This weeks FBA Podcast is a talk was given on a Young Women’ Weekend at Taraloka titled “Faith is Innate, Doubt Acquired.” In this talk Singhamati explores Sangharakshita’s aphorism: Faith is Innate, Doubt Acquired. It looks at questions such as: What is faith? How do you cultivate the three grounds of faith? How is doubt a fetter? How can you dispel doubt?
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Faith Is Innate, Doubt Acquired
(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - Yes, so today I'm going to be talking about this aphorism that Bantis given us. Faith is an eight out acquired. The faces in the sense is essentially in the spiritual life. If we don't have faith, we lose inspiration. It's faith that is the basis for our sustained interest and effort and that's what makes development possible. The face is really important. I'm just going to unpack this aphorism a little bit to start off with. So faith roughly translates as confidence or trust in something or someone, is innate. So it's natural or inborn and doubt, which is our uncertainty, our lack of conviction, our vagueness is acquired. So it's something learnt or developed as a habit or a skill. So the faith, the trust, is natural within us and doubt our uncertainty is something we acquire, something we learn or develop. And Bantis gave us this instruction, but it's not a new instruction in the Buddhist world. So if you look back to the scriptures, you'll see this instruction in the scriptures. Yeah, this kind of reminding us that faith is natural within us and doubt is what we acquire. So one of those, particularly which really struck me, was in the Ratnagueness Amchaiagata, which is a Mahayana text, a primary pyrometal perfection of wisdom, etc. And it starts like this. It starts, "Call as forth as much as you can of love, respect and of faith. Remove the obstructing departments and clear away all your taint. Listen to the perfect wisdom of the gentle pudders thought for the wheel of the world or heroic spirits intended." And in a way, that is saying the same thing, as faith is innate, doubt acquires them. So in that when we're being asked to call forth as much as we can of love, respect and of faith, we're being asked to call for something that is already within us, something that's already there, something that we can contact. In a way, you already love the Dharma, you already respect its proficiency and you already have faith in its effectiveness. You wouldn't be here if you didn't. So it's something that's within you. Whether that feels very German or right now, or whether that feels like really tangible. And yeah, you know what that is, whatever extent you're in contact with that faith in yourself, it is there, yes, it is there. And we need to contact as much as we can of that. We need to contact as much as we can of that love, respect and faith. And in a way, that's receptivity. So that's our receptivity to, is that already being there within us. Yeah, and then when we contact that, we need to remove our obstructing department. We need to remove the doubts that we're acquiring. We need to purify ourselves of our unskillful mental state. And then we can listen to the perfect wisdom of the tendency for this. And then we can really listen. We can really listen with all of ourselves, not just with our ears, but also with our hearts. Yeah, so in this talk, I really just want us to explore what is faith? And what does that mean? That faith is something within us. Yeah, what does that mean? And what are the grounds of faith that we stand on? And how do we develop faith? We're just gonna really look at that, what faith is, and how we can contact that. And then we're also gonna look at doubts. Doubt as a camouflage. Doubt is a fetter. Doubt is a hindrance and how we dispelled out. That's what we're gonna try and do in the next like 45 minutes or something. So what is faith? As Badger Tara said last night, it comes from the root to place one's heart upon, yeah? Or a lifting up of one's heart. Then Buddhism, of course, that means to place one's heart upon the three jewels, place one's heart upon the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. And Sangha Ratchett in the Buddhism as a path of the higher evolution. This is very inspiring, very visionary, quite long, quite about faith. And I've cut it a little bit, but I wanted to share it with you. He says this, he says, faith, not faith in the sense of belief, believing something to be true for which there is no rational evidence, not to even faith as a merely emotional state. Though certainly faith is an emotion. Faith is the response of our total being, not just the head, not even just the heart, but the whole of ourselves, totally responding to something higher, do something beyond, do something transcendental. This is faith. Faith is a giving of ourselves completely and entirely to the transcendental, or the seed of the transcendental. It is the response of what is ultimate in us, the what is ultimate in the universe. The one setting, the other vibrating by its proximity. And for Buddhism, of course, faith means faith in the three jaws because these represent for Buddhism, the highest values of existence. Yes, so faith