Teaching an Introduction to Buddhism Class always seems to deepen my understanding and faith. Understanding and faith seem to go hand-in-hand in Buddhism. The more we go into the teachings, we see the logic of what is presented, we can experience the change these teachings bring to our own life, and faith becomes easier.
Faith is a strange word in Buddhism. It seems out of context. How is faith expressed in a religion that does not have a creator God? We develop faith in the teachings themselves which is known as the Dharma (Dhamma, Pali). We start at the beginning in our classes, which is, of course, the truth of dukkha. Dukkha is the acknowledgment of the fact that there is stress, unsatisfactoriness, dissatisfaction, or however one wants to think of dukkha. Actually, this takes very little faith. Anyone who is awake to existence can see that dukkha exists.
Faith is needed as we get into the rest of the Four Noble Truths. There is a cause. There is the possibility of release from dukkha and there is a path to attain release. When we move forward with this understanding and take some action with it, we see it works. I’m convinced that if one tries to investigate and to think and act in accordance with the teachings that flow out from the Four Noble Truths, faith will naturally follow. We will come to understand bit by bit that changes that are within a human being’s power can significantly impact the amount of dukkha in life.
In talks, I’ve often referred to Ajahn Thanissaro’s measure for progress on the path: “Are you creating less suffering for yourself and others?” With understanding and action, we can see our life becoming less of a dukkha generating machine for ourselves and others. It works, we find out. Faith grows. We seek to better understand ourselves and the Dharma. Over time, this understanding of self and Dharma merges. “To study the way is to study the self” as Dogen puts it.
Eventually, our faith and understanding become too large for our little life. We see dukkha all around us. Through our own understanding and experience, we have faith that these teachings work for others. We might also notice that there are a lot more others than our single human life, a lot of people with a lot of dukkha.
Let me tell you about a little moment in time. We had spent the night at our daughter’s house where we wake up to take care of our nine-month-old grandson. He was still sleeping upstairs and I had a baby monitor with me downstairs. I did my morning yoga routine and then ended it with a little strange ritual that I have. I stand on my left leg first with my right leg tucked near the groin in what is I think called tree pose. As I stand this way, I take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha three times. I usually do this refuge in front of a Buddha at our house. When we are on babysitting duty, I don’t have a Buddha with me so I use an image of one from Sangha House that is on my phone. I placed the phone with the image of the Buddha beside an iPad that had a babycam vision of our grandson, still asleep in his crib.
These two electronic images brought together something in my mind. I have a worry in my mind and heart of what will happen in the future. I worry for my grandson, for other young children, and I worry for the Buddha and this home the Buddha’s teachings have found at Sangha House in Fort Wayne. Our community currently serves as a refuge for many people. There is a wonderful diversity of Buddhists of all stripes and non-Buddhists and curiosity seekers. I think we provide something important for our community, especially at this time in history.
At this time in history, I would say that the causes of dukkha, namely attachment, aversion, and ignorance are running our world. Things are not looking so good and the situation could get much worse.
My grandchild is less than a year old. We currently have four teachers and there is a good chance that none of us will be teaching by the time children now under a year old are nearing adulthood. Impermanence is the way things are.
In my morning ritual, I then stand on my right leg with the left leg tucked in. In this stance, I recite the four Bodhisattva vows. I vow to save all sentient beings, to be free from desires and vexations, to recognize and enter dharma gates, and to attain the Buddha's way. I then recite the four remembrances. May I remember throughout the day the nature of a precious human life like mine where one has freedom and opportunity and has been exposed to the Dharma. May I be mindful of impermanence, that this present human life and this precious opportunity to hear, contemplate, and meditate will end. May I be mindful of the power of karma and the results of actions of body, speech, and mind. And may I be aware of the unsatisfactory nature of samsara, which is the self-centered life of attachment, aversion, and ignorance.
As I looked at the image of the Buddha on my phone with a red poinsettia on the altar and lovely snow in the background and the baby cam image of a small child starting to stir with notes of Brahm’s Lullaby caressing his sleeping ears, I felt deeply how much I want the Dharma in some authentic form to last in this community.
My worry for Sangha is that it will not endure long enough for even the next generation to have the opportunity to hear, meditate, and contemplate in this space. I am pretty sure the building will last. People will come to this space to do something. But what? There is a lot of twisting of the Dharma to fit our cultural world view and personal desires these days.
I am no lineage holder or anything like that; I am a person with a little understanding I want to share. I am also a person who has faith in the slow and steady progress one can make on this path. It will be so, very soon, that these four teachers who in their own way have tried to communicate the Dharma will be gone. Gone, gone, really gone. I have mentioned faith in the Buddha and faith in the Dharma. It is with faith in the Sangha, this Sangha here in the land of the three rivers, that I trust that my grandson and others his age can encounter something authentic on Sandpoint Road for many, many years. So long as we remember to always embrace the Noble Sangha that starts with the historical Buddha and his disciples, the Arhats and Bodhisattvas through the ages and enlightened teachers in our time, we will keep authentic Dharma alive. May we be the guardians the next generation relies upon.
- John Steinbach
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