Joe Isuzu's Daily Slander

REDEFINING FAITH

“The title of the Sutra, says Nichiren doctrine, is the essence of the whole sutra, the holy teaching of the Buddha’s life, the principle of all things, and the truth of eternity; the fullest implications of the title are inexplicable and inconceivable, understood not even by subordinate Buddhas. The title of the original doctrine is to be believed in, not understood.” pages 31-32, Buddhist Prophet Nichiren-A Lotus In The Sun by Bruno Pertzold

I know many people who struggle with study. I’m one myself. Perhaps, like me, they equate “wisdom” with the use of accumulated knowledge, which is in itself taking an action based on reason. It is very important to come to an understanding of what the definition of faith is in context of this Buddhism. For when I am instructed to substitute faith for wisdom, I may very well wait for someone of faith to tell me what I should think and feel.

“To know what a given belief is about, I must know what my words mean; to know what my words mean, my beliefs must be generally consistent. There is just no escaping the fact that there is a tight relationship between the words we use, the type of thoughts we can think, and what we can believe to be true about the world.”
Sam Harris, The End Of Faith

Page 49, May-June Living Buddhism, Lecture by Mr. Ikeda;

By "substituting faith for wis-
dom" (footnote 22)--bringing forth Buddha
wisdom through faith in the correct
teaching--we, as ordinary people, can
triumph over fundamental darkness
just as we are. The power with which we
can subdue fundamental darkness is
solely the power of faith, our minds
and the inherent enlightened wisdom
within our own lives.

Firstly the footnote looked as if it was a quote lifted from a source so I looked at footnote 22 which reads:

"Substituting faith for wisdom: the principle that faith is the true cause for ataining supreme wisdom, and faith alone leads to enlightenment. In general, Buddhism describes supreme wisdom as the cause of enlightenment. According to the Lotus Sutra, however, even Shariputra, who among the Buddha's 10 disciples was revered as foremost in wisdom, could attain enlightenment only through faith, not through wisdom."

So it appears that it really isn't a quote from a specific source as
the quotation marks infer, but a non-sourced cite. As we read the
second sentence, which is used to qualify the preceding one, it has
the appearance of making logical sense until you look at the grammar
which is confusing in that it asks the reader to make a connection
from faith to our minds, which, according to the cite, is not the
source of enlighten wisdom. The premise
relies on the conclusion, which in turn relies on the premise.
It gives no clue to what faith means.

REALITY BASED FAITH

But even if it was grammatically correct, it's very Kantian in that
it's using logical wisdom from the same plane it claims is inherently
delusional, to argue against the same logical wisdom from that plane,
to a wisdom that may only be known through a faith, which exists
regardless of our existence. The famous "leap of faith" attributed to
Kierkegaard, the belief in something without, or in spite of, empirical
evidence, lives in a paradox for there is no reason for anyone to leap
without unreasoned external encouragement. Kantian faith, in my
definition, is different than Buddhist faith. Kantian faith, like his
disciple Kierkegaard, is Christian and is a belief in something that
has no factual reason for belief or actual evidence to the contrary.
Buddhist faith, in my definition, is based in the same daily
experience as stubbing your toe and falling to the ground: everyone
experiences the same result and it is only subjective in the degree to
which it hurts when you land. But everyone falls in the same
direction. Nobody except Jesus and Mohammed ever fell up and that's a
conjecture based faith.

THE MEANING OF FAITH

What do we mean when we use these words: faith, trust, belief, understanding, knowledge, reason, logic, wisdom, and truth. Here are several examples, many conflicting, of what some believe to be a reflection of the term “faith”:

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.--ST. AUGUSTINE

Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it. -- REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Faith... Must be enforced by reason...When faith becomes blind it dies.-- MAHATMA GANDHI

He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more, He who loses faith, loses all. --ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope or confidence. --HELEN KELLER

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. --DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. --ST. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets. --ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt --UNKNOWN

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them. --BLAISE PASCAL

Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.--EDITH HAMILTON

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.--KAHALIL GIBRAN

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.--FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to. --GEORGE SEAT

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. --VOLTAIRE

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. --IMMANUEL KANT

DEATH BY FAITH

“Some say we do not need to know what the Lotus Sutra means. To want to know is seen as mistrust; a lack of faith. Others say we should not chant any other mantras; that would be disloyal. Critical thinking or discernment is seen as an enemy of faith. Anti-intellectualism is conflated with faith. It also becomes thinkable to launch smear campaigns against competing 'faiths;' in order to discredit them; to inspire distrust of them. So heart felt faith can spiral downward into its own 'enemies' of fear, superstition, intolerance, and bigotry.” Robin http://mettasense.blogspot.com/2009/04/three-levels-of-faith.html

