So, here's my question for discussion on the Hipforums Hinduism forum. Is it possible to have faith that is not blind? How is faith different in Hinduism as opposed to Abrahamic religions? Furthermore, why is it so easy to doubt and so hard to have faith? How do we know that what we have faith in is the right path and we aren't just kidding ourselves.
chanting. there are different processes of chanting on beads in different religions, but the mahamantra is unique (as far as i'm aware) because krishna and his name are the same. it's like a drug. you can speculate theoretically about an altered state of reality, and you can believe it's possible, or not. but when you actually have that experience, it seems stupid to deny it afterwards. it's just inconcievable without experience. after the fact, or during it, at that point, it's ridiculous to say, "maybe i'm making it all up." no. you did something, which produced this affect. something else entered into you and changed your consciousness. transcendental is a perfect word for krishna consciousness. today in bhagavad gita class, our teacher said, "have you ever been in the middle of a roaring kirtan and had any desire to go back to material doubts and anxieties? have you ever stopped and though, 'i need a cigarette'?" it's so interactive. krishna always reciprocates. you can see it book distributing. of the people who actually stop to talk, half of them mention something that happened last week or something they just said to a friend that convinces you that the two of you meeting at that exact moment is too miraculous to be coincidence. things just open up for you. you start to see analogies and metaphors in everything. it's transcendental, and krishna reciprocates whenever you make some effort. it's a transcendental snowball .
I can't remember any scriptural evidence that talks about faith , but If something has a liberating experience for you, let it be something as trivial as going out and getting some ice cream in the middle of winter, then the idea that it will relieve you of the stress of life sticks with you... this in my humble opinion is faith. However, the ice cream providing stress relief at one case is by coincidence- you felt like eating the ice cream, it may not provide stres relief in another instance- But the idea that God is everywhere and with us all times provides comfort that is not there in these short lived desires for things- IMHO, This is also the same kind of faith. Actually when you come to think of it , this faith is everywhere. Take archeology for example, the idea that you could make assertions about an empire from the sparse findings of pottery pieces, some old coins is pretty far fetched... but we trust it to some degree and believe in the importance of such evidence in the context of explaining about a past culture or empire . Similarly, when synthesizing a drug for medical purposes , we try to test it on cells inside and outside of various species. This is because we have faith in reproduciblity of results will give us a certain idea about whether to use the drug in real settings or not. Here, the faith is in reproducibility. I guess the point I am trying to make by this crazy explanation is that, faith exists in various forms in various disciplines and it is the same faith. However, if your question is about how to strengthen faith... well that depends on the individual. For instance, if something does not seem to be right, maybe you should look deep into your heart and see what you truly believe in. I guess the point here would be, if you know yourself and know what you want to truly believe in, then you will have faith in what you believe to be true. , yes its a circular argument.
faith implies living in a reality constructed upon pillars of logic and a reality sill reverberating in the shackles of mind just living feeling, breathing, living, loving without any other reason than it is
Faith is really a first step. It is necessary to have faith in order to be able to do anything. One has to believe in the possibility of what one is trying to do. So if you want to have an experience of spiritual reality, then you have to begin with faith that this is a possiblity. You also need faith in yourself - in your own capacity to have such experience. Part of the problem with judeo-christian religion, is that it often goes no further than faith - or 'belief'. I 'd say that's at least in part because they lack a methodology which can actually give direct spiritual experience. Often in fact, what are described as spiritual experiences by xians are in fact emotional experiences. One of the problems with the thing in general is that often that in which people place their faith is far too complicated and over constructed. For instance, xians say you have to have faith not only that the divine exists and that coming to know it is a possibility, but that you ned to have faith in a particular historic figure - Jesus - and also in the scheme of salvation - Jesus death and ressurrection