This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. My name is Wendy Lewis and this morning I will be talking about faith and doubt and I'm talking about it again. This comes up for me a lot if I think about what practice means, why I stay at Zen Center, why I've stayed so long, what is this about, and my relationships with everyone else here and their intentions. There's many ways of looking at faith, particularly, but also doubt. I think about what atheism means sometimes.

[01:00]

And I just think about it. Is that a form of doubt or is it a form of understanding? So the founder of Soto Zen, Dogen Zenji, wrote that our vow should be to hear the true Dharma, that upon hearing it, no doubt will arise in us, nor will we lack in faith. So faith can be associated with a kind of emotional and maybe even superficial way of relating to spiritual or religious practice. But that's not what Dogon is referring to when he's talking about faith. Heejin Kim, who is a 20th century biographer of Dogon and commentator and translator, says, faith and enlightenment are often regarded as two antithetical ideas, so much so that Zen Buddhism is mistakenly thought to be exclusively the religion of enlightenment, faith being an inferior or even a foreign element, or at best, a preliminary to enlightenment.

[02:25]

But in Dogen's thought, faith and enlightenment interpenetrate each other so that without one, the other cannot be fully meaningful. The inferior status of faith is repudiated once and for all. It now becomes the very core of enlightenment. So Dogen is saying that faith is the ability to hear without the support of our, what I call, narcissistic ego. I think all of us are, to some extent, narcissists or narcissistic. We see this self-reflection always happening. And we also spend a lot of time looking at other narcissists, actors, teachers, peers, bosses. They're not all narcissists, but there's a kind of a way that we stare at certain people

[03:30]

And I once watched this film and the camera hovered so long during the film on these takes on the woman actress that after the movie I looked in the mirror and I was kind of startled. I was like, oh, it's not her, it's me, you know. And that's kind of what happened, this way of staring at these images. So I think there are times when we're more absorbed in our own reflection. And we become so self-referencing that we become unconcerned about what's happening with other people in their lives or experience. And this can be if we just had a big success or received an inheritance

[04:31]

or gotten this job, you know, and we're going to do it our way. Or, you know, times of ill health, or loss, pain. And so it can sort of push us into this narcissistic place that's kind of isolated, needy, and even conceited. I read a couple of reviews of a book by this fairly popular author whose wife had been shockingly diagnosed with cancer and died about 30 days later. So he was dealing with this. And he talked about the myopia of grief, how we get very near-sighted, and how People didn't understand him because they had never experienced such a loss.

[05:34]

They wanted him to get over it. Their friends were uncomfortable about talking after with him. But there was something about it that felt sort of uncomfortably narcissistic to me and made me think about, well, you know, how do we deal with these things? How do we sort of keep relating to people in the same way, in a certain way. Because one of the things he seemed not to think was maybe their friends were a little hesitant to talk about their own grief about the death of his wife because they didn't want to impose on him. And they were actually being sort of sympathetic in that way. So I just wondered. So my brother and my parents and my niece have all died in pretty horrible ways. Other people in my family have been ill.

[06:36]

Friends have been ill. Acquaintances have been ill and died. And in the last few years, I've had surgery on my back and on my feet. And this was after years of misdiagnosis and lots of pain. And my life got very limited because of that. I also worked in an acute care hospital for a year as a chaplain. And I've also had my share of success in getting that job, thinking I was going to change everything, and good fortune and good friends. So what I'm thinking is that it's not so much that people want us to get over our sort of celebration and elation or our pain and grief, as the narcissistic part, this idea that, you know, no one's ever suffered like I am, or look at me, you know, I'm so great.

[07:40]

Because what that does is it excludes people. They feel excluded, like, you know, oh, well, I guess I'm not so important to this person right now, or something like that. So there may be sympathy, empathy, support there, but also a kind of discomfort that they're being manipulated or sort of held hostage to another person's experience. At the same time, self-centeredness is part of success and part of the grieving process, and the sometimes you have to hang out in it for quite a long time. But it's difficult to give it up. And those fortunes and misfortunes can become the basis of our self-identity.

[08:45]

We sort of keep them. And I don't think we should renounce those feelings of success or triumph or happiness. And I don't think we ever really get over our losses. I don't think I ever will. But to see them as a part of things and that that can allow us to develop different ways of seeing ourselves and others and developing an essential kind of empathy. It doesn't mean always thinking of other people or anything like that, but this sense of inclusion, like being in it. So empathy is something that narcissistic personalities are not really able to feel or experience. And they may be very skilled, like you can watch actors and actresses being very skilled at expressing sympathy or

[09:54]

saying the right words, and you can see these little interchanges in TV shows, films, trying to show how this person is. But the intention is really that they look good. There's a way to do this right. Actually, I just was remembering when you first start training as a chaplain, for instance, you're given all these little tools of right things to say, wrong things to say, and all that sort of thing. But if you use them too much, of course they don't work. You have to internalize something about them. And I think what's really important is make the mistakes and then see what you do next. Because you get rigid if you're too worried about not getting it right. And then you can't be honest in your exchanges with people.

