Last newsletter our colleague Paramita shared about faith - the first of the four qualities the Bright Earth ministry team have chosen to guide us. Below is my chapter about faith from our book, Just As You Are: Buddhism for Foolish Beings - available from all good bookstores 😉
You may also be interested in the talk Kaspa & I gave at our recent retreat day - about our history of being Buddhists. I cried a little bit in mine, of course. Here it is and here’s a picture of our hanamatsuri shrine from the day. Go gently all!
Talk: The Thread You Follow
The F-word
Whether we see ourselves as having a spiritual dimension to our lives or not, we all have faith in something. Right now I have faith that pressing the keys on my laptop keyboard will result in words on the screen. I have faith that the floor will continue to hold me up, and that the sun will continue to rise through the morning mist.
I take comfort from the things that I have faith in, or, to put it another way, the things that I take refuge in. Most of us in the modern world take refuge in material goods to some extent: money, possessions and the status they confer upon us. We have faith that if we do what society expects us to do – get married, have children, buy a nice house – that we’ll live happily ever after. We think that if we successfully seek and receive praise, status and fame then we’ll feel better about ourselves.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I take refuge in these unreliable things as a way of avoiding the feelings I don’t like and clinging onto the feelings I do like, and as an antidote to existential and other forms of fear. I am especially fond of taking refuge in behaviours that become ever-so slightly (or ragingly) compulsive. Some of us love the reliable feeling of relaxation when we drink our first glass of wine in the evening, or the endorphin kick of a run. My own favourite compulsions are sweet foods, overwork, and social media addiction. When I feel sad or bad I reach for sugar, regardless of how effectively it staves off the emotion. Sugar has been faithful to me in the past, and now I am faithful to it – expecting relief even when it leaves me feeling dissatisfied and slightly sick. What are your favourite compulsions?
All of these places where I habitually take refuge (especially the ones with a more compulsive quality) are doomed to disappoint me in the end. As most of us know intellectually, money or possessions in themselves don’t make us happy. Despite the hope that we will reach a point of ‘enough’, this never seems to arrive. Research backs this up, tending to suggest that after our basic needs are met, increases in salary no longer lead to increases in happiness. These things are also subject to impermanence – money, status and possessions come and go, sometimes in ways that are completely beyond our control.
One of the things that can help is swapping our most unhealthy refuges for slightly healthier ones. We might swap out-of-control computer gaming for chocolate or yoga, or alcohol for an addiction to the gym. This is a good thing to do. Ultimately, though, none of these places of worldly refuge are reliable. They keep shifting about. Our favourite yoga teacher moves away, or finances become tight and we can no longer afford to go to the gym. We break our favourite mug, relationships change, and people leave us or die. Because of the fundamental unreliability of the world, Buddhism suggests that we place our faith in something that transcends the material world entirely – something that transcends impermanence.
All Buddhists take refuge in what are known as the three jewels – the Buddha, the awakened one; the Dharma, the teachings of awakened ones; and the Sangha, the community of people following the teachings. These places of refuge are unlike the things of the world – they are reliable. Different Buddhists will have different forms of words for taking refuge. This is what we recite during our Buddhist practice here at Bright Earth:
For refuge I go to the Buddha
The one who is awake and full of love
Namo Buddhaya
For refuge I go to the Dharma
All that guides us to wisdom and compassion
Namo Dharmaya
For refuge I go to the Sangha
Those who live in the Buddha’s light
Namo Sanghaya
(update - we also now have a fourth refuge, in the Earth - the holy ground of awakening - Namo Bhumyai)
How does this ‘taking refuge’ work in practice? People will discover their own meaningful relationship with refuge in different ways. To start with we might choose to take refuge in the Sangha, and to trust that we will be held by the group in a way that would be impossible for any individual to do. We might experiment with trusting that the wisdom we need will come from the Sangha, sometimes from the person we least expect. We might try sharing a little more openly with the Sangha – taking it as slowly as we need to – and see how we are received.
We might take refuge in the Dharma by listening to Buddhist teachings and reading Buddhist books. Since Shakyamuni Buddha started teaching around two and a half thousand years ago, a great body of wisdom has accumulated from lots of different teachers in lots of different Buddhist traditions. We might also try to follow the five lay precepts, which offer us guidance on how to live a good life. Here’s the form of words we use for our precepts:
With faith in the three jewels
and in light of my human tendencies
I pray that I may become aware
of when I take life
I pray that I may become aware
of when I take what is not freely given
I pray that I may become aware
of when I fall into sexual misconduct
I pray that I may become aware
of when I fall into wrong speech
I pray that I may become aware
of when I become intoxicated
For me, the most powerful way of countering fear is to take refuge in the Buddha. To begin with I did this by copying what others did, especially my old Buddhist teacher. I wanted to be more like him, and so I did what he did – clipping the lavender in the way that he clipped it, or placing my liturgy book carefully on the floor as he did. This is how we learn as children and it is a very powerful way to learn. We copy the people we want to emulate unconsciously and as we perform the same actions as them or say the same things they do, we learn new ways of being. If we are feeling depressed and purposefully move our bodies into a more upright, open position, more positive feelings often eventually follow. In a similar way, as I attended Buddhist practice and moved my body into various positions – sitting upright, bowing – I began to feel some of the same faith in the Buddha that my old teacher felt.