is the uniting of our hearts, our heads, our emotions, our belief, our total being, and setting that resonating with something higher, the three jaws, the transcendental, that ultimate. Don't know about you, but that feels like quite a big vision. Yeah, and I love it, I love that quote. And I've spent a lot of the last few weeks thinking about, well, what does that mean? You know, when Bantu says, it is the response of what is ultimate in us, the what is ultimate in the universe. So, what does that mean? And I know I resonate with it very strongly, and also, yeah, it feels like a big vision. And I've felt like, oh, I need to kind of try and bring that down to my experience a little bit more, unpack it a little bit. And I was listening to a talk that Subnandi gave on faith. And she says, I think faith isn't something as tidy or conceptual as we think it is. It's just a very deep resonance of something. And I found that just really helpful, actually, because I suppose when I've been writing this talk, I've really felt like, well, what is faith? And I found faith quite an elusive thing to try and get clear about, for myself, what that means, and how to think about how to communicate that, yeah. So, what does it mean to have faith? What does it mean to resonate with the Buddha, with something higher, with something transcendental, with the ultimate? What does that mean? And I suppose it's not actually, the thing is it's not an abstract idea. We're not talking about an abstract idea. We're talking about an actual experience. So the Buddha had an actual experience, where he gained enlightenment, he awakened. He saw things as they really are. So when we're talking about having faith in the Buddha, we're talking about having faith in the experience of enlightenment, in the Buddhist experience. And we're talking about trying to contact that in ourselves. The Bantu, when he's talking about enlightenment, talks about enlightenment, and he talks about natural and artificial ideals, and the ideas found this really helpful. The Bantu says, "A natural ideal is an ideal which takes into consideration the nature of the thing or the person for which it is an ideal. The artificial ideal, on the other hand, does not do this. The artificial ideal imposes itself on the outside in an artificial manner. Enlightenment is a natural ideal. It is an ideal that corresponds to one's nature and to one's needs. The qualities that constitute enlightenment are, in fact, already found in one, in German or form. I've found this really helpful because it's like, it takes, we're having faith in the Buddha, but then we're having faith in the Buddha's experience of enlightenment, and then Bantu is saying, and then enlightenment is a natural ideal, the qualities of which are already German or within you. So I thought, ah, so we're having faith in something that's already German or within, or within you. So what is that? What are the qualities of enlightenment or qualities of the Buddha which I resonate with? What are those qualities? So if we're resonating with what's ultimate in us, with what's ultimate in the universe, we're talking about resonating with the qualities in us that are also in the Buddhas, yeah? And of course, they're in us in a German or form, and they're in the Buddhas in a fully awakened form, yeah? So that's the resonance. But what are those qualities? I was thinking to me, well, what are those qualities? What is it about the Buddhas and those qualities that are German and me that I'm trying to develop? I had quite a lot of ideas of different qualities. And this morning, just doing the metabar of now, I was really struck, well, met is this one, met is one of those qualities. Something about love for me, I'm being thread of my practice, being around how do I contact more love for myself and more love for others? How do I express more love for myself and others unconditionally? So that's what we're doing in the metabar of now. And so that's what I'm doing in my community, and that's what I'm doing in all of my relationships in my life, and hopefully that is just what I'm doing with my life, actually, learning to love myself and others more deeply, definitely my myth. And I was also thinking about the qualities of the Buddha in terms of the Buddha as a lion, 'cause obviously seeing a Matty, which is my name, seeing how it's lion and Matty is minded. So, being given this name, which is all about being lion-minded, which is all about the lion, the Buddha as a lion, the Buddha as this animal that rules the Dharma and is willing to speak the truth and speak the Dharma. And I thought, "Oh, there's qualities in that as well." That obviously my preceptor saw is German lion-made, that are fully awakened in the Buddha. The space is worth all of us, just really, really concentrate in this weekend. Well, what are those qualities that are German lion-like you that are fully awakened in the Buddha? So what can you have faith in that you're developing in yourself, that are fully awakened in the Buddha? Now, I'm gonna ask lots of questions during this talk, and they're all written down on the handouts. So, don't worry too much if you're not lying them down, or if you want to, that's