Greetings,

This month we will begin our deep dive into Transcendental Dependent Arising. Last month we did a summary of these 12 links. This month we will look at faith. Faith is the first link but the exploration starts in the midst of dukkha. The Buddha said the result of dukkha is bewilderment or a noble search. To live in samsara (the conditioned world) is to live with dukkha. When our attention is scattered, we get lost in problem solving mode - judging, comparing and fixing. This causes us to search endlessly for external solutions in an effort to bring happiness, joy and contentment in our lives. The problem is that these external solutions are inherently ephemeral and unreliable. Even knowing this we continue to put our trust and faith in these external solutions leaving us weary and unsatisfied.

At some point, each of us come face to face with this dissatisfaction and exhaustion and face a decision to continue down the same path or to find an alternative path. This alternative path, however, is elusive. We have no idea where to start, how it works, or if it will even work. All we have is some hearing of the Dhamma and a heart belief in its truth. This is the place we are standing in whenever there is dukkha. The choice we face in this moment is whether to stick with our usual ways of handling dukkha (regardless of whether it works, it's familiar) or turn towards something new. What we are unaware of is that liberation is also present in this moment. It's just obscured by the noise of our searching. Faith, when connected to transcendental dependent arising, means turning inward and seeking a solution from our internal understanding.

In 2001, I found myself at Seattle Insight. I was going through a lot of emotional difficulties, mostly because I was seeing a lot of my unskillful habit patterns. It was a profoundly difficult time. I would leave Rodney Smith's weekly Dhamma talks with an uplifted heart and great inspiration, yet within a couple of hours I was locked in some mental rage about something that happened. When I finally got out of the rage, I tumbled into these pits of self-hatred and shame because of my inability to make the Dhamma work. I had a deep seated belief that the problem was that the practice was not powerful enough to help me. I came from the Black Christian church where the sermons and the music drew out a level of power in one's actions. But sitting silent week after week didn't seem to be powerful enough to fix me. I often felt disappointed in myself and the practice. During this period, Sharon Salzberg's book Faith was published. This was one of the few times I heard talk of "faith" as being part of Insight practice. I bought that book and read it several times. It helped me realize that faith was not a solution nor a destination; it was the vessel that was going to get me to liberation.

I can think of no other image than the cover of Sharon's book as a way to express what each of us has to explore this month. We are not building faith in something. We are not building a belief system. We are cultivating faith in our own experiences. What this meant to me during that time was that my rageful moments became as important to me as my peaceful moments. I became as interested in how rage arose in me as I did in how contentment arose in me. I began to ask myself what I really believed about or thought of Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. I spent several months investigating my own relationship with Buddha, with his teachings and with Seattle Insight. I didn't know it at the time but I was going to have to let go of some pretty unhealthy coping skills that were at the root of a lot of my rage and harmful behavior. Without faith, I never would have been able to do this.

Transcendental faith is not like faith in something. It is faith in and of itself. It is mostly unconscious. It is a willingness to stick with something whether you see any results or not. It's what gives us the ability to begin again and again and again. It is what gives us permission to fail, get back up and try it again. I think this happens because, as I said before, it's not faith in something. Transcendental faith is more like interest in something. The more interested I became in my harmful conduct, the less judgment I had about it. And the less I needed to run from it. It's strange that we use the word "transcendental" which kind of implies a transcending outward. In truth, these transcendental links transcend inward, so I guess you could say, we transcend out of our judging mind and into our own deepest experience. That movement inward takes a kind of unconscious faith meaning that it doesn't have to look a certain way. Sometimes it will look sloppy and messy. Sometimes haphazard and weak. And sometimes it could look strong and disciplined. However it shows up, it is what is keeping us on the path when it seems like nothing we do is working.

This is what we're exploring this month. Contemplate, reflect upon, think about - what keeps you on the path? What makes us start practicing when we haven't practiced for six months, a year, 10 years? Where does that come from? What inspires you about the practice even if you don't see that behavior in yourself. What keeps you practicing day after day? Lastly, what is your relationship with Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha? Is it yours or your teacher's?

With a deep bow,
Tuere