Wausau, Wis. Leilani Neumann has been convicted by a jury of her “peers” of second-degree reckless homicide. Her daughter, Madeline Neumann, died of untreated diabetes March 23, 2008, surrounded by people praying for her. When she suddenly stopped breathing, her parents' business and Bible study partners finally called 911. Her defense attorney, in response to his client being labeled a religious zealot who let her daughter die as a test of faith, stated "Religious extremism is a Muslim terrorist. They are saying these parents were so far off the scale that they murdered their child. The woman did everything she could to help her. That is the injustice in this case."

Injustice indeed! In trying to deflect away from his client and towards a different type of extremist, the defense missed the actual point. He could have just as easily turned inward to everyone in the courtroom. Chances are that most people in that courtroom, the accusers, the accused and the “peers”, believe in the same Bible that the Nuemanns’ and their friends put their faith in. So how could she possibly be found guilty? But since we live in a nation that runs on the law of man and not God, most people cherry pick which parts of the Bible to follow. If you go strictly by the Word, you may end up in jail. The desperate effort of the defense to deflect what their client was accused of to another religion makes one ask the question that most people do not ponder; why do we believe what we believe?

PROVE IT

Like Scully, I trust my partner but I “believe” in scientific empiricism not phenomenalism. Yet for 35 years I have invoked a phrase that provokes what I “believe” to be empirical phenomena. And for the last 10 years I have endeavored to take away anything that may be strictly subjective in order to find what may be termed as an authentic truth that transcends both the temporal and secular affairs and yet at the same time cannot exist outside of either. Sounds a lot like Kant. The truth is out there and in there. But what I believe needs to be based in common sense. For example, and sticking to a fictional theme which many people have “faith” in, I have no reason to believe that this planet has, within the span of time that humans have had a recorded history, been visited by extraterrestrials. There isn’t any solid evidence. It makes as much sense as the movie Signs; a species of life that has mastered time and space travel (but can’t get out of a locked closet) uses their technology to come to a planet two-thirds water (which is deadly to them) to eat us. It’s a lot of fun, but when all is said and done “It’s a cook book!” And yet some people believe, in spite of the lack of evidence or the face of evidence to the contrary. Believing in an anthropomorphic, metaphysical being who is both omniscient and omnipotent is what the term “FAITH” means in the Judeo/Christian culture I was raised into. But people will suspend their disbelief when they want to believe.

“Many today regard any kind of belief---and religious faith, in particular—as somehow in opposition to reason or at the very least as a sort of paralysis of the faculty of reason. There are, indeed, fanatical religions in which faith opposes reason. But it is an erroneous leap of logic to assume on this basis, and without any evidence, that all religions are so. That itself is irrational and can be characterize as a kind of blind faith in it’s own right.”
Daisaku Ikeda, The Wisdom Of The Lotus Sutra, Vol. II, Belief and Understanding.

Spoken like a man of religion in defense of religion. I couldn’t disagree more. And there is at the very least a couple of millennia worth of recorded evidence that every religion enables the suppression of reason through faith. Even Buddhism. Here's a question for the guest blog: can somebody still be my mentor if I disagree with him? Or maybe the question should be, can I still be a disciple? Will I be guilty of cherry picking? Will I survive the repercussions from from the other disciples? (Please note: the reason that I have read Kant, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Augustine, Aquinas and more, is because Mr. Ikeda has quoted from their works more than once in a positive way in shedding light upon Buddhism. And I was curious as to why, they being bastions of Christianity. All of them have an affinity towards finding an ultimate "truth" which cannot be understood through reason alone. They were, as the Lotus Sutra states, looking for a single moment of belief and understanding in which faith and reason are inseparable yet cannot be reach through an intellectual process. They were perhaps trying to find their version of Ichinen Sanzen through an external faith in God. But, as Nichiren consistently points out, one needs the correct vehicle to put faith into. But Mr. Ikeda in no way excludes reason or wisdom when it comes to faith as you will read below. In fact, he and one of the worlds most active atheists, Richard Dawkins, who refers to "faith" as the root of all evil, find a point of convergence regarding Buddhism.)

