Well, if you have to think about faith or no faith this much there is probably not much inight into just how faith moves . . . there really is no way of defining faith, or refuting . . . much like Zen, it is an experiential mystery that has many faces.
We could just call it, 'catching my groove'. zendervish --- In [email protected], "Joe" <desert_woodworker@...> wrote: > > Bill!, Zendervish, > > Bill, would you we willing to consider that there is an aspect of faith which > is like trust? > > Trust, like faith, is often not simply "blind", but is earned; it is > developed. > > I won't flesh that out. > > Also, in all sorts of empirical situations, we humans rely on "Induction"; > Philosopher David Hume spent some time on that matter in his TREATISE OF > HUMAN NATURE. For example, each day in the past, the sun has risen in the > East and set in the West: will it happen again tomorrow? > > Hume writes that we have a sort of compulsion, a psychological proclivity, to > suppose that it will. > > Is this proclivity dependent on a faith, or a trust? Mind you, here's an > empirical situation: a "matter of fact", it's called. We don't know in > advance if the sun will rise; but, ...we have a faith or a trust that it will? > > It would seem our lives are based on a very shaky kind of certainty! > > Granted, our expectation of the sun's behavior is based on our observation of > how it has appeared to behave in the past, and on our memory of that > behavior. Is it *reasonable* for us to assume or expect that it will behave > again as it has in the past? Or, is this a faith of ours? A trust? If the > latter two, are faith and trust reasonable? > > And, then, is not this faith solidly based on empirical observation and upon > our conditioning by empirical, factual information? This is not "blind" > faith: this is the kind of faith one has even in Buddha Nature after one has > realized it. It is a faith lived from the inside, not the outside, and it is > very solid. It continues, and itself has a life, and a career. > > To give this faith or this trust a mechanical-sounding name like "induction", > or the workings of induction, does not shift the origins of our expectation > of sunrise to something outside of ourselves, and make it a part of a corpus > of knowledge that has something more to do with "Physics" than with us. It's > ALL our doing! > > And I don't mean that in some sort of spooky way. I agree with Hume's notion > that it is "psychological", in the broad sense he employs. > > I'll leave this open-ended, because I do not know how to close it. > > ;-) > > --Joe > > > > > "Bill!" <BillSmart@> wrote: > > > > Zendervish, > > > > IMO, and as I use these terms... > > > > 'Belief' is a condition of the mind that categorizes something as true or > > real. > > > > 'Faith' is a type of belief that has no experiential, scientific or logical > > foundation. > > > > I think these definitions are pretty much the same as the ones you gave in > > the 3rd and 4th paragraphs of your post below. > > > > Both belief and faith are helpful and maybe even necessary in the early > > phases of zen practice. They were in mine. After realizing Buddha Nature > > faith no long plays any part in zen practice - at least not in mine. > > > > ...Bill! > ------------------------------------ Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are reading! Talk about it today!Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