funny. So, I was thinking about faith, that is resonance between, yeah, what is German lion-made and what is fully developed in the Buddhas. So, thinking, I've been thinking a lot about that and thinking, well, what happens if my emphasis is all on, okay, well, these qualities, I just want to be more kind and content and still and generous. And I'm just gonna focus all my energies just on that. Not gonna pay too much attention to the Buddhas, I'm just gonna develop those qualities in myself. What happens? And I think what I realized was, well, if that was the case, it would just be a bit limited. It's like I'd just be here practicing to be a nicer person. You see, you have this analogy in the Buddhist life of, am I just polishing the wheel, or am I trying to get off the wheel? And it's a bit like, if you're just developing those qualities in yourself to become more kind or generous, well, are you just becoming a nicer person, are you just polishing the wheel? And it's almost like we need the Buddhas, we need the mystery of what they've attained, that we want to attain, so it's fully awakened in them and German and us. The help us see, ah, we want to get off the wheel as well as something else. It's not just about being a nicer person and developing these nice qualities in ourselves. But if my emphasis is just on the Buddhas, and aren't they great, then I lose something in myself. I lose contact with my own potentiality. And I think, ah, it's on a table, do my, where's my faith? Have I got any, what am I doing here? Am I a Buddhist, what does that mean? It's all just too big, it's a bit untangible. I lose my own sense of my own reference points in my practice, yeah? But to me, we need both these poles when we're talking about faith. We need to be clear about faith in ourselves and faith in the Buddhas and the resonance between the two. And the other thing I get tripped up on when I'm thinking about faith, though I spent quite a lot of time thinking about why do I not relate to faith. And the other thing that I just wanted to talk a little bit about is, well again, it's about this balance of the Buddhas and me. 'Cause we have these Buddhas, the Buddha, and the ideal of the Buddha, and the golden light of the Buddha. So if you're into traditional terms when we contemplate the Buddha, we traditionally contemplate the Buddha bathing us in golden light, being surrounded by golden light. Just in a way, just a visual manifestation of, yeah, coming into contact with his goldenness, his kindness, all his qualities, his wisdom, his compassion. There we are, we've been bathing the golden light. I don't know about you, and I love that. But my practice is also a bit more messy than that, yeah? So I love being bathed in the golden light, and I can find that really helpful, just to open up to that space and that potential. And also, well, the jewel is also in the dungheap of our lives, yeah? So when the Buddha talks about lotuses growing, you have this image of lotuses growing out of the mud, and they grow out of the mud. They have these beautiful lotus flowers, but they grow out of the mud. And it's like sometimes, I'm more in contact with my mud, than I am the lotus. And then if I'm in just in contact with the mud, do I lose faith? Because I think faith is just about the golden light. Faith is just about the lotus. So faith isn't just about the lotus or the golden light. Faith is also the process of arising out of the mud. Now I'm gonna share a dream with you, which I had resistance to talking about, but I think it's a good, it's good. So I'll just tell you. So I had this dream man last year, sometime, about six months after I was all turned. I had this dream where I found the jewel in the dungheap. So in this dream, I found a marla in my shit. Yeah? I was in the bath and naked at the time. Anyway, there was a shit and there was a marla. So there I was in this dream, in this bath, naked with the shit and the smile out, not really quite knowing what to do. And the toilet was there and I thought, okay, do I throw the whole thing down the toilet? Do I throw the shit in the marla down the toilet? Or do I keep this marla? And if I keep this marla and everyone says to me, wow, that's beautiful, where did it come from? Can I tell them where it came from? So, and it was just, I felt so embarrassed by the dream, I couldn't even tell anyone for a little while. And then when I went, but I knew it was significant. So when I did tell someone, that's a fantastic dream, isn't it? It's just the jewel in the dungheap. And I found that dream so helpful, 'cause it's like, I've just wanted to throw away all the messy parts of my life. I think, oh, that isn't me going for refuge. That isn't my spiritual life. But it is, yeah, that is where the marla is, actually. And I suppose how that translates in terms of my practice of community is like, you know, there's all the vulnerable parts of me, do they love me, do they like me? Will they like me if I'm angry with them? Can I say what I really think? Will it all be okay? You know, that's all a bit messy. But that is what going for refuge looks like, yeah? That is what faith looks like. Faith looks like having the courage to look at that stuff, yeah? And