[10:57]

So sometimes you make these little mistakes or big mistakes, but you have to go back or you have to give up and deal with that. So what I've been thinking about in thinking about the role of narcissism is this sense of kind of acting out our lives, being looked at, reflecting other people back, and feeling judged or judging others or whatever we're doing. And it's a kind of internal and external form of what they call smoke and mirrors. I kind of see it like this. Is something really going on or is there something in between our relationships with each other and with ourselves?

[12:02]

So one way to think about it is something I read. It said, in order to deceive others, you have to deceive yourself. And I think that this self-deception is what faith in Buddhism is trying to undermine or intending to undermine ourselves. Because narcissists are very good at deceiving others. Eventually you start to say, oh, you know, when you experience someone that way, you start noticing little things that are odd. And this has happened in some Buddhist groups where scandals, you know, have been revealed. And it turns out that the teachers were dishonest insincere, lacking integrity, and everyone's shocked. How did this happen? How did this happen? And this type of narcissistic teacher can be very effective and actually help a lot of people.

[13:12]

So I just want to say that that's not part of things. But a lot of the followers, the people who are closest to them, also have narcissistic tendencies. So when something is revealed about a teacher or someone tries to say something, the response of a narcissist is to humiliate or mock the person, usually publicly, and to keep up the image. And so the students do that too. I'm completely sympathetic, particularly for those who are making this spiritual effort and needing something, some image to inspire us. These statues, that's what they're for. So what's tricky about looking at narcissism, particularly narcissism in others, is that

[14:21]

Even non-habitual narcissists act in the same ways. And as I said, this is often during times of success or something like that, and during times of stress or loss. So the difference is, if I can put that in quotes a little bit, is that if you're If you're not caught or if you notice you're caught in that narcissistic, what do you call it, archetype, you can notice it and feel regret. I read this article by a couple of theologians. It's called Coming to Terms with Our Regrets. And in the article, they refer to this film, The Big Kahuna.

[15:26]

In it, one of the characters describes regret as, when you discover the folly in something you've done and wish you've had it to do over, but you know you can't because it's too late. So you pick that thing up and you carry it with you to remind you that life goes on. So it's not exactly what you expected him to say, you know, in a way. Because regret, in this sense, is not about trying to go back and rewrite the story, or make up for our mistakes, or redo anything. But carrying these things with us to remember, recognize, and to understand our ordinary humanness. And I think that this is where faith functions. And some philosopher, theologian of the 11th century said something similar.

[16:37]

He said, for I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe this, unless I believe, I will not understand. So faith has, it's this little place where, call it in Zen, not knowing, that is what faith is. There's a Buddhist teaching on the five cardinal virtues, or faculties, and they're faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. So the all but faith are very familiar to most Buddhist practitioners, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. But the way they're introduced is that faith is the seed without which the plant of spiritual insight cannot start growing.

[17:38]

As a matter of fact, those who lack in faith can do nothing worthwhile at all. And yet the virtues, the five virtues, are meant to balance and support each other. In the Vasudhi Maga, or Path of Purification, it says, it should be understood that when any one of them is too strong, the others cannot perform their several functions. What is particularly recommended is balancing faith with understanding. Which is what I am saying. So... You could interpret this that faith is essential to the other four, but it's also the most vulnerable to narcissism. And that might be why we're very careful in Zen, particularly not to talk a lot about faith or emphasize it.

[18:42]

But Buddhist teaching is often presented in this qualified way because it's very easy to put on a mask or guise. And it's not due to lack of sincerity, but because transformation is almost impossible, which is another thing I keep sort of ending up with. You know, we wear, we've imported these outfits and these little accessories and everything, and I think that they are both about hope and a kind of denial. You know, those things are always struggling with each other. So it's useful to apply a certain amount of creative doubt to all of these things. Because the doubt that Dogen is discouraging is complacent doubt. You know, you don't really have to know anything about Buddhist history or doctrine.

