Buddhist Architecture & Faith
So, guys, I think you are looking for Buddhist architecture and faith of Buddhism, so you are really at the right place and we will discuss it all here.
Now Buddhism is depending on how we understand it either a religion or a philosophy I did an earlier video on that topic I'll put a link to it down below that's not going to be the topic of this video but insofar as we consider Buddhism to be a religion often that's described as being a faith tradition er sometimes we'll gloss.
The word religion as a faith tradition, so the question is to what extent can we describe Buddhism as a faith tradition I'll get to that near the end.
Now in general of Buddhist Architecture what I would say is it's very complicated it's not straightforward it certainly isn't honest that it's accurate but what we want to do I think is to look at what faith is at least in the Western tradition where it's so central to see what we can make of this concept of religion.
So first let's turn to faith the idea the concept of faith which again this is an English word which comes out of a Western tradition so what we want to do is to try to get some background here before we push this towards Buddhism shall we say so what is faith now it's this is way too big a topic for me to deal with on a short article like this is a topic that you could spend a lifetime studying and finding out all the nuances.
So obviously I can't go there, but we'll try to do something at least a little bit in a nutshell kind of introduction here so within sort of a biblical tradition which is where all of the ideas of faith comes from in the West we have faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen now this is a cryptic sentence and as such it can be interpreted in many different ways and throughout the centuries and millennia.
It has been interpreted in different ways, so we have to be humble when coming at it because, again, there's going to be a lot that we're not going to be able to get into. Still, at least at first glance of several issues first, the assurance of things hoped for that first phrase.
We might wonder whether indeed we are assured of what we hope for much that we want to come true we know do not we know ordinarily there's a lot in life that we wish to and which doesn't happen so we might wonder to what extent it is skillful shall we say to feel assurance towards things that we hope for when we know that in ordinary circumstances so much of such things don't come true and in the second part of the sentence.
Let's Understand With View of Buddhist Architecture & Faith
The conviction of things not seen and once again we may wonder where this conviction would come from in the case that we don't know the situation and this can indeed and has in some Western traditions led to something that we could blind faith that is to say a belief in something without any reason or evidence in it only belief irrational.
If you like or a rational belief without reason and again, this is one way to interpret it. We may again wonder whether that is a very skillful way to approach reality to approach the world if we have conviction in something ordinarily beliefs such as that comes through seeing comes through experience personal experience of one kind or another and if we lack such expertise if we don't know the thing.
The question is why we should have such conviction, or whether such confidence makes a lot of sense now historically in the West and Christianity in particular, there have been any number of different proposed solutions to these problems that I've read that I've raised with faith.
It's important to stress that several different approaches to Christianity do hold that there is that blind faith is not a good thing in other words that certain kinds of evidence ground faith we won't go into what that kind of evidence is or whether it's the sort of evidence that we would necessarily accept if we were not Christian.
So on but at least there in our, there are various attempts within the Christian tradition to push back against this notion of blind faith and to say that blind that and to agree that blind faith is a problem and to say that really what is being held in ordinary Christianity's not blind faith that sometimes does happen. We have to acknowledge that and not to assume that all such faith is blind that said, even so, there is going to be a role for having confidence and things that we don't see ourselves. We may wonder whether that's the right kind of strategy to have, such as somebody who rose from the dead 2,500 years ago.
Similarly, when we go on an airplane, we didn't see the aircraft being made. We indeed were not with the mechanics when they determined that the plane was airworthy, and yet we're putting our lives on the line in the sense.
If this thing if this airplane doesn't work if this drug doesn't work we might very well die so we're making a very very large bet we might even say a conviction without seeing conviction and things not seen now one might say in response that although we didn't ourselves go to verify the construction of the drug that we're taking or the airplane that we're planning to fly on that, nevertheless we could in principle we could go there and do these things.
If we wanted to and that's true the problem there though is that if we went as we are now and went to the factory or went with the mechanic, we would be in the same situation that is to say we wouldn't know we were looking at we would have to be told that this is the way things are supposed to look. We would have to take that on conviction without seeing without truly seeing.