not just throw it down the toilet and close the lid. Don't know why both are true, yeah? So it's like, faith is me when I'm being with the Buddha, when I'm walking the earth with him, when I'm bathing in his golden light, and faith is also when I'm in the mess, okay? Ooh, and the Buddha. Okay, I'm going to show you a lovely quote from Fazabandi. He says, "I think of Shakimini "and of other enlightened beings, and I reflect. "As they were, so am I. "What they became, so may I become. "They started off as human beings, and so do I. "They started off with weaknesses and imperfections, "and so do I. "They started off with all sorts of limitations, "and so do I, but then look at what they achieve. "They transcended their limitations. "They became Buddha's, they are human. "I am human. "What they achieve, I too can achieve, "is the only I make the effort." Yeah, so faith is all about the Buddhas and us, and what is German in us, and what is actually in there, and us making the effort to realize that what is German in us can be actually in us. So in the survey, Bantu Sangrecht talks about the three grounds of faith. I like this, grounds of faith. We can stand on the ground, can't we? We stand on three different grounds of faith in the Buddha. Yeah, the ground of the intuition, the ground of reason, and the ground of experience. So these are the three grounds of faith that he's standing. And then know your mind, Bantu also discusses the three qualities of faith, cognitive faith, lucid faith, and long faith. So I wanted to talk about both of these lists, and what I've done is kind of put them together a little bit. Not traditional, I know, but it's kind of always business. So you get this kind of more intellectual side of faith, which is like the ground of reason, and the cognitive qualities. And then you get this more emotional side of faith, which is our intuitive ground of faith, or the longing or the looted aspect of faith. And then you get our experience. I'm just gonna talk you through those three aspects of faith. So if we start with this intellectual side of faith, so yeah, that's the ground of reason. But this is having faith in the teachings and the life of the Buddha, and using that life story of the Buddha as a way of providing evidence and a kind of rational proof that the Buddha achieves in awakening or enlightenment. And when we know those, we can allow those life stories of the Buddha to really deepen our faith. That he achieves something that we want to receive. We can have faith in that. So we can have faith in Buddhism through knowing the life story of the Buddha. And yeah, this is their cognitive aspect of faith. So that's a deep conviction of what is real and understanding of three principles. Yep. So yeah, this kind of aspect of faith is all around, knowing the life story of the Buddha or his disciples, and really using those stories as a ground for our faith. And also knowing the teachings of the Buddha, the principles, and using those as a ground of our faith. And when I was thinking about that, I was thinking, okay, so how do I do that? How do I stand on this ground of faith? And I think I can be very inspired by the stories of the Buddha, especially the female disciples of the Buddha. And it's like I can relate to those in the way that I relate to my own life. And I'd really encourage them to read some of those stories of the disciples, and especially female disciples if you don't know them. Because they just help me see that what we're working with is archetypal, or historical. It's been through, you know, women through the years, through the decades have worked with the same emotional states. I can't remember which story it is or sounds, but there's this story where this Buddha says, you have cried an ocean of tears in all your lifetimes. It's like, and you've done that. You don't need to keep doing that. And something about that I just really resonated with, I'd really recommend them. And using those stories as well as just stories for ourselves. And just knowing what teaching to be really resonated with. So when I was thinking about this, I was thinking about the first retreat I ever did. And actually the turning point, which for me on that retreat, was a teaching. It was hearing a teaching. So first retreat I ever did was in India, and it was a 10-day silent retreat. And every day we had an hour's Dharma talk that was a tape talk that we listened to. And one day that I've still got the book of the tape talks written up. And I heard this little phrase in the book, but it wasn't in the talk, and it really struck me. It said, "The source of the process of suffering, "the deepest cause is ignorance. "From ignorance starts a chain of events "by which one generates mountains of misery for oneself. "If ignorance can be eradicated, "suffering will be eradicated. "When one is aware of all that one experiences "of every sensation, pleasant or painful, "but does not react, "does not tie new knots of craving and aversion, "does not create misery for oneself." I was just really struck by that. I had this very strong sense hearing that talk on the retreat, that I create my own suffering, and I create suffering for other people, and that I can