[19:47]

And you don't have to follow the guidelines. And Buddhism is a better religion than any other. How can we help it? It's really difficult what we do. So it's easy to go there. And these are kind of self-justifying interpretations. And it's very easy to mistake self-justification for self-knowledge. So creative doubt has a different purpose that is the counterpart to faith. Now there's a saying that history repeats itself. What I think is that human nature is consistent.

[20:54]

You know, we think we're doing something new and that our lives have changed and often it feels great because it turns out we're doing things the same way we always have done it. We've just kind of adapted these new things to what we already know. And this is very liberating and it can sort of shift our lives in very deep ways. But we usually struggle against change or liberation and struggle to maintain the status quo of our reality and return again and again to what's familiar, sort of a custom groove. Because doing something different or thinking differently, It's embarrassing, and it's uncomfortable, and it's awkward, very awkward. And I think that that's why it requires this sense of faith and a faith in what Dogen calls the truth, this kind of rules and guidance and things like that.

[22:06]

And, of course, while I'm thinking about all of this, I read an article in the New Yorker called The Gift of Doubt. And it was a review of a biography of an economist, Albert Hirschman. And here's one of the quotes from him. Doubt was creative because it allowed for alternative ways to see the world. And seeing alternatives could steer people out of intractable circles and self-feeding despondency. doubt, in fact, could motivate. Freedom from ideological constraints opened up political strategies and accepting the limits of what one could know liberated agents from their dependence on the belief that one had to know everything before acting, that conviction was a precondition for action.

[23:09]

So once again, we get caught in our ideologies and we apply them to other things that come up or our thought that everything's new. And this is our form of self-feeding narcissism. And I'm using that word because it is unpleasant in a certain way. We don't so much like the idea of being a narcissist. Or maybe we do, I don't know. But it's an interesting word that I work with for myself. And as I said, you know, we can be very inventive in interpreting our ideologies to reflect what we already know. And hoping, you know, but at the same time we may hope that our lives or the world will change. But I wonder what really needs to change, or if it ever will, actually.

[24:18]

There's, as I was doing, you know, sort of thinking about this, I kept finding these things. And one is, in the Vasudhi Maga, there's this image of building a little fire and feeding it to it, all are sort of narcissistic little thoughts and ideas and self-realities. and letting them burn up. And you know, that's a very creative act. But it's so easy to get into, you know, thinking of it as a kind of a exercise you get given in a workshop. You know, go off, you know, and make a little fire and put all these things on it. And you know, this kind of circling, circling. So we keep sort of circling back to these, what he calls it, this intractable circling. We can't stop it.

[25:19]

It keeps going. And self-feeding despondency, which I think we can see that when we think, why isn't everyone doing things the way I think they should be done? That's a sort of sign of despondency. Why isn't the world the way I think it should be? And so we go back to our self, you know, or rest in our self-justification. But this leads us back to that concept of regret because that's really what that little fire is about. Because regret is a very positive form of doubt. The thing to remember I said, as far as I can tell, enlightenment is not a state of superiority or power, but a sort of a rival at integrity or maturity.

[26:24]

And that can feel very useless. Because, you know, here we are, 2,500 years of Buddhism, And we're still discussing, and no nearer to resolving, power issues related to race, class, and gender. And that's no matter how many people who might have attained enlightenment. The very beginning of Buddhism, they were arguing about all of these things. And here we are, 2,500 years later. But the point is, not to give up, you know, not to give into despondency. Because even though, you know, we could kind of throw up our hands or just be, wonder what could change or what could be different, and, you know, do what we do, like I call it, waving our banners, which is a very important thing to do.

[27:35]

I think also just consider, you know, that we share our human nature with everyone who has existed and everyone who's existing now. And it doesn't really solve anything, but I think there's something very hopeful in that. Another thing that they quoted from Hirschman was, creativity always comes as a surprise to us. Therefore, we can never count on it, and we dare not believe in it until it has happened. In other words, we would not consciously engage upon tasks whose success clearly requires that creativity is forthcoming. Hence, the only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be.

[28:45]

So from the perspective of faith, I think we can know that at the same time as we bring our certainty to things, uncertainty is accompanying it. So we can purposely doubt from that place. Misjudge the nature of the task. Do things like our community meeting the other night for those of you who were there. Misjudge the nature of the task. 2,500 years. And then at the same time discover how our own narcissism and everyone's narcissism is hindering us. And when, you know, as the character in the film says, when we realize, you know, that it's too late to change anything or to turn back, instead we keep going.

[29:57]

You know, what's going to happen in the future? You know, intrigued by it and interested in it rather than just holding on to this kind of circular worrying and perhaps, you know, be willing to believe in order to understand. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org. and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[30:46]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_94.69