After 40 minutes, we take a little stand-up break. I was just talking to Richard quietly. Well, you can hear that. Yeah, I was just talking to him privately. That's why he didn't hear what I said. So, tonight is our class on the subject of faith and Buddhist faith, and how it's understood, various ways that it's understood and practiced. As a text, I think you have the text.

[01:07]

If you don't, John Mogi has some, I hope, he says. And if you don't, just raise your hand. Looks like everybody has a copy. Do you have a copy for... So I've chosen this book called Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment by Sungbe Park. Sungbe Park is a scholar, well-known scholar actually, and the more I look at references to modern scholarship, I see appreciations for his help.

[02:18]

And I remember back in the early 70s, he was at Cal, and he asked me to give a talk at the Buddhist churches of America to some students, and I had never met him before. I think he needed to go someplace, so he was looking for somebody to give the little talk to people, so he asked me to do that, so that was my connection with him. But I've always had this book for many years, and I like the book a lot, but I think I read it once. But when several people asked me about this subject, I was reminded of this book, so I really like it a lot.

[03:21]

I think Sunbe goes into the subject in a very, I think, correct way by talking about the difference between what's called ancestral or patriarchal, I think we should call it ancestral faith, and doctrinal faith. Doctrinal faith is faith in, and ancestral faith is the faith of the ancestors. essence function. Faith is the function of essence of mind. So it's not faith in something, it's simply faith. So I want to, first of all,

[04:29]

I want to say a little something about faith in Buddhism in general, what it's considered, how faith is one of the factors of the five spiritual faculties and the five powers, as they're called. If you've studied Abhidhamma, you're familiar with the five spiritual faculties and the five powers, which are the same thing. But they're called faculties as they relate to each other, and they're called powers as they become the power of practice. So faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. These are the five.

[05:32]

So faith and wisdom are at opposite ends. And energy, mindfulness, and concentration, concentration is also like samadhi. And energy is the driving force And concentration, I mean, and mindfulness, of course, is paying attention. So these are factors that are present in any wholesome state of consciousness. In every single wholesome state of consciousness, there's faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. So faith is like the foundation. And I looked up a bunch of synonyms for faith, just to orient ourselves. These are either synonyms or closely related uses of the word.

[06:38]

Hope, fidelity, virtue, religion, piety. reliability, exactness, literalness, obedience, observant, constant, orthodox, devout, literal, loyal, dependable, trustworthy. So these are all associated meanings. So what I want to do is go through the introduction, because in the introduction, Sung May outlines what he will talk about. But before I go into the introduction, I want to talk about the contents.

[07:42]

So, in Buddhism, in Mahayana, Faith, practice and enlightenment are the three important factors. Faith, practice and enlightenment. Because all three of these contain the others. Within faith is ... faith is practice and practice is faith. And faith, practice is enlightenment. So, he talks about each one of these three. So part one is about faith, and he talks about the primacy of faith in Buddhism, the ancestral faith and the doctrinal faith, which is what I was talking about. Buddha nature and ancestral faith. Essence function versus subject-object construction. Essence function is what I was saying

[08:48]

as in opposition to subject-object construction. Subject-object is belief in something outside, whereas essence function is Essence and function are not two things. So, non-backsliding faith and backsliding faith, and the two truths in skill and means. As you know, the two truths are the mundane truth and the primal truth, primary truth. The unity of faith and enlightenment in practice.

[09:52]

Bodhidharma's wall meditation. Questioning meditation and the dynamics of faith. It's not like you're questioning meditation, it's the meditation of questioning. But that's a little elusive sometimes. It's not like you're questioning meditation. It's a meditation which is questioning, and this questioning is what? It's like unassuming, letting go of conditioned assumptions. That's questioning everything, questioning your conditioned assumptions about what something is. practice in the treatise on awakening Mahayana faith. This is a very famous, well-known treatise called The Awakening of Mahayana Faith, which is usually called

[10:56]

the awakening of faith in the Mahayana, which is not correct, even though most translators translate the title that way. It's not faith in the Mahayana, it's Mahayana faith. Mahayana in this case not meaning some special school, Mahayana being essence of mind, big And then faith and practice in pure land Buddhism. When we think of faith in Buddhism, we usually think of the faith of pure land Buddhism, which is faith in construction. And then faith as the practice of compassion. And then part three is enlightenment, sudden enlightenment and gradual practice. faith and enlightenment in the Hawaiian Sutra, the experience of brokenness, revolution of the basis and the three gates.