In other words, we wouldn't be doing it ourselves. We would be relying on the opinions of other people, which amounts to the same thing again. Theoretically, we could go through school and get all the proper knowledge and then go and see for ourselves sure that's all true, but there's too much of this in life we can't do it about everything.
We don't have the time we would be dead before we would do this about one or two things in our lives so and especially given the amount of knowledge we have nowadays for many things it would only be impossible for us to have all of the experience necessary to be able to verify every step.
So I think I see you probably can see where I'm going with this, which is that there is always going to be an element of taking things on conviction because we've seen them work before because we've seen other things.
We have some evidence, so I'm not going to say this is blind faith. It certainly isn't. Still, it is a conviction of things not seen simply because we can't do all of the verification of everything ourselves nobody does so what I hope to have shown is that faith is something somewhat complicated that having conviction and things not seen is not straightforward it's not straightforwardly in you know foolish because we have to do this it can be silly in certain circumstances and so on with Buddhist architecture.
Now let's turn to Buddhism in Buddhism as an early Buddhism which is what I'll be discussing here today faith, yeah there is no real notion of blind faith we have to say that there's never an idea that one should accept something either on somebody's here. Hence, I'm just on hearsay somebody's statement or only without any reason or evidence at all that never becomes an issue in Buddhism that's not considered proper.
The word that is often translated as faith son does the Pali it is probably better understood as something more akin to the confidence that is that we have belief in something several different Buddhist scholars have noted in particular K Andrea Tillich who is a significant scholar about epistemology the study of what we know and don't know in early Buddhism and Rupert Geffen that contemporary scholar of early Buddhism both of them have noted that within the Western tradition.
We've just been discussing this kind of faith or even we might say confidence is in ordinarily in beliefs or propositions sentences statements what both of them call cognitive faith or what Rupert Geffen calls cognitive faith taking this idea from Jaya Tillich that is in the Western tradition we're supposed to have sort of faith in certain belief kind of views, so you're you have confidence that a particular thing is exactly where we're saying a belief such as that Jesus Christ died for our sins or that Jesus is the Son of God these kinds of things that Jesus arose from the dead.
These are the kinds of propositions that is to say sentences beliefs that we're supposed to have faith in and both of these scholars also notice that in Buddhism the case is slightly different as Rupert Gethin says in early Buddhism faith is he says almost entirely sufficient that is to say it's not cognitive it's useful it's not about believing in propositions or sentences statements but rather about a certain kind of confidence a specific type of emotional state that we have and in particular its trust.
In particular people or individuals things in this case in the case of early Buddhism, it is most typically confidence in the Buddha the Dharma and the Sangha so we might say it's confidence in the Buddha in the Buddhist person now, of course, this would have been most relevant back when the Buddha was alive so people would have had confidence sudden faith in him as a teacher that's less useful to us now because he isn't with us anymore but is undoubted.
The Dharma and there is the Sangha of monastics so we can have confidence in them that is that these individuals organizations that they give us a kind of energy or impetus in our practice along the path and so both of these scholars Jaya Tillich and Geffen make this out to be a relatively significant and essential distinction between let's say Buddhism and Christianity I sense that this is less of a substantial difference than they make it out to be in the sense that certainly within the context of Buddhism in general.
Early Buddhism, in particular, to have faith in the Buddha or sudden confidence in the Buddha was basically among other things to be primed to believe what the Buddha said so for example if the Buddha said that he witnessed his prior lives a nun in a nun being a weak stream of previous experiences that you took him at his word that that was what he did see and that he was right about it and similar kinds of things about the action of karma and so on.
Similarly, that one had confidence in the Sangha would have meant and indeed in many cultures still does mean that one accepts the word of monastics that if monastics are teaching about the Dharma or life that one accepts what they have to say because one has this kind of confidence in the Sangha now this is to say that while Jaya Tillich and Gethin make this distinction between cognitive