MY OWN WALKING - February Journal 2025

At some point in a lifetime there comes a realisation, that most of ones life has been about a central theme with streams and rivulets running off from that. And like riding on a merry-go-round you come back to this theme over and over again. As though you are worrying at it. As though you are wanting the answer to a question that you've not yet been able to fully form. As I presently understand mine, the central one has been the desire to fully know, express and realise who I truly am. Simultaneously a very human search for individual meaning and purpose has inexorably lead me down a spiritual path to ponder what the true nature of the self and reality are, and discovered quite how unfathomable this ultimate reality can be. And so the recent Check In posts have rumbled on, as though something else has yet to be given a voice. I apologise if some of the following appears to be rephrasing very similar territory. This is just me trying to tease some stray threads out.

One question has turned up - How can you meaningfully make connections and relate to an ineffable ungraspable ultimate thing, whatever you might choose to call it - God, Enlightenment, Tao etc? And a short answer might be, you can't. At least you can't intellectually, self consciously form a real connection with what is ineffable. You can only rake the soil as though in preparation. It's unknowable in any meaningful way, though you could imagine a proposition that you might relate to. Which, as I've indicated previously, are usually 3rd or 4th cousins, so very distant relations. Often made in our own image.

We anthropomorphise our Gods, our spiritual goals, because we want to have some real physical sense, however misleading, for what we are worshiping, relating with or aiming to connect too. This painted face of religious belief would be its symbols and icons, which can assume a power all their own. It makes the ineffable seem real and relatable, but this may be an expression of, but not the ineffable itself. Which is often where we trip ourselves up.

This is why the Buddha put so much emphasis on practice being the important spiritual effort. Yes, it was worthwhile studying the sutras and attempting to understand the Dharma on a deeper level. But speculating and devoting too much time and effort to debating the nature of Enlightenment? Well, that was counterproductive folly. Clarifying nothing of much worth to you spiritually. So what I'm doing here is tantamount to intellectual wanking. But, nonetheless we need to hold ourselves to something, however provisional.

And what then is faith? What is its role? What is it that we say we have faith in? Is faith a provisional proposition sufficiently true that it can be followed ? Is faith simply a hunch for what is true? I like to couch faith as an aesthetic sense for where the truth might be found. It's an intuition, a felt sense for what is ineffable. Faith can aesthetically ignite all our sensory faculties into a heightened sensitivity. And this type of faith may sustain us on the long journey towards the unknown destiny. 

It's tricky, because that faith can also seemingly falter or collapse. Dogen devoted a whole chapter of his spiritual epic Shobogenzo to mischievously riffing on the merits and demerits of a painted rice cake. Though a painted rice cake might look edible, it is a painted representation, not capable of sustaining you practically. But it might sustain you in the short term spiritually, on the journey toward a real experience of 'rice cakery.' When our faith falters its usually when we somehow catch ourselves in our faithful pretense, that this is only a painted rice cake, an artifice, a facsimile, and ask why am I kidding myself? Where is that real thing I was promised? Am I wasting my time here?  In our hunger for meaning and purpose, all religions feed us with an elaborate pretense, a bit of fabulous fakery - until what was once fake becomes real.

Buddhism actually has no direct Sanskrit equivalent for the English word faith. Instead it has the word Shraddha, that can be broken down as something we have confidence and trust in, or have some fidelity with. I love the idea of faith as a form of fidelity. A loyal identification and friendship formed with what is ungraspable by any other means. Shraddha can be couched as a friendship with the good, or for what is true. And like human friendships shraddha requires regular devotional effort if it is to be forged well and maintained. You can never take it for granted. It's important to know what your faith or sraddha requires of you in order to sustain it, and to do more of that.

For me, what reconnects and strengthens my faith has come down to three things, reading anything written by Dogen, any form of devotional ritual, and making or devising something that has sacred purpose. Even better should this purpose also benefit others.