[12:05]

So I don't expect you to remember all that, but I'm preparing you for how this book is laid out. So I'm going to read the introduction and comment on it. And if you have any questions, You can ask questions as we go along. So he says, it is now well known that Buddhism is a religion of meditation and of enlightenment. Yet few are aware that it is also a religion of faith. Without right faith, no practice can be initiated and no enlightenment attained in Buddhism. Why then is Buddhism not known as a religion of faith? That's a bit of an interesting question because when we think, you know, Buddhism is non-theistic. I think non-theistic is different than atheistic.

[13:07]

There is a tendency in Buddhism to be theistic. I think Buddhism pushes the envelope of theism without being theistic. the Mahayana pushes the envelope of theism without being theistic, because we talk about Buddha nature, we talk about the alaya-vijnana and so forth. So these are all, if we're not careful, they fall into the realm of theism. So mostly practitioners and scholars try to avoid falling into theism and We don't deny God, we don't deny the presence or the understanding or the idea of God, but we don't go there, we don't settle on that. We know that there's something that is the basis of everything,

[14:15]

unified field, so to speak, but we don't think of it in terms of a god. So, Westerners regard it as a non-theistic religion, and as Unlike Western theistic religions, which are based on a dualistic subject-object structure, as expressed in the faith-in construction, faith-in deity, that subject-object, I believe in. So I believe in something that's subject-object construction, even though I think the higher understanding of theistic religions is that the presence of God is within you, not outside, but nevertheless, religion is still based on a subject-object relationship

[15:37]

So, the East Asian tradition of Mahayana Buddhism is based on a non-dual Ti-Yung, or essence function construction. According to East Asian Mahayana Buddhism, faith does not require an object. Rather, it is a natural function, of one's own originally enlightened mind, understood as tea or essence. Consequently, the concept of faith in East Asian Mahayana Buddhism represents a challenge to Western theistic religions and demonstrates that there are serious alternatives to the dualistic faith-in construction. In other words, it's possible that there is a religion that does not have the face-in construction, because what people usually think of as religion is the face-in deity.

[16:58]

People often don't think that Buddhism is a religion, or that Zen especially. It's all kinds of things, but it's not a religion. Sometimes I say to people, well, it's whatever you think it is, but it's the essence function. The function of the essence is faith. So what is this essence? And so when we say essence, it's like the sixth ancestor says, you should not stray from your essence of mind. Don't stray from essence. What is essence of mind? You could say that essence of mind is an aspect of deity, but we don't think of essence of mind as a deity, and mind has many connotations in Buddhism. Essence of mind is the essential quality

[18:05]

that ties everything together, that's at the basis of everything. Yes. Who's they? Yeah. Well, you know, it's a... I will get to that. But I don't want to start talking about that now, but Zen is considered other power, I mean self-power, right? And Pure Land is considered other power because Amida Buddha took a vow to lead everyone to the Pure Land, who chants the name of Buddha. It's a simple way. So there's this thing of other power, and Zen is self-power, salvation through your own effort, right?

[19:19]

But in the end, self-power and other power is the same thing, because self and other is the same. But I'll elaborate more on that later. So, in the tradition of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism, the role of faith is central. The Huayen school, which is based on the Huayen Jing, or flower adornment scripture, is usually regarded as having achieved the highest degree of philosophical systematization in East Asian Buddhism. It's called the Avatamsaka Sutra, and if you've ever looked at the Avatamsaka Sutra, which is considered in the hierarchy of sutras as the last word of Buddha,

[20:20]

three inches wide and very small print. And there are 39 chapters that are put together and if you start to read it, you should stay with it. But the 39th chapter is called is really the chapter in which Sudhana visits 52 teachers and they each teach him something, and these are called the 52 stages. That's sort of faith, isn't it? Oh absolutely, yes, faith is staying with it, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, well you know there are faith types and doubt types, and a lot of the people who come to Soto Zen wonder why they're here, because they're doubt types.

