Faith

As long as we remain on the surface of life, everyone and everything seems to exist as isolated entities.

Some people live internally as if they are in a war zone, even if they are living in material luxury, sometimes even if they are surrounded by caring family members or friends.

In Pali, faith is a verb, an action, as it is also in Latin and Hebrew. Faith is not a singular state that we either have or don’t have, but is something that we do. We “faithe.” Saddha is the willingness to take the next step, to see the unknown as an adventure, to launch a journey.

Whenever I teach lovingkindness retreats in an urban setting, I ask the students to do their walking meditation out on the streets. I suggest they choose individuals they see and, with care and awareness, wish them well by silently repeating the phrases of the practice, “May you be happy, may you be peaceful.” I tell them that even if they don’t fe

When we wake up in the morning and picture the dealings of our day as consequential, we tell ourselves a story that is based on our ultimate concern.

IN PALI, the language of the original Buddhist texts, the word usually translated as faith, confidence, or trust is saddha. Saddha literally means “to place the heart upon.”

This buddha nature, with its two wings of love and awareness,

strong. I once had a dream in which someone asked me, “Why do we love people?” I answered, “Because they recognize us.” I think this is true. When someone recognizes a basic goodness within us, beyond our habits and conditioning, when someone recognizes who we fundamentally are, it is the most important thing that can happen to us, and we respond w

The first step on the journey of faith is to recognize that everything is moving onward to something else, inside us and outside.