THE CULT OF FALLING UP

Everyone I have ever met on good ole planet earth during my lifetime has experienced falling. And everyone has always fallen in the same direction: towards the earth. I have complete faith in my belief that if I stub my toe on an unseen crack in the driveway on the way to my mailbox, I will fall towards the earth. In fact, if I say, “I fell down” it’s redundant. And because I am resolute in my belief about the potential injury I may suffer, because my experience has never once proven otherwise, I have found myself, and the rest of humanity, going through extraordinary dance-like gyrations in order to remain upright in an effort to save us from the impact from the fall. Until recently I never understood the exact physics behind the why of what happens when the gravity of the mass of earth attracts the mass of my body. When I hit the earth, the electrons composing the molecules of my body mass and the electrons of the mass composing the earth repel each other showing that the electromagnetic force is even stronger than gravity. But that really didn’t matter to me growing up. I just knew after a few times that in falling, I scraped the skin off my knees and hands and it hurt. So I tried not to let that happen whenever possible. If I were to start a religion or a cult using other religions as a template, the first thing is to find something that the followers must suspend their disbelief about. The Cult Of Falling Up is based upon the premise that a true believer has faith that on judgment day everyone who is saved will fall up. I doubt that I will have many disciples accompany me to my rooftop to test their faith. Or maybe I will.

BELIEF AND UNDERSTANDING

“Buddhism, the ‘religion of wisdom,’ is an extremely rational religion. In fact, it is so rational that many Westerners even question whether it can be classified as a religion, since it does not teach the existence of a supreme being in the image of humankind.”
Daisaku keda, The Wisdom Of The Lotus Sutra, Vol. II; Belief and Understanding.

“And I shall not be concerned with other religions such as Buddhism or Confucianism. Indeed, there is something to be said for treating these not as religions at all but as ethical systems or philosophies of life.”
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion; The God Hypothesis.

“In the beginning, we require some degree of trust to get past mistrust, suspicion, and cynicism. So we suspend skepticism; and give it an honest shot….Nichiren called this 以信代慧 {ishin daie} or substituting faith for wisdom. I think Nichiren stressed trust because distrust, suspicious doubt, and cynicism tend to disable us before we even start, or cause us to quit at the first bump in the road. Who has time to sort out all the competing claims? So people tend to put their trust is something, to anchor themselves. However,, Nichiren Shonin said people were trusting the wrong things; like an all knowing Sensei, government authorities, or secret transmissions. He concluded that the Lotus Sutra was the best place to anchor one's practice; the best source to trust. Moreover, he evidently thought Chapters two and sixteen provided the keys. I think one can do worse.” Robin http://mettasense.blogspot.com/2009/04/three-levels-of-faith.html

(Actually, in regarding re-defining faith, I think one can do better. But I encourage everyone to read in their entirety all the quotes from their original sources.)

“While looking at various texts, I noticed that there were a number of words being translated as faith. After a lot of back-translating, I came up with three main Sanskrit words; Shraddha, Prasada, and Adhimukti. This gets a bit convoluted, because different teachers and schools use these terms differently. Also, translation from Sanskrit to Chinese was a chaotic mess. So, keep in mind that I am oversimplifying for clarity. Shraddha 信 {shin} means to believe in, to trust. Yogarchara breaks this down into Cognitive Faith 信忍 {Shinin}, Emotive or Joyful Faith 信樂 {shingyo}, and Volitional Faith 善法欲 {zenbo yoku}. Prasada 信心 {shinjin} is a deep or profound faith, a heart felt conviction or trust. Note that Prasada has a lot of other translations, the most common appears to be 清浄 {shojo}; which is also a translation of vishuddha, a term that means spiritual purification. For present purposes, 信心 shinjin works. Adhimukti 信解 {shinge} translates as a faith based on understanding. Adhi means something like primordial or source. Mukti means liberation or emancipation and the translation, ge 解, means to unravel. Shin {trust}, shinjin {heart felt faith}, and shinge {faith with understanding] all have a shared meaning; while each has a distinct nuance.” Robin, Three Levels of Faith

The 4th chapter of the Lotus Sutra is translated as BELIEF AND UNDERSTANDING, or in Sanskrit, Adhimukti. The bottom line of the metaphor it tells is that the son believes in and has faith in himself and in doing so gains what he had not sought nor coveted: a storehouse of treasure which comes to him of its own accord.

“These teachings are stated in the Lotus of Truth, and have been explained and elucidated by many a great master of the past; but they remain simply doctrines, so long as they are merely understood, and not personally experienced. Vain is all talk and discussion concerning existences and reality, unless the virtues of existence are realized in one’s own person.” Masaharu Anesaki, Nichiren the Buddhist Prophet, page 78.

Posted by joeisuzu at July 5, 2009 03:27 AM