Faith

Saddhā is often translated as faith, confidence or conviction.

The Buddha said that faith comes from having seen that the human condition is unsatisfactory. It is imperfect, wrought with dissatisfaction, discontentment, pain, grief, fear and anxiety. Having seen that, then the mind naturally seeks a path out of that state. It questions the meaning of life and how to find inner happiness.

So this faith looks for a path out of suffering. For people who come across the Buddha’s words, to hear that there is a cause for unsatisfactoriness and that there is the ending of unsatisfactoriness and a path to practice for that release: that brings this faith. It’s often because we haven’t understood dukkha – or because we think that dukkha shouldn’t occur – that we don’t leap forth to find a way out.

Recently a lady came to speak with me explaining that a friend of hers had just given birth to a child, and the child had died. She was very upset because she was going to be a godmother, and she said, “This shouldn’t happen; this is unfair.” So there is the presumption that life should be fair. But with experience, we start to see and understand that life isn’t always fair. So dukkha is the unfairness of existence. It is not a fair abiding.

So, having seen dukkha, we seek a way out. In the case of that lady, having experienced suffering, she came to the monastery and decided that she would practice Dhamma and share the merits of her practice with that deceased child. She began seeking a way of dealing with suffering.

When the Buddha described faith he talked about faith in four aspects; faith in the Buddha, the person who has become fully enlightened in this world and teaches the path out of dukkha; and in the Dhamma, those teachings of the Buddha; and in the Sangha, those monks, nuns and lay-people who have realized that truth in their own lives; and in the training.

This last one means having faith that this practice we’re doing will yield results. Faith in the training also intrinsically implies faith in our own abilities to realize truth: faith that we can do it.

This reflection by Ajahn Ñāṇadhammo is from the book The Spiritual Faculties, (pdf) p. 2.