[21:40]

So somebody like Dogen, Suzuki Roshi, and I have to say myself, are face types, you know. And I know many people who are down types, you know. So face type is like, soko zen is kind of a face-based practice. with some doubt, and Rinzai Zen is a doubt-faced practice with some faith. So the faith is kind of not brought out so much in Rinzai Zen, and the doubt is not so much brought out in Soko Zen. So Rinzai Zen is systematically to create this strong ball of doubt which hopefully will explode and then you find yourself in a land of enlightenment.

[22:48]

And Soto Zen is creating moment-by-moment inner harmony. The element that goes hand-in-hand, at least in my experience of reading or trying to read out the Tantra Sutra, is effort. Effort, yeah. Effort. So, to have the faith necessitates making the effort inseparable from the faith. Well, that's right, yeah. It takes a lot of effort to read out the Tantra. I think what it is, it's like it takes effort to enter, and then you find once you're into it, then you're coast. You have to persist.

[23:53]

I have to admit, I've never been able to get past the first page. But one day I will. This is my goal. I'm really getting revved up for it. Does that person have less faith, or using less faith? No, let me say, you have nothing to do with faith.

[24:56]

Faith just is. You don't call it up, you don't create it, you don't try to... It's a quality, it's not an entity. Does it take on different flavors or different colors or something when it's combining with the persistence versus... I think faith is something that's just always there. It's not necessarily that it comes and goes. With essence function, there's no backsliding because there's no place to go. With the faith in construction, there's a place to go and you can fall back.

[26:06]

But with essence function, there's no place to go because it's all one thing. So it's not like you're calling up faith or something like that. The fact that as soon as you enter into practice, faith is there. Sometimes people say, well, I don't have any faith. I've been practicing for 10 years and I don't have faith. You just don't understand it until you have it. Yeah. Would you say that it's accepting the world as it is? Well, that's great faith. Accepting the world as it is is, yeah, an act of great faith. It has a different flavor.

[27:13]

Well, belief is okay, but faith is beyond belief. Yeah. It doesn't depend on a belief system. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking about the difference between faith and belief. And for me, belief is kind of static, and faith, to me, you know, just like reading the Avatamsaka Sutra, that you have the faith, but that's, you know, reified by the action that you take. Well, yes, action, that's right, action itself, you know, is faith. You know, we can't take a step without it. Actually, we cannot take a step without it. We just don't realize that that's there.

[28:15]

But did you ever think about like hesitation? You may be able to, all your life you've been walking and see you've been stepping off curbs, not in the curbs all your life, you're thinking about it, but one day you have self-consciousness and you misstep because you're hesitating. And you've broken your faith. You've broken that faith that was there that you just took for granted. So we take faith for granted, but it's there all the time in everything that we do, actually. You cannot live without it. But we characterize it in different ways. There's an interesting article in the New Yorker this last year about these critics of religion and faith, which is very interesting because they're thinking about it in certain ways that totally missed the mark.

[29:30]

It's backsliding within faith because faith and doubt are intimately connected. If we see doubt as different, as something separate from faith, This creates a big problem when we see doubt as disconnected from faith. Doubt and faith work together. Actually, you need doubt in order to proceed with faith. So doubt, it's fine to have doubt. You should have, there should be doubt. because doubt is like stairs, you know, faith without doubt becomes rudderless and doubt without faith has no meaning.

[31:12]

They're complementary, they're not really ... even though they seem opposites, they're complementary. So there's faith and there's skepticism. I mean, excuse me, doubt and skepticism. Doubt ... skepticism is an extreme form of doubt, which is standing outside. So, as long as you're inside, as long as you're inside a practice, there's doubt and there's faith. But skepticism tends to stand outside, and then whatever you're looking at becomes objectified. And when it's objectified, it's no longer real. So you can stand outside and criticize everything, and you unreal it. You make everything unreal. So that's easy to do. It's easy to be a critic, standing outside and be a critic. You just make everything logically unreal.

[32:20]

So faith actually makes things real, even though there's some forms of faith that create illusions. That's why faith needs doubt, because the doubt is a counteracting or balancing factor for faith and keeps it real, keeps it going out to deep end. Because if you look at a lot of the religious practices which are based on faith, based on the subject-object faith, they're crazy, you know, basically it's insanity. So it needs to have doubt to control it and balance it. Broken faith.

