Faith turns into leaves and sky, flowers, bus stops and flowing water. It is hard to believe, but it does. When faith arrives there, faith disappears, like a raft left on the shore. What's not to like?
Here’s Dongshan:
The sage kings from the beginning made Yao the norm;
He governed the people by means of rites and kept his dragon waist bent.
When once he passed from one end of the market to the other,
He found that everywhere culture flourished and the august dynasty was celebrated.
This Emperor Yao was the “mythic model” of Chinese rule – he “governed by means of rites”, meaning that his edict was not of subjective whim, but he trusted that which came before him for his rule. Very Confucian. One could say that faith was involved. He “kept his dragon waist bent”, meaning that although he could wield awesome autocratic rule, he didn’t. The picture painted here is that there was something to attend to, to be supported by, to acknowledge and to have faith in, even before the great sovereign (you!) arrived with its great ideas and plans.
What’s the benefit? When passing through life, resting on what is already established - culture is flourishing, and it’s a celebration.
Faith in Zen is a bit like acknowledging that long before we grabbed and gnawed at the world - before (and during!) our endless picking and choosing, the world has always been utterly supporting us. We don’t need to have faith that it will, or might, we just acknowledge that it is already like this.
Foyan also said, “Every day all of you do a thousand or ten thousand things. There’s nothing you don’t try to do. So why is it you don’t understand? It’s because your faith isn’t sufficient. If your faith were sufficient, then even if you did nothing, you’d arrive at it. If you don’t give a thought to all the affairs of the world in the ten directions, then you’ll realize it”
The point of the post is to say that faith, when understood as something that orients us to what is already present is a good thing and has a place.
P.S. Religious faith is not this. That should be called "hope", "wishing", or "self-centredness" - like trying to lift oneself up with a rope.
Submitted June 08, 2022 at 05:20AM by bigSky001 https://ift.tt/5mFDkQ2
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