Faith and belief are commonly confused, as if they are interchangeable. Faith is not belief. Belief is holding onto an idea of what is or what should be. Faith is allowing, trusting and surrendering to what is. Faith is the ability to let go to or fully engage in what is, here and now, without preconceptions of the outcome. Alan Watts, a philosopher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the West, underscored this critical contrast of the two terms:
“We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “like” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.”
Learning, personal growth and spiritual awakening are not the outcome of belief. They are the result of direct awareness and experience. It’s not a matter of belief. The proof is in the pudding—the actual tasting and eating of the pudding—not the recipe. Holding onto a belief is like eating the recipe.
Carlos Castaneda, who was largely responsible for introducing shamanism to western culture, taught the practice of controlled folly which is grounded in this understanding of faith. Controlled folly is the act of committing yourself fully to an action with the knowledge that your efforts may come to naught; letting go fully into the action, with no thought of the outcome. Similarly, Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said, “When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.” Most of us have experienced this when fully engaged in an activity in which our thoughts drop away and we lose track of time. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his research regarding flow, identified the characteristics of this experience and many ways in which we can experience it.
Faith involves an eyes wide-open approach to our unfolding experience. This involves what I call “letting it have it’s way with me”—being open to the raw experience of whatever arises: pleasant, disturbing, boring, etc. Deep emotions are often stirred as a result. This flies in the face of the common misconception that mindfulness or presence involves a neutral, non-emotional awareness. On the contrary, fully surrendering to what is carves out our capacity to feel deeply both the highs and lows of life’s drama. In so doing, we are no longer clinging to or resisting what is and are like a lithe tree bending in the wind that stays fully grounded in the present.
The Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, encouraged his students to embrace the less rosy side of faith: “We must surrender our hopes and expectations, as well as our fears, and march directly into disappointment, work with disappointment, go into it, and make it our way of life, which is a very hard thing to do.” I would add to this the need to march directly into appreciation and gratification which is also a very hard thing to do. The majority of us have a hard time experiencing and taking in the so-called good as well as experiencing and releasing the so-called bad. Our beliefs, fears, hopes, expectations, judgments and difficulty taking in the good all represent attempts to change, stop, get away from or control the here and now. These are resistances that ultimately result in disappointment and suffering.
How do we surrender our resistances? The common, first response is to try to get rid of them. However, what we resist will persist, and resisting our resistances ends in a never-ending war with ourselves. In contrast to this initial impulse, faith involves being present with, experiencing and feeling our resistances. All these resistances are also expressions of what is. When such resistances are held in unconditional, open awareness, we dis-identify with these automatic reactions. They are often felt in the body as tension and contracting that may move into a physical, energetic or emotional release, eventually dissolving into an easeful awareness of what is.
Another important aspect of faith is the direct experience of the here and now through our senses without filtering it through thought. We are often separated from our direct experience due to the automatic habit of labeling, evaluating and comparing everything that enters our awareness. This brings to mind Fritz Perls’ invitation, “Lose your mind and come to your senses.” Perls, a founder of Gestalt Therapy, is encouraging us to retrieve the a priori, non-conceptual awareness that we were born into before language became our dominant form of perceiving.
A faith-illumined path does not require a leap of faith. It can be a series of baby steps in which we stick our toe into the raw, direct experience of the here and now without resorting to thought. Doorways to such glimpses are innumerable: the arts; nature; loss; injury; sickness; relationships; play; sports; spiritual practices and focused work of any kind.
This does not mean eschewing thoughts and beliefs. Thoughts and beliefs are held lightly as they play their parts as needed and come and go within the non-conceptual, direct experience and awareness of faith. Grounded in faith, we dis-identify with our default setting of viewing the world through thought, beliefs and our automatic resistances. We, eventually, drop into our original default setting, our birth-inheritance: an open, unconditional, easeful awareness of what is that guides our lives. Faith, first; thought, speech and action, second.
Surrender
Surrendering to all that arises,
Surrendering to the resistance to all that arises,
Letting it all have its way with me,
Letting it break my heart open,
Letting it break the barrier between
Me and you,
Mine and yours,
Here and there,
Now and then,
Within and without,
Right and wrong,
Life and death,
Suffering and enlightenment,
Between one and all.
Image copyright: Rob Byron and Evgeny Atamanenko