[33:27]

Are you speaking about... Oh, broken faith. Broken. Broken. Okay. Attachment to something outside of doubt and faith. Attachment to something outside of doubt? I'm not sure I understand. Okay. You spoke of broken faith, or... I thought I heard... Oh, he said broken, yeah. Or he said... I didn't say broken, oh brokenness, brokenness, not broken fate. Brokenness means smashing the ego, that's what that means. It's a funny term, but it's an Asian term which means smashing the illusions. Yeah, that isn't what I'm talking about.

[34:30]

Okay. I may be using the wrong term, and I can stop. But no, but what do you mean? I was talking about stepping out of the practice. Uh-huh, oh yeah. Okay, and I was calling that breaking the faith, but forget it. But stepping out of the practice and I was trying to determine if that was from some kind of attachment. you know, it's easy to criticize. And I was thinking of the critical faculty being an attachment to something else. So you step outside of the whole practice, step outside of that whole process. And so to explore what the attachment is that makes you step out could help you get back into it. You know, we actually, we very rarely is practice a straight line.

[35:33]

It's always going like this, you know. And so sometimes we think we're out of it, you know, and sometimes we do something else. But you can, once you practice and you have actually realized that phase, you always have it, no matter what you do. I know people, they've stopped practicing, they go to New York, they do all kinds of things that are considered not practice, like going to New York. Twenty, thirty years later they say, you know, I never forgot my practice, no matter what they're doing. And they invariably say, I'm really happy that this practice is still going on.

[36:41]

Yeah? When you say that the idea of faith in something, is that an illusion? Well, it's a subject against the object. You're making an object out of, you're creating a duality by, you know, in a sense, faith in and essence function at some point come together. So even though you have a faith in practice, it can also be an essence function practice. That's possible. But our understanding is that essence function is enlightened practice, because what it depends on is enlightenment and not something outside of yourself.

[37:57]

So enlightenment first and then practice. Sudden enlightenment and gradual practice. Sudden enlightenment, we can discuss that, but I want to continue, I haven't got past the first page yet. It's like the all-the-time Sankha Sutra, but the thing is that we're creating the Sutra as we go along. Is it time for 40 minutes? God, that much to ask? Okay, just stand up and no talking, please. So I was talking about actually the Huayan sutra, Huayan Buddhism, Huayan thought is a Chinese school.

[39:02]

A monk named Fatsang was the third patriarch and he's the most well-known patriarch of the Hawaiian school, which is based on the Avatamsaka Sutra. And Hawaiian thought is very much the philosophical basis of Zen. more than any other, because Hoi An thought is the interpenetration of all phenomena, and the interpenetration of essence and function, and the understanding of interdependent arising. And you've heard of the Jewel Net of Indra, this is the school which produced the Jewel Net of Indra, where every jewel is reflecting all the others, so it's the really cosmic sutra.

[40:16]

So he says, in the tradition of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism, the role of faith is central The Huayen school, which is based on the Huayen Ching, or the flower adornment scripture, or the Avatamsaka Sutra, is usually regarded as having achieved the highest degree of philosophical systematization in East Asian Buddhism, as interpreted by such ancestors of the Huayen school as Fat Tsang, 643-712, and Ching Kuan, The Huayan Qing outlines a scheme of 52 stages in the career of bodhisattvas. The first 10 of these are called the 10 faiths, shir shin, I'm sorry, shir shin, 10 faiths. And the last stage of marvelous enlightenment, myao chow, is defined as the perfection of faith.

[41:25]

So this structure, therefore, reflects a primacy of faith in the Hoi An system of thought. So in the two major traditions of East Asian Buddhist practice, which are Chan and Pure Land faith, again, has a... I'm sorry. In the two major traditions of East Asian Buddhist practice, Chan and Pure Land, faith, again, has a primary role. The Chan or meditation school understands faith to be a state of conviction or resoluteness that keeps one firmly rooted in practice, whereas the Pure Land school understands faith to be total reliance on Amida Buddha's 48 Vows of Compassion as the sole means of being born in the Pure Land. Therefore, whereas Chan faith is a form of self-power, Japanese jiriki, Pure Land faith is a form of other power, tariki, yet despite this crucial distinction, faith in both cases is considered to be the primary cause of salvation.