stop doing that. I can stop doing that if I stop trying those knots of craving and aversion. And I just really wanted to do that, actually. It was like I heard that the teaching went right in and there was no turning back, yeah. That was definitely my experience. And I wondered for all of you, there hasn't been one story of the Buddha, or one time you've heard a particular teaching, that's gone right in, that you stand on that is your ground of faith in intellectual sense, yeah. So I just invite you all to really reflect on the stories and teachings of the Buddha that you know, and just where you feel that conviction of, ah, yes, that is true. So identify some of those stories in yourself and allow them to be a ground of faith that you stand on. Allow them to really be a ground of faith. And if you're not sure for yourself what those stories are, then open up the books with the stories of the Buddha, to be speak of the female disciples, of the teachings of the Dharma. Find what it is that touches you in the teaching. There will be something, 'cause you didn't be here if there wasn't. And yeah, just really use that. Use that to be a ground of faith that you stand on. Yeah, so then faith has this emotional, intuitive, longing, lucid aspect. So, um, yeah, this intuitive ground of faith, it arises out of the depths of our hearts. It is an affinity between his actual and our potential Buddha head. And we're back to that, that feeling in us, this affinity between our potential and his actual Buddha head. So what does your heart feel in affinity with? And then faith has this lucid aspect that's a lucidity as to what has value. Lucidity is not a word I resonate those times with. I looked it up, kind of means shining brightness. Charity, fearness, something that's lucid. And then another way this lucid faith can be thought about is an intense fondness for the pure qualities of the three doors. So the kind of question that relates to this, this aspect of faith is what do you love? What do you really love about the three doors? Well, what is that intense fondness for you? And then you have the longing faith, a longing for what is possible. Lovely. Yeah, the profound desire and aspiration to attain and realize what is good. Ask yourself, what do you long for? Why are you here? What do you long for? Great, great question. It's a really allow yourself just to dwell on those questions. And again, it's just really trying to find how do you stand on this ground of faith? Having clarity about what you feel affinity with, what you love, what your intuition is, what you long for. And just knowing what those things are and knowing how you stand in this ground of faith. And letting that feed your life, letting that feed your inspiration to practice. Traditionally, we talk about developing this emotional aspects of faith in our practice in different ways. But in a way, the intellectual aspect, perhaps we developed through study and study in these pictures, hopefully together. And this emotional aspect, we talk about developing primarily through pooja, yeah? The Bante talks about pooja as a way of finding emotional equivalents for our intellectual understanding, yeah? So we're doing pooja as a way of, yeah, developing that emotional feeling and that emotional connection to the bidders and why we're here. And certainly that's for me taking time, a lot of time. When I first came across the tree-vanna community and started practicing, I went to pooja's. I found it quite hard to connect to them. But now, over the years of doing them and finding my own ways in, exploring what they mean and what the symbolism of the pooja's are. I definitely feel like pooja is a way of me finding that emotional equivalent. I don't know about you, but when we were in the dedication ceremony last night, I suddenly thought, oh, yeah, this is one here. This is, this is faith and I'm with the bidders. And it kind of all made a bit more sense to me somehow in that context because I was in touch with the emotional aspect of faith through that rhythm. So, yeah, pooja and devotional practices, is this way that we can develop this emotional aspect with faith. And we can also develop this emotional aspect of faith through contemplating the bidders. Yeah, contemplating the form of the Buddha or Bodhisattvas, the way they look. They're full of symbolism, aren't they? You know, the Buddha touching holding the bowl, smiling and passionately, horror, and reaching out, leg reaching out, leg in. Then what's it going to do? It's like they're full of symbols. Those, the Buddha's and Bodhisattvas are full of symbols and contemplating those symbols in them and how we resonate with them in ourselves. Another ways that we can develop this emotional aspect and emotional connection with the bidders. And one of my favorite readings is from the Sita Napata and it's from the way to the beyond and it's otherwise known as pinky as praises and it's where pinky is talking about here's the relationship of being with the Buddha. And it goes like this. There is no moment for me, however small, that is spent away from Gautama, from this universe of wisdom. This world of understanding, this teaching, this teacher whose teachings is the