogen zenji says, “Without attaining Buddhahood, the faith won’t manifest. Where the faith manifests, Buddha’s and Patriarchs manifest.” The Nirvana Sutra states, “Great faith is no other than Buddha nature.” The very nature of existence and all of the phenomenal world are none other than the faith mind.

This is the worldview of Zen regarding faith.

III. Play
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the function of play in Zen. The many Zen teaching stories or koans are deep, sneaky play. Zen is akin to improvisation in art. Learning the art of trusting our wholehearted response is integral to Zen training.

Here are two stories, famous stories:

1. Chao-chou’s Dog

A monk asked Chao-chou, “Has the dog Buddha Nature or not?”
Caho-chou said, ‘Mu”.

2. Nan-ch’uan Kills the Cat

[Read p. 94 from the Mumonkan]

If one of the monks had been able to just act, respond, go beyond thinking, the cat would have been saved. This is faith too.

When we come forward fully, beyond our ideas, we save the cat, ourselves and everyone; this is the play of the dharma. It is joyful, free and untrammeled.

Conclusion:
Rumi says, “Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field, I’ll meet you there.”

It is in the field of realization where the tree of faith is grasped. Faith is activity based on realization.

We just do it.