[42:38]

So whether it's faith in or essence function, Faith is at the basis of both. Yeah. Yep, just mainly speak up. I wonder if faith in is the first step sometimes. I think right now I have faith in... In what? In Buddhism, for example. Oh, I see, yeah. It's sort of, it's other... And that's how I got here. Yeah. It can be. but it doesn't have to be. I think we have to be careful not to be critical and comparative, too comparative. There is a comparative thing going on, but we have to be careful not to be critical of it,

[43:45]

within the comparison, critical meaning superior feeling, so simply look at it as it is. So I think that if you come from a Judeo-Christian in religion, basically it's faith in. So then when you start to practice Zen, it's essence function. So yes, you could say that you could use that as a step, but it's not, you don't have to So, later maybe I can talk a little more about what the Pure Land School is about, but as you probably know, even about the three times, there was a prediction that

[45:14]

in the first 500 years after Buddha was called the authentic practice and then the second 500 years was called the imitation practice or the false, not false, but what's that called? Anyway, the further you get from Buddha's time, the harder it is to practice. And the third stage was called Mapo, which happened to be around the time of Shinran and Dogen in Japan. And the stage of Mapo was supposed to be impossible to find salvation through practice, according to that.

[46:17]

prediction. I don't know who made that up, but anyway, you can see though how it is, because the further you get away from the founder, the more distorted the practice gets, until finally it looks like something else, like look at Christianity in America. Is that the founder's practice? Some of it is, yeah, some of it is, but Wow, some of it gets really far from the founder's understanding, and in Buddhism too. So, the age of Mapo was when Dogen and Shinran both lived, and Shinran was in Japan, of course Pure Land School developed in China, but Shinran was the one who brought it to its conclusion in Japan, and Dogen brought Zen from China. So Shinran said because of Mapo, the age of Mapo, it's impossible to find salvation through practice.

[47:31]

So he developed a practice, a Chinese practice, further developed a Chinese practice of Amida's 48 vows of saving people and you don't have to practice. It's all you have to do. And then you would be, you know, Amida would lead you to the pure land. So that's the Buddhist faith in practice. Whereas Dogen said, don't pay any attention to that. You can find salvation through practice. You know, forget mapo. So Dogen developed the essence function practice, which is enlightenment is practice and practice is enlightenment, and faith is what holds it all together.

[48:33]

So those are the two streams which is being talked about here. If you read the Platform Sutra, Huineng says, pure land is your own mind. When you practice according to the various instructions of practice, you find the pure land in your own mind. It's not somewhere in the East or the West. Yes? Well, yes, that's right. But the two poems are complementary, because this is what I've always maintained, is that the Hui Neng's poem is about essence, and Shen Xu's poem is about function.

[50:02]

Right, I agree, and I think that's kind of where Right, yeah, he brings that out, he brings out that point, that's right. So, although it has been an important role in East Asian Mahayana Buddhism, the concept of faith has been largely neglected by modern Buddhologists, not only in the West, but in the East as well. Even contemporary Japanese Buddhist scholarships with its enormous output of scholarly work has produced no major systematic studies of Buddhist faith, except the other power faith practiced in Pure Land Buddhism. The self-power faith, supported by Chan, which is Zen, remains almost completely unexplored. Faith is discussed with some frequency in the traditional East Asian commentaries,

[51:04]

in relation to important passages in the sutras that mention faith. However, none of these commentaries presents a systematic doctrine of faith, and none raises any important critical questions about faith. Thus, the concept of faith still represents a major gap in our understanding of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism. Why has faith been neglected in modern Buddhist scholarship? One reason is that, although many Buddhist sutras emphasize the importance of faith, they say very little about the nature of faith, and even that tends to be obscure. The Ta Chang Chir Shin Lun, or the Treatise on Awakening Mahayana Faith, I mentioned that before, which is the key Mahayana Buddhist text on the subject of faith contains no extensive discussion or analysis of faith, and wherever it does provide, for example, extolations of faith in the three treasures, that is the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, or the means for perfecting one's faith through the six perfections of the Paramitas, is usually very traditional.