way things are, instant, immediate, and visible all around, eroding desire without harmful side effects with nothing else quite like it anyway in the world. "You see," said Pindia, "with constant and careful vigilance, it is possible for me to see him with my mind as clearly as with my eyes, in night as well as day. And since I spent my night reviewing him, there is not to my mind a single moment spent away from him." So in a way that's where we can all aspire to. We can all aspire to being able to hold the Buddha in our mind and hearts in every moment and to have this sense of being with the Buddha in our life. And I was quite a strong experience of that, being with the Buddha, when I was on my ordination retreat, in particular context, being on a three month ordination retreat. And I hope that if you have an ordained that you will get the opportunity to do that. But yeah, this very strong sense of just being with the Buddha, being with the Buddha walking the earth, that Akashivana, being with the Buddha, meditating, being with the Buddha, I was wearing robes, I chose to wear robes from the retreat, this sense of the cycle-ship of being the daughter of the Buddha. I was learning the Dharma part of my heart on the retreat, a sense of the Buddha and his word in my being. This is through meditation, through text, through just being. It was like this sense of dwelling in that and being with the Buddha. It's been really interesting for me coming out of those, that context of the three months retreat and then trying to explore and translate, well, what does it mean to be with the Buddha right here, right now, in genes and a teacher, what does that mean? And that's a process. And I'm leading a retreat later on, only a year on that, a whole week, exploring how to be with the Buddha. So maybe you'll come and we can explore it together. But it's, you know, just this sense of just really, how do we be with the Buddha? What does that mean to us? - When I was thinking about this kind of emotional and the more intellectual sides of faith, I was thinking, ah, I wondered for some of us whether we resonate more strongly with one than the other. And maybe you're someone that easily relates to the cognitive or to reason or to the teaching. And maybe you're someone who resonates more with this emotional aspect, this emotional, intuitive, longing, lucid aspect of faith. So maybe it's worth just identifying whether you do resonate more strongly with one than the other. And if you do, whether it would merit developing the other ground a bit more. But if you're standing really well in the ground of reason, what you need to do to stand a bit more in the ground of intuition. So the last ground of faith that Banti talks about is experience. Yeah, so that's our experience. That's how we've changed. Yeah, so that's standing on the ground of faith that we know that through practicing the Dharma, we have changed. Again, I just encourage all of us to be in contact with this is an area in which I've really changed. And I've changed because I've been practicing the Dharma. And I use that as a real ground of faith. I can have faith in the Buddha and his teaching because I know that I've changed through practice. Yeah, so let's spend some time just really reflecting on how we've changed through our Buddhist practice. And, yeah, really allow that to be a ground of faith fast. Okay, so now I'm going to talk a bit about doubt. That's faith. It's a doubt appears in the Buddha's teaching in different ways. It appears as a theta, as a bond. It appears as a hindrance. Yeah, a hindrance to a clear mind. And Bante also talks about it as a camouflage. In terms of the fetters, so the fetters are what bind us. So there's 10 fetters here that bind us. And doubt is the second fetter. And Bante talks about the fetter of doubt as also as a fetter of vagueness. Yeah, so in the taste of freedom, he talks about this fetter of vagueness, where we don't want to commit ourselves to things. And in a way, the spiritual life is difficult, isn't it? Then because it's difficult, we tend to shrink back. We want to keep our options open. So we stay vague. Yeah, we stay vague. Because if we get clear that this is really important, then we have to act. So we stay vague. We stay in doubt. And this is one of, again, one of my favorite quotes. If you keep your options open indefinitely, you avoid having to do anything. Doubt is a kind of camouflage. If you don't take up a clear position, no one can attack you. You are beyond criticism, or rather you haven't yet reached a point where you can be criticized. You might not be certain, but at least you can never be wrong. And this is a comfortable position or a non-position to be in. Once you eliminate doubt, you have to act upon your conviction. You are obliged to admit to your own shortcomings. You have to say, well, I'm just lazy, or I'm afraid. You know where you stand, you aren't pretending. Doubt is essentially resistant to the positive, forward-mute, looking spirit of the path. As soon as you are convinced that Buddha was enlightened, you have to take what he said seriously enough, actually, to do something about it. If, on the other hand, you give yourself the luxury