Faith, Christian and Buddhist. And One More Step

Changsha sent a student of the intimate to ask Master Hui, “What about before you saw Nanquan?”

Hui simply sat still for a little while.

“What about after seeing him?”

“Nothing special.”

The student returned and told Changsha what had transpired.

Changsha observed, “The enlightened person sits on the top of a hundred-foot pole; She has entered the way but is not yet genuine. She must take a step from the top of the pole, And worlds in the ten directions will be her complete body.”

The student asked, “How shall I step from the top of a hundred-foot pole?”

“Mountains of Lang; waters of Li.”

The student said, “I don’t understand.”

The master concluded, “Four seas and five lakes are all under the reign of the monarch.”

From The Book of Serenity, Case 79

Some time ago, a few years actually, I was involved in a listserv conversation turning on faith. The participants were largely dually identified as Buddhists who had an interest in Unitarian Universalism, or, mostly Unitarian Universalists with an interest in Buddhism. A crowd I like. For the most part.

I mainly lurked.

They were discussing faith, and particularly faith within Buddhism.

Faith.

That thread immediately fired off a memory of my asking Jiyu Kennett Roshi, oh, maybe a hundred years ago, just exactly how much faith did I have to have to become a Zen student? As I had already been sitting for a year or two, I’m not sure what my motive was. Maybe I was asking how much faith I needed to continue? I’m sure the three or so times Jesus rebuked his followers with the words “oh ye of little faith,” couldn’t have been far from my mind…

She suggested to practice Zen one probably needed to believe there was a reasonable chance it would be better than not practicing Zen.

I was relieved as that level of faith only stretched my credulity a bit…

This was a crowd who were ready to slice and dice that word faith. For at least one the word had become so contaminated by the way it seems most Christians use the word, that is to stand for belief in something in spite of any lack of convincing evidence, that it should have no place in Buddhist thought, conservative or liberal.

Lurking, as I was, I offered nothing. But, I personally would have demurred.

It was at seminary that I was schooled to use the word “belief” for that “ability to believe what you know ain’t so.” While faith might best be reserved as confidence or trust. Faith as something dynamic, a verb, as it were: so, faith really is faithing… Engage, reflect, re-engage.

For me Christian faith at its best is that.

My UU Buddhist friends were perhaps a bit too suspicious for their own good. Perhaps.

And it probably is something like that same dynamic sense that led many translators to use “faith” for the Buddhist term shraddha, which is usually understood to mean confidence or trust.

Faith.

The Buddhist priest and scholar Jeff Wilson notes:

“Virtually all Buddhists throughout history and the vast majority of those Buddhists living today undertook Buddhism as a system of faith, believing in multiple supernatural helping beings, invisible forces such as karma, the efficacy of prayer, life after death (and before birth!), magical powers, the sacredness of scripture, and putting their trust for their own salvation from suffering in the truth statements and attendant practices of Buddhism as a ecclesiastical and religious institution. This is true for Buddhists in all sects throughout every culture and time period in Asia. Clearly, faith is an integral part of ‘Buddhism.'”

Which would suggest Buddhists have both kinds of faith as do Christians.

(And how many others? I suggest the list is long…)

Which brings me back ’round to the koan I cited at the top of this reflection. Chosha was one of that herd of rare creatures nurtured by Nanquan, a dragon with a poisoned bite, it there ever were one. A hero as well as an ancestor…

Here he led the inquirer down a rosy path, pushing him to speak of his state before and after awakening.

And if anything pivots on that magic word faith, it has to be such a moment in our lives when we step away from our preconceived notions into the boundless realm.

Here belief must be left behind. Perhaps at one time it helped.  The things we were taught as children may well have gotten us here. We can even assume so.

But as some point we need to let go of those things we were told.

Then there’s faith. The dynamic and engaged thing. A much better thing.

But it, too, takes us to a point, where we need allow something else. We may well find a place where even our most refined reflections are now standing in the way. After we’ve studied the sacred texts down to the bottom, after we’ve mastered the disciplines of inquiry, and presence, then what?

Here we need to let go.

Here we find the great depths of samadhi. All the wisdom of one pointedness. A kind of awakening, this. It takes us right to the top of that hundred foot pole. It gives us the clear gaze. We can see a hundred lifetimes away.

And yet. Not even this.

Instead, one more step.

Sometimes this next is called shinjin. Another term sometimes translated as “faith.”

Here Zen pushes us one more step: after our taste of awakening, then what? After we’ve come to let self and other fall away, then what?

After belief falls away?

After faith falls away?

What does it mean to step away from the hundred foot pole?

Isn’t that one more instance of faith? Isn’t that the call of my seminary professors, to engage, then assess, then engage again? But now the engagement is no longer in our hands alone. It’s putting our burden down.

It’s a step into that place where our whole body is revealed. Faith, perhaps. Shinjin.

Robert Frost had something to say on the subject, it seems.

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are
Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.
And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole
And, tired of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.

Here, perhaps faith, but not mine, not yours.

Just faithing. No longer a lovely pointing. Faithing.

The awakened heart.