[52:12]

Furthermore, traditional East Asian Buddhist commentators apparently assumed that faith was not something to be systematically analyzed, critically questioned, or objectified by reason, but something to be aroused in one's heart and lived by. So it can be excused on those grounds. It's not something to be analyzed, but as a matter of fact, it is. So we're maybe trying to close the gap a little bit. The perfection of the Awakening Mahayana Faith does have a short chapter on faith, but the treatise itself is a very seminal work which outlines the Mahayana doctrines in a succinct way, and practices, and a lot of stuff is based on it.

[53:19]

And when I looked at the chapter on faith, it's okay, but it doesn't say anything that special. Well, there's something called the determined class and the undetermined class. The determined class is like the classification of those who are determined to do something. So, what kind of faith should a person have and how should that person practice it? And the answer, briefly, Answer is, briefly, there are four kinds of faith. The first is the faith in the ultimate source, Buddha nature, or however you want to say it. Because of this faith, a person comes to meditate with joy on the principle of suchness.

[54:26]

The second is the faith in the mind, I'm sorry, in the numberless excellent qualities of the Buddhas. Because of this faith, a person comes to meditate on them always, to draw near to them in fellowship, to honor them and to respect them, developing a capacity for goodness and seeking after the all-embracing knowledge. The third is the faith in the great benefits of the Dharma, teaching. Because of this faith, a person comes constantly to remember and practice various disciplines leading to enlightenment. The fourth is the faith in the Sangha, whose members are able to devote themselves to the practice of benefiting both themselves and others. Because of this faith, a person comes to approach the assembly of bodhisattvas constantly and with joy and to seek instruction from them in the correct practice. So there are five ways of practice which will enable a person to perfect their faith.

[55:30]

Charity, I would say dana, giving, generosity, precepts, patience, zeal, and cessation of illusions and clear observation. Letting go of illusions. So how should a person practice charity? So then they go on to explain, the sutra goes on to explain what these five So I'm not going to read all those. Generosity, observing the precepts, patience, zeal, or energy, and cessation of illusions and clear observation. I think it probably means samatha and vipassana, stilling the mind and perceiving with clear observations, probably a form of that, but then it goes on to explain what those five are or to elaborate on them, and that's about it.

[57:04]

but I don't want to go into that because that's a little bit more than I want to, it's straying from the text too much, but that will all come up later. So, to begin closing this large gap in the field of Buddhist studies, I have attempted to write a systematic book on the dynamics of Mahayana Buddhist faith. Rather than adopt a philological and historical approach, I have analyzed the structure of Mahayana Buddhist faith on philosophical grounds. I have also raised various critical questions about the nature of faith. For example, what is the relation between faith and salvation in Buddhism? Buddhism is not simply a philosophy of life. It is also a religion with soteriological concerns, yet there always exists a kind of gap between theory and practice. What bridges this gap? It is faith. The act of arousing faith allows one to advance from a merely intellectual understanding of Buddha's teachings to the levels of practice and salvation.

[58:10]

Well, I think that's right. To intellectualize doesn't take faith, but to actually practice brings things alive, brings Buddhism alive. So faith is like the juice. Do you need the intellectual part? Well, your mind needs food. So your mind craves, some people's minds don't crave much food. But some people's, you know, yeah, you need food for thought. So you want to understand intellectually what is happening intuitively. So yes, we should understand, we should, but we shouldn't mistake one for the other.

[59:17]

It's like there are two mountains. One mountain is the mountain of, the mountain of, I'm trying to remember this. The mountain where, at the top of the mountain is the essence, and on the other mountain is the mountain of understanding. So the mountain that reaches to the essence is the main mountain, that's number one, and the mountain of understanding is number two. This is the most important one, but this one is also important. So this is called the first principle and this is called the second principle. The first principle is just the thing itself. The second principle is about the thing itself.

[60:19]

So we may feel, well, the thing itself is enough, maybe. But for most of us, about the thing is also important. So you may have a pretty good grasp of practice, but you may also be a little bit ignorant. It's good to be stupid, but not in that way. It's good to know that you're always at the beginning. So the act of arousing faith allows one to advance from a merely intellectual understanding of Buddhist teachings to the levels of practice and salvation. For this reason, the initial act of awakening faith is the most difficult to achieve.