etc, and also that the bible is the word of god etc etc. There are many items in which belief is required in order to say 'I have faith'. The entire content of the apostle's creed really. Trouble is, that there is no way to ascertain if the historic version of c/anity is correct. If we go into the detail of the creed for example, it says stuff like 'the holy spirit proceeds from the father and the son' ( just the father in orthodoxy - that's the basis of the rift between eastern and western churches) Such matters are IMO irrelevant, but if you don't believe and have faith that it is so, then you don't have complete christian or at lease catholic faith. Other than the general belief in a higher power and that we can know it, the rest is like 'add-on' stuff IMO such a faith is over-constructed. In the case of other religions, say Islam, different articles of faith are required - one god, one prophet etc. Such faith is more likely to be a block to spiritual opening in my view. It simply gives a certain intellectual content to the mind, which can preclude the entry of any other idea. Thus those who have been proggrammed with, or have proggrammmed themselves with the beliefs of a particular system are often narrow minded and incapable of seeing beyond this or that system. Often too they lack any direct spiritual experience, and substitute a kind of emotionality based on their 'belief' in the details of their own religion. Similar to the way patriotic people get worked up about their flag or other national institutions. With things like eastern religions, shamanism and so on, faith is also necesary, but it is more a faith that if one follows certain procedures and practices, it will lead to direct experience. Why have faith in a particular method? I'd say that unless we can see that it has worked for others we should be very careful in this. Perhaps that's partly why Krishna says a living guru figure is useful - not because we can then worship them, or that they can actually give us enlightenement, but because in them we can see the results of yoga practice. Same applies with Zen masters and so on. If a person looked at various systems of spiritual develpment ect they would notice all the differences in the details. But they might come to the conclusion that there is definitely 'something'. Perhaps it has been seen and dsecribed by different people in different ways in the past. It would then seem reasonable to have faith that some experience of this 'something' is a definite possibilty. Beyond that, I think faith can often be a dangerous thing. We should only beieve that which we can verify ourselves. Faith that there is a higher power in general is ok. Faith in one's own experience of this is ok - faith in the over developed systems of a particular religion not so great.
Hare Krishna! From Prismatism....... ......it's so interactive. krishna always reciprocates. ....it's transcendental, and krishna reciprocates whenever you make some effort. it's a transcendental snowball. It is so nice ! Dear Prism, thank you. Yes, He does reciprocate. It is clearly felt and understood whenever an effort is made to know that. Love.
Thank you all for your beautiful responses. I wanted to post this thread because I wanted to try something different for a change as far as discussion is concerned... that and sometimes I, personally, have a difficulty keeping faith in this day and age...I go to a university and you know...while that has strengthened my faith...also I have found some doubts as well all do. I feel that sometimes we have such strong spiritual experiences that we could never even *dream* of doubting not only the existance of God but also that our spirituality is real, whole, and deep. I suppose faith boils down to how much we give to it, how much we sincerely offer ourselves to recieve Grace. Offering ourselves and having the courage to do so ...I think that is faith. I think that is a faith that is beyond perhaps any religion.... because its something universal...you want to experience God and talk to Him/Her ...you need to put yourself out there that you know you are gonna feel that something within you. Its a really hard thing to do...esp. in this time and place...esp. in this country when its so very easy to be ashamed of spirituality because to be spiritual people assume that you a crazy person who doesn't believe in science...but you don't always want to keep it to yourself...because the great Joy you feel doesn't want you to. I suppose that that's what I feel about faith. Its such a great virtue ...but it one you have to work to strengthen. Thank you all for your beautiful responces...and thank you Jedi for that archaeology analogy...I swear you played right into my heart. hehe. Yes, though you can back up a lot of archaeological evidence with scienctific means (dating and statistical surveys) ...reconstructing the past indeed takes a bit of faith and I think that that is a good analogy to having faith here and now. At least the archaeologist in me likes it.