of doubting whether the Buddha was really enlightened at all, or at least postponing the committing yourself to a view until you are really sure, you don't need to take his teaching so seriously, and best of all, you don't need to do anything about it. The ideal way to free yourself on doubt is just to clarify your thinking. Not necessarily in a bookish or abstract way, but simply by reflecting on what you know of the spiritual path. So, do we give ourselves the luxury of doubt? In order that we can just take a comfortable position, or are we willing to clarify our thinking? But what do we have invested in doubt? What do we have invested in doubt, in staying vague? What are we camouflaging ourselves from? What stops us really committing and being clear? So, in order to dispel doubt, in order to not be vague, we need to reflect on what we know of the spiritual path. We need to be willing to think clearly. Yes, the doubt isn't about not asking questions. So, in a way, in order to clarify what we know of the spiritual life, we have to ask questions. Yes, the doubt that there's a difference between doubt and questioning. And maybe we have to get clear for ourselves if we know what the difference between those two is. When I was thinking about that a bit this morning, I was thinking, I'm sure there's a quote somewhere, although I have no idea where it's from, where someone wise wants their turn, if not, I've just made it up. An unexamined life is an unlived life. So, we have to question things, yes, because we have to question things in order to really examine our lives and to really be living our lives. Otherwise, we're just in ignorance, haven't we? The doubt really isn't about not asking questions. No, I'm not asking questions because we're not asking questions. I'm not asking questions, I'm not asking questions, I'm not asking questions. I'm not asking questions, I'm not asking questions, I'm not asking questions. I'm not asking questions, I'm not asking questions, I'm not asking questions. But at the same time, we need to get clear, don't we? We need to get clear about what we really care about. We need to get clear about what those qualities are that are generally in us, that we're developing. We need to get clear about what those grounds of faith are for us. Yeah, intuition, reason, it's doing. We need to get clear. And I was thinking about doubt as a hindrance and the practice of mindfulness. So, suppose another way of thinking about doubt is about thinking about Mara. So, I've spent most people have heard of Mara. Mara, the evil one who comes to the Buddha, distracts him from his quest to gain enlightenment. So, in a way, Mara stands for all those forces of greed, hatred, and delusion, standing in the way of realizing what is true. So, Mara, whenever we make a step forward on the spiritual life, Mara is there. So, whenever I stand up to give a talk, Mara is there. Mara normally says, "Who are you to be doing that?" "Who are you to be doing that?" That's his best line when it comes to me, leading anything. And in a way, I always have to say, "Well, who am I not to be, actually?" And I suppose it's just knowing for ourselves what flavor Mara takes in our experience. So, how does Mara manifest this doubt in your experience? What is your best line? What's Mara's best line in your mind, in terms of doubt? So, this is by Marianne Williamson. It says, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." So, that's our doubts. It's not our doubts, our deepest fear, or our doubts. And in a way, how can we liberate ourselves from doubts? How can we stop acquiring doubts so that we can really allow ourselves to shine? And really allow ourselves to contact what is brilliant within us. So, what gets in the way? What do we have invested in doubt? I'll give this one up. So, yes, so we're just going to spend the rest of the weekend exploring this. So, what is faith for you? What, how do you contact faith? Is something natural within you? Is something German or within you? What are the grounds of faith for you? What do you stand in? This intuitive faith, reason, experience. What is that for you? So, what is ultimate in you? That's resonating with what's ultimate in the universe. That's really spent some time contacting that, contacting faith. And what that means for us. And realizing that our doubt is acquired, and that we need to remove all those obstructing departments. So, how does doubt manifest for us? What does Mara whisper in our ear? What if we got invested in listening to those storylines? What are we camouflaging ourselves from? What stops us listening? And how do you dispel your doubt? We're going to finish with one more come in. Good, the way it is by William Stafford. There's a thread that you follow. It goes amongst things that change, but it doesn't change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread, but it's hard for others to see. While you hold it, you can't get lost. Prior to these happen, people get hurt or die, and you suffer and get old. Nothing you can do can stop times unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread. But let's find our thread. We hope you enjoy the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]