[61:24]

This, perhaps, is why faith is the most neglected topic in all of modern Buddhist scholarship. This is one reason why there are so few people practicing, but there are a lot of people who use the word Dharma and Buddha and so forth, you know, quibbly. There aren't so many Buddhist practitioners. It's not, I mean, when you think of the number of number of people who do things, who talk about Buddhism and study Buddhism. Very few people practice comparatively. Do you mean sit? Yeah, well, sit or have a sincere practice, which means putting your body and mind on the line.

[62:33]

But that's okay, it's just the way it is, I mean it's too hard for most people. Not only too hard, but too hard to get through all the stuff that you have accumulated, climbing over your pile to get there and stay there. In this study, I have called attention to a critical distinction between two radically different kinds of Buddhist faith, established by the celebrated Korean monk, Chino, 1158 to 1210. Ancestral faith, which in Korean is cho-shin, in Chinese, zu-shin, and doctrinal faith, whereas, okay, sorry, Anyway, there are these two kinds, you know, he's talking about this terminology which is established by Chi Nul, who is a very renowned Korean monk.

[63:50]

And Chi Nul, actually, I'm going to be referring to him a lot because he really made this very clear. So, whereas doctrinal faith is the belief that I can become Buddha, ancestral faith is the affirmation that I am already Buddha. So this is a very interesting distinction, and in Japan nowadays, you know, there's a kind of questioning of whether this is really true Buddhism or not, that I already am Buddha, Because in the history of Buddhism, the teachers would always talk about it takes at least three lifetimes of continuous practice to become a Buddha, and probably more.

[64:53]

But the Zen and Mahayana folks reduce that to what you can actually do it in one lifetime. And then, hey, we're already Buddha. Yes. Well, I think Kosan would say it's not that I am already Buddha, it's that Buddha is already me. Yes, well, Buddha is already me and I'm Every time you say one side of it, you have to also, otherwise you fall into that problem. If you say this is right and that's not right, you create a problem. So as soon as you say Buddha is me, I understand where you're coming from. It's also true that I am Buddha. So Suzuki Roshi said, we're half Buddha and half ordinary beings.

[66:01]

You know, he brought that out in his own way. And I've talked about that quite a bit, actually, in the past few years. You may not have heard it, but I did. Yes? This becoming Buddha as opposed to being Buddha already reminds me very much of a reassurance and a distinction between reassurances that I heard years ago that I thought was useful. the difference between saying, it's going to be okay, and saying, it's okay. It's okay, yeah. I like that. But, I am Buddha, and I'm also becoming Buddha. I am enlightened, but I'm becoming enlightened. It's like, in order to, although I am already Buddha, in order to manifest Buddha, we have to practice. And although we're already enlightened, in order to manifest enlightenment, we have to practice.

[67:07]

So you could call it latency, but we have to be careful there. But I think I like latency, actually. It's like, we are Buddha, but we're also latent. You know, yeah. Didn't Suzuki Roshi say you're perfect the way you are and you could use a little improvement? You can use a little improvement. You can still use improvement, yes. Right. So, everything is a process. There's nothing but process. So, whereas doctrinal faith is the belief that I can become Buddha, patriarchal faith is the affirmation that I am already Buddha. Even within traditional East Asian Buddhism itself, the notion of ancestral faith is not well known. The kind of faith usually discussed by Buddhist scholars is doctrinal faith, or the faith that one has the potential to become Buddha through a gradual process of faith, understanding, practice, and enlightenment.

[68:18]

However, against this tradition, I argue that patriarchal or ancestral faith is a much more potent idea than doctrinal faith. having important consequences at the levels of practice and enlightenment. So, you know, Dogen was very much familiar with all of this, and he was very familiar with the Hoi An school of Buddhism, and he doesn't mention that, but the more you understand the Hoi An teaching, you understand more about Dogen. Just like Suzuki Goshi never mentions any of these schools, but the more you understand them, the more you understand what he understands about them. The issue of ancestral faith versus doctrinal faith provides a new vantage point for understanding one of the most controversial debates in East Asian Buddhism, which is sudden enlightenment versus gradual enlightenment.