Myself, I have faith in the universe. Just to pick up on one point there - the thing about people thinking that to be spiritual is to be un-scientific - I think that again, it comes from having faith in over-constructed sytems. To some, like the 'young-earth' xians, science must be false because it directly contradicts their own account of the creation and so on. They can't accept ideas such as evolution because in their minds, it's an 'all or nothing' thing to believe in a higher power. You have to believe in the whole thing as set out in the bible, or you're faith they will say is weak. It's the same with ISKCON - they won't accept many scintific findings because they run counter to their own versions of the structure of the universe etc. But it needn't be that way. Once again, it is a matter of separating the 'essential from the adventitious'. I don't think I need to say more on that. It's really quite easy to see how some things are the product of imagination and speculation in the past, which have now become dogma - imaginative storytelling which is regarded as objective history, that sort of thing. And if one has one's head stuffed full of all this extraneous material and takes it seriously, it is just a way of becoming filled when one should be striving for emptiness. I think that in order to create in ourselves the conditions for a real experience of the spiritual we need to let go of all that we think we 'know' - in fact we know nothing often beyond what we've read in this or that scripture. And there is no reason on objective grounds to accept the account of one scripture over that of another. That's why I say a general type of faith is good, but it's not good to just accept what cannot be verified or goes against what we do know of the objective world. Young earthers are a good example I think. The evidence against such a position is so overwhelming that to continue to believe in it on the basis of ancient scripture is not faith, but stupidity, fixity and narrowness - often based on fear. That's one big reason why I call myself a 'new-ager' - I think a total and radical revision of what we mean by spirituality is needed. If we do have faith in ourselves, the universe and higher intelligence, I think we could develop new forms of spirituality and 'religion' (a word I am coming to dislike quite a lot these days). If we lack such faith, then we may end up reposing what faith we do have - and it is not true faith - in stuff which is really taking things nowhere. But faith and confidence in oneself are of paramount importance even to live happily on the mundane level. BTW - good idea for a thread here.
What on earth is Mr.B on about here, some may ask. So I'll try to explain in part. Over time, I've looked into and to an extent participated in various spiritual paths. In every case, there was 'something' which attracted me to this or that belief system. But without exception, I found that all contained things with which I wasn't at all either satisfied or happy. Same thing applies with spiritual teachers. For some time, my response to becoming disatisfied with this or that system was to look at something else - but really to look at it in the same way - as some kind of 'total reality package' - something with all the answers. This has all led to problems - but these days, I see things somewhat differently. My 'faith' to begin with, such as it was, consisted only in a belief in a higher power - a higher conscious power, and a higher level of consciousness being a possibliity for human beings. Everything I did in studying religion, philosophy, yoga, magic etc was a manifestation of that basic underlying faith. So through years of varied seekings, my actaul underlying faith didn't actually either increase or decrease. I have become extremely disenchanted with certain teachings and teachers, but still the underlying thing persists. It is because of either the limitations, as I see it, or in some cases the falsity of some techers and teachings I have had to discard - along with a whole attitude towards spirituality which prevails in many cases of established systems. I have come to see the universe these days as the direct manifestation of a higher power, which is nonetheless within the universe, and not different or separate from it. So far, the universe has supported me for half a century, and somehow directed me from one learning/growth experience to another - and it's happened sometimes in spite of what in my surface consciousness I'd convinced my self I believed at that point in time. I have no reason to think the universe will fail or let us down or turn out to be 'wrong'! So my attitude now is to trust in the universe. And to try to act always with kindness towards other parts of the universe, like other people, animals, plants even....everything is precious, alive with the universal life. The stars are love........... It's true that like everyone I will eventually die - and perahps move on to inhabit a different layer of the universal manifestation that we don't now know about or see. Maybe not. Maybe death is the end. In which case I'd rather have spiritual bliss, paradise etc here and now. But somehow my feeling is that things are in reality much much more amazing than even the most enlightened and imaginative of human beings has ever concieved. Hope that makes at least some sense.
be careful how much encouragement you give that cowboy... he's already brainwashed driving his motorcycle over the cliff at full speed
Hare Krishna! From dear CCP : be careful how much encouragement you give that cowboy... he's already brainwashed driving his motorcycle over the cliff at full speed Dear Chief, He is as brainwashed as I am. It is His encouragement that He gets back in reciprocation. Hope, He takes me on His motorcycle and drives all over the places. Love.