At the beginning of our practice, most of us dip our toes into taking refuge through first trusting in those who have come before us – those experienced practitioners who also learnt how to take refuge through someone who came before them. This person-to-person transmission of the Dharma is a very important part of Buddhism. Deep spiritual experience passes like a benevolent virus from teacher to student, teacher to student, and if we are lucky we come into contact with enough ‘infected’ people to be blessed with the virus ourselves. Another word for this marvellous virus is faith.
What are the benefits of taking refuge in the three jewels? Since I became a Buddhist and found faith, my life does look different as I now run a Buddhist temple. Despite that, much of my life still looks the same – I still work as a psychotherapist and write as I did before, and I still enjoy simple things like walking and sharing breakfast with friends. I also still struggle with my favourite compulsions.
What has changed is that I am driven by a different engine. My faith lies underneath everything I do now – inspiring me to connect with the Buddha and to become a more loving person, despite my fallibilities. I have firm ground underneath me, which makes it easier to meet life’s many challenges head on and to find comfort when I feel overwhelmed. I also think that I take more risks now – I am more likely to speak my truth, regardless of how I guess other people will react, and I am more able to stand up for what I believe in. It is my faith that made it possible for me to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience, and (alongside Kaspa) to launch a training programme for ministers here at the temple.
I hesitate to make these claims about myself, as I don’t want to give the impression that having faith has ‘fixed me’ in any way. I am still bombu, a foolish being of wayward passions. I still make many mistakes, I sometimes act from fear, and I am still sometimes self-centred, jealous and greedy. If anything, since becoming a Buddhist I have felt safe enough to gain an ever-deeper realisation of how full of self-protective selfishness I am. With the crushing weight of our karma, how do any of us manage to do any good at all?
Through the grace of Amida, I do feel that many good things have happened as a direct result of my taking refuge. I am also more likely to withhold judgement in the face of the vast mysteries of the Universe. Maybe things are unfolding as they should. How do I know whether I’m moving in a ‘good’ direction or not, or what ‘good’ is? Some of the worst times in my life have turned out to be my greatest gifts. As time goes on and I continue to gather my (unreliable) evidence, I have tended to trust the Universe more rather than less. Awful things still happen – Buddhism doesn’t deny that bad things happen to good people for no good reason. The first noble truth reminds us that we cannot escape suffering. I do trust, however, that I am somehow not alone in the Universe, and that there is something that I can turn to for help.
If you like the sound of faith, how might you get more of it? Here are some things that have helped me:
• Try to get ‘out of the way’. Begin to become aware of the (appropriate and understandable) defences you have built up over your lifetime, and see what happens when you relax them just a little bit. In the language of Internal Family Systems, we become friendly with our protective parts, especially those in extreme positions. As these parts feel heard and build trust in us, they can relax a little. This makes more space for Self inside (buddha nature) and SELF outside (the Buddha). Even ‘unblending’ from our powerful parts a teensy bit and making a tiny bit of room for Self can make a big difference.
• Find people who seem full of faith and spend time with them.
• Fake it to make it – do Buddhist practice, make offerings to the Buddha, and ask for help, even if you don’t feel that anyone is listening. See what happens.
• Find a personal spiritual practice that suits you, and a Sangha where you feel at home.
• Spend time on your relationship with the Buddha or a Higher Power. Check in with them once a day with some spiritual practice or even a simple bow. Hand things over when they become unmanageable and don’t forget to say thank you.
• Keep saying thank you. If you don’t know what to say thank you for, look again. Gratitude will open the door to you experiencing refuge.
Having said all this, grace often visits us when we least expect it – we’re not in control of it, that’s the point! It is beyond us. We say the nembutsu and we trust that the rest will take care of itself.
My faith comes and goes, as it does for most people. On some days I wonder what on earth I am doing, or I feel frightened and alone. That’s okay. Like clouds across the sun, I have faith that even when I don’t have faith – even when I can’t see the light – the Buddha is still there, smiling at me.
So… what is it offering you?
Namo Amida Bu,
Satya <3
Here’s our menu of Bright Earth offerings. Ready to dip a toe in? How much time would you like to put aside every day? Are any of these practices calling to you?
🙏🏻 1 minute a day - Everyday Gassho (two bows a day) - read Rev. Kubose’s instructions
🙏🏻 5 - 10 minutes a day - start a daily chanting practice - take our free 30 day email course here
🙏🏻 30 minutes - write a Dharma Glimpse - write one and send it to us
🙏🏻 45 minutes - Bright Earth Buddhist practice - join us live or on Youtube