[69:25]

Whereas the doctrinal faith that I can become Buddha is the basis of gradual enlightenment, the act of arousing ancestral faith that I am already Buddha is the basis of sudden enlightenment." So sudden enlightenment is realizing, oh, I am Buddha, or Buddha is me, as Bob says, as Tozan says. It is me, but I am not it. So, when we realize we're already Buddha, then everything falls into place at once. And so, gradual enlightenment is called stepladder practice, and Suzuki Rishi's talked about this a lot. we don't want to fall into step-letter practice. And this is one of the difficulties of Soto Zen, is because in most, like in Tibetan Buddhism and in most other schools of Buddhism, there's step-by-step practices.

[70:38]

You read through this stage, and then you study this, and then you progress gradually from your unenlightened state to enlightenment. But in sotas then, you start from enlightenment and have gradual practice. So... I'm sorry, I was just thinking, you start from enlightenment and it's all downhill from there. It's all downhill from there! But you don't have realization. Our enlightened mind is what brings us to practice. We wouldn't be practicing if our enlightened mind didn't bring us to practice. That is, if we are practicing for the right reasons. But we don't always practice for the right reasons. We don't necessarily know why we come to practice. We have various ideas, but we don't necessarily realize that Buddha is actually leading

[71:49]

ordinary being to practice. So being half Buddha, half ordinary being, in practice we give the lead to Buddha and when we stray from that we take the lead and Buddha follows. So in practice we want to give the lead to me to practice, so I'm both Buddha and sentient being, this is essence and function, and this is the basis of faith. We turn ourself over to Buddha, which is ourself, not something outside of ourself. That's where everything works, yeah.

[73:19]

So that's allowing harmony to work itself out, creating harmonious situation with everything, with our surroundings. So deep ecology, So we have a few more minutes. So he says, thus I have raised another important question. Is sudden enlightenment possible? My contention is that if sudden enlightenment is possible at all, then it is achieved only by the arousal of an ancestral faith. I also reconsidered the more traditional debate between self-power faith, as in Chan, or Zen, and other power faith, as in Pure Land, from the standpoint of the debate between ancestral and doctrinal faith, in order to show that ancestral faith can be approached from either the direction of self-power or that of other power.

[74:38]

So Alan one time brought up He said, well, isn't this being kind of dualistic? But he's saying here that patriarchal faith can be approached from either the direction of self-power or other power. So another philosophical problem I have considered is that of non-backsliding faith. This book, Awakening of Mahayana Faith, talks about non-backsliding faith. Another problem I have considered is that of non-backsliding faith, putuishin versus backsliding faith. Right faith in Buddhism is equivalent to ancestral faith.

[75:42]

In East Asian Buddhism, the criterion for right faith is usually that it be non-backsliding or non-retrogressive. Therefore, I have raised the question, is a non-backsliding faith possible? Again, my contention is that if a non-backsliding faith is possible, it is only possible on the basis of the arousal of an ancestral faith. or the affirmation that I am Buddha. However, if it is true that I am already Buddha, why should I perform spiritual practice? This problem, as well, is illustrated by the Huayen theory of 52 stages, according to which all 52 stages in the life of a bodhisattva interpenetrate, so that the last stage of marvelous enlightenment is already contained in the first stage of initial faith. We say our practice is beginner's mind, but a beginner's mind is also the end.

[76:46]

The end is in the beginning and the beginning is in the end. The beginner's mind contains everything. The question I want to ask, because I don't see that he actually addresses it in the book, is what is non-backsliding faith? The implication of it is that once, to me, from reading this, is that once you have manifest this kind of faith, you have no doubt about who's nature. You're the faith type, I'm the doubt type, but I've never met anybody whose existence was absolutely without doubt.

[78:00]

That is not backsliding. No, backsliding. Backsliding means that you can't get out of it. It's like, once you're out of your mother's womb, you can't backslide. OK, so that means, I'm just trying to get this, I'm trying to get it clear because I think the language is a little vague. So in other words, what you're saying is that once you have entered this realm of essence-function, then it forever defines you, defines your consciousness, your existence in a certain way. Well, it's that there's no gap between essence and function. So there's no place to go. Backsliding means when you're reaching for something and you backslide.

[79:03]

You can't hang on to it. That's the problem, the problem with essence, with doctrinal faith is that you're reaching for something and you're struggling to hold on to it, to get to it, and then all the other things bring, you know, all this stuff in the way brings you down and you backslide. you may have obstacles and difficulty with ancestral faith, you're still there. We don't say you're breaking the presets.

[79:52]

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