While I may not agree with everything BlackBillBlake says, these statements are great. Faith is the basis of it all.
disagree, faith is eating one's own puke don't concern yourself what you know is true discover, create... be
Yeah...I agree with you...that's what makes faith hard...when you are looking at it from that kind of point of view...but I figure... faith is not something that we can touch or understand...rather...it is something we have to develop and work on... it takes time...its hard when you are in the middle of two paths...and you try to make truth out of both of them... but truth...perhaps...is beyond the physical relm of human understanding...and you need to experience it in a place beyond words... its not really the answer I'm looking for...when I wonder of whether or not I made the right choices and continue to make them... but its something I'm learning to grasp on each leap of faith I make... and learning to accept by giving my hand to my Universal Parents and letting me guide them as a Father guides his children...as a Shepard guides his sheep. This love is beyond distinction...and its something I personally need to learn to remember whenever I get caught up in the distinctions of the religions of the world... we're all looking for something to guide us when we get lost...but first we have to give up our distinctions and instead follow the music in our heart.... then one day perhaps we'll find the source of that Joyful Sound...but not before we learn to follow the music.
But doesn't that even take faith? Faith to let go, to take a chance, to give in to creativity, discovery....faith to ignore your limits and reach your full potential?
are you saying faith to let go of one's faith? that's the faith i'm talking about to go beyond the known
There are four yogas for attaining spiritual growth, Raja Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga. Iskcon is mainly an exponent of Bhakti Yoga and to a certain extent Karma Yoga. They are dead against Jnana Yoga ( the yoga of the intellect) and is also against the teaching of Advaita and the impersonal God as advocated by Advaita. Like all monotheist religions , they too have their intolerance. I myself had a nasty experience with these guys ,when I was discussing Raja Yoga in an another hindu forum. They believe that Bhakti Yoga ( the yoga of love) is the only way to salvation and bury their heads in the sand when mentioned about jnana Yogis like Ramana Maharshi, Adi Shankaracharya, and the Zen masters and other enlightened masters that have arose from practice of other yogas. Logic and reason are not their forte. However at the same time it is not correct to say that all Vaishnava or Iskcon beliefs are contradictory to science. If you analyse the avtars of Vishnu, you can see a strange similarity to the theory of evolution of life on earth. . The first avtar of Vishnu is that of matsya or fish( according to scientists life originated in water) ; the second one is that of kurma or tortoise ( the evolution of the fish to the amphibean); the third one is that of varaha or the boar(the evolution of the amphibean to the land animal ); the fourth is that of narasimha or the man-lion( the evolution of the land animal to a humanoid form with animal charecterestics ; the fifth is that of Vamana or dwarf ( the evolution of the animal-man to purely human ; the fifth is that of Parashurama (the evolution of the dwarf to a physically well developed and ferocious warrior); the sixth is that of Rama, who was considered as the maryada purushottama or the ideal man or the embodiment of righteousness and morality . The next avtar is that of Krishna , who is considered as the ideal yogi, the superman who is known for his many-sidedness and all-rounded character.(as I mentioned in War and the Bhagavad Gita). We can clearly see an order of evolution in these avtars of Vishnu. I am just stating this for the sake of information. I don't subscribe to Iskcon's following of Bhakti Yoga only. I believe that Swami Vivekananda's advocation of a harmonious combination of Jnana Yoga, karma Yoga, Bhakti yoga and raja yoga is superior to this. This also allows the allrounded development of head, heart and hand, and helps to create a well-rounded person (like Krishna.) And this is what Hindu spiritual masters like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Mata Amritanandamayi is promoting. Though it is an easier path , Bhakti Yoga takes a longer time than the other yogas to attain enlightenment. However the bhakta yogi enjoys a lot of bliss and joy in the process of loving God. I am reminded of the Sufi spiritual master, Masood, who upon attaining enlightenment , declared that Ana Iq allah (I don't know the words correctly), which means " I am Allah" , much alike the Upanishadic verse Aham Brahmasmi , which means " I am He". He was apparently seeing himself and everything else as pure consciousness . However tragically, for this repeated statement of his, he was beheaded by Aurangzeb, at the request of his orthodox Islamic clerics in the name of blasphemy. Similarly St. Francis , a lover of Christ, was a great Bhakta Yogi himself. I believe, all spiritual aspirants should be exposed to all yogas, to all religious traditions , and after considering them all , he should select that which caters to his tastes and inclinations. He should select one, or more , or all of them if he likes and should strive for spiritual growth. And if he wants to reject all of them and wants to follow his own intellect and intuition and heart , he should be allowed to do that as well. Liberty is the condition of growth and progress.
