From the talk titled and#8220;Amitabhaand#8221;, we bring you todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Faith as Metta.and#8221; Saddhaloka introduces us to Amitabha, the red Buddha of the West who represents and inspires the highest love of alland#8230;
Talk given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre, winter retreat, 1997
[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] So I want to just say a bit at this point about faith and the Buddhism of faith, and just faith in the spiritual life. So it's sometimes been said that if we think in terms of metta, then when metta is directed towards those who suffer, it becomes compassion. When it's directed towards those who are happy, who are well, it becomes rejoicing in merit. When it's directed towards the ideal, it becomes faith. So where this strong emotional response to the highest is directed towards, well when a strong emotional response is directed towards our ideals, towards the highest in us, towards that highest potential in us, we have faith. But I think faith is a spiritual faculty, that we often underestimate, that we just don't take very seriously in ourselves. We don't really recognise in ourselves. We just don't think of ourselves as belonging to a culture where faith is really that appropriate. We feel the need to be questioning and skeptical, and we experience ourselves often as being more intellectual and so on. And I think we often just don't recognise the faith that is there. And this brings me to a point that I often find myself talking about in discussion group, study groups these days, ongoing for refugee dreams, and this is the distinction between depth and intensity. Now I think we often confuse the two. We actually overlook depth and look for intensity. So with faith, we actually often overlook a quiet depth that can be there in us. It's actually directing our lives, motivating our lives. We just don't actually take it seriously because we're looking for a sort of intensity. We're looking for sort of strongly felt immediate experiences that we consider. You know, actually really strong devotional feelings are sort of an immediately felt warm glow that we can actually get hold of as it were. And we don't take seriously a lot that's often going on in our lives. Just as a sort of analogy, I remember one standing in Holland on top of a hill. They actually do have a few hills in Holland. And looking out across this huge river flowing down to the sea. It must have been half a mile across this graceless silver grey screen of water with a lot of boats and so on. There's a lot of ships on it. This is a huge expanse of water, much, much bigger than one would ever see in this country. And yet it was so still that it hardly seemed to be moving. And it was only when I really thought about it that I realised that this is tremendous weight. Millions of tons of water probably to steadily relentlessly moving towards the sea. And if you compare that to a little bubbling stream that you might meet in the hills somewhere. Which can seem very energetic and alive and there's a lot happening there. Well, I think it can be like that with us. You know, we look for intensity. We look for something sort of bubbly and sort of interesting. And if that's not there, we think faith isn't happening. When actually, you know, you sometimes look at people. You talk to people and say, "I'm not really a faith type. I don't have much faith." But then, you know, that person has actually, you know, maybe given up a job, moved into a community, is working for very little inner business, helping to run a Buddhist centre. You know, their whole life is actually moving towards an ever deeper involvement with the three jewels. You know, something in there is responding to the beauty of the ideal. And their whole life is actually being shaped more and more by it. They just don't recognise it. They don't take it seriously. And because they don't take it seriously, they're not allowing that faith that is actually there. You know, to be the force, the directing force and shaping force that it could be in our lives. So I think faith is a faculty that we could all take a lot more seriously. You know, look for in ourselves. Recognise a lot more in ourselves value, a lot more in ourselves and not to build, develop, cherish in ourselves and in others. You know, so that this faculty of faith can really be an ever stronger force carrying us towards enlightenment. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [music] [music]
