Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Doubt from Faith,and#8221; takes us into some crazy stuff as we hit koan country! In this track, Padmavajra explores materialist versus religious world views, spiritual life without God and the dialectic between Great Faith and Great Doubt. Uncompromising stuff towards a more profound level of awareness and#8211; steer to the deep!
FBA Dharmabyte from the full talk, and#8220;Great Doubt,and#8221;, featured in this Saturdayand#8217;s full podcast.
[music] Dharma Vites 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. [music] Anyway, so we're not talking about that state of chronic confusion, that sort of shilly shally. It doesn't matter about whether you become a Buddhist or not, but really make sure you do something with your life. What we're talking about, the doubt that Chaochu and his disciples create, because they all create it, it's a community, it's a communication. That doubt arises out of a deep commitment to spiritual life, to Buddhist life. Born of a genuine faith and commitment. And this faith, of course, is not belief, it's not dramatic adherence. This faith is an intuition, a sense, even a kind of insight and a vision of what is possible. A vision of Buddha nature, even. You sense that there is something profound and mysterious to discover, to unfold, to become, to be. And so you commit yourself to the path of practice. And you keep going, even when you're not in contact with that initial vision. You keep going, you keep faith with it. But this very faith, this very practice generates doubt in the sense of a deep questioning of your life and of your experience. In fact, this kind of deep questioning, this kind of great doubt, is implicit in your faith. Maybe sometimes it will even come before faith in some people. True doubt can sort of give rise to faith, as well as being an expression of your faith. So it can engender it, engender your faith, and express it as well, being an expression of it. So discussing faith and doubt like this, we're not just having an interesting look into ancient Chinese Buddhism. We're talking about the actual dynamics of spiritual life. So let's try to relate it to our experience. Maybe we don't have the extraordinarily intense and ascetic life of Chaltu and his followers. But maybe we don't, we don't. But what about us? What about our faith and our doubt? And so think about this. I remember the time in my early teens, 13 or 14, maybe 15, that terribly painful, confusing time. You know, when it's all happening, it's all kicking off at that time. Isn't all those chemicals swirling around, all that kind of post puberty stuff? And you don't know who or what you are. And I remember a time during this where I had the first stirrings of a real doubt. Not a doubt in the sense of a lack of commitment, but a questioning of life, a deep questioning. Not that deep, of course, because I was so confused. But something was going on. I was brought up a Christian, a good old C of E, high church. So it was church every Sunday, sometimes twice. I was in the choir. I served at Holy Communion. I must have looked very sweet. Not. But I did have a big question. God, Christ, I never really kind of went along with them, really. They just weren't apparent. I mean, this creator of the universe and this Savior, they just weren't apparent to me. It's not that I had kind of anything against them, but they just didn't seem to be around. They weren't there. I didn't feel they were there. So surely then life is just physical, materialistic. That's all there is. There's nothing spiritual. It's just stuff. There's nothing deeper, nothing higher, no purpose. But I wasn't convinced by that either, that kind of materialistic outlook, because I did have some sense, maybe some romantic sense, or something deeper. I knew I didn't want to follow convention for an early age. I knew I didn't want a regular job. I knew I didn't want to get married and all that. But that age, spiritual religion, was identified with God, the Creator. So I was in a real conflict between a materialistic world view, if you like, and a religious world view. I remember we had a very good religious knowledge teacher at the school I went to, and he used to organize these class debates on things like the existence of cotton, things like that. I could argue for both with equal gusto, you know, even in, you know, I could take both sides, and one day I'd be definitely religious, and another totally anti-religion. There's just physical existence. It was a real issue amidst the maelstrom of post puberty. But the thing is that questioning, that doubt got me searching, got me looking, got me longing. I experienced openings usually to do with listening to music, usually listening to John Coltrane and people like that. And that got me into reading and exploring in those ways, a kind of faith. An intuition was developing, eventually got me to Buddhism, to the Dharma, reading Lama Govinda's books. And I was just amazed because he was religion, he was spiritual life without God, a rich, deep, thorough spiritual life that you could live, that you could internalize without a God capping it all, putting the mockers on everything. And there was an immediate connection when I got, when I started to read about Buddhism. Eventually, of course, I devoted my life to Buddhism, because nothing else seemed to be worth a candle worth doing. And, you know, I lived happily ever after, and everything went smoothly. I sailed down the white path to Nirvana. I wish. And I'm sure my story, my early story, has resonances with yours, you know, discovering Buddhism. Yes, yes, certainty. That's a laugh. But, of course, this doubt doesn't go away. That deep questioning doesn't leave, it can't leave. The dialectic between faith and doubt, in fact, is what spiritual practice is all about. In fact, it's important to generate the dialectic, the tension between faith and doubt. In fact, in Zen tradition, they say there are three elements that are needed. Great faith, great determination arising from the great faith, great doubt, great faith, great determination, great doubt. These interact, and they lead to great death, which leads to great awakening. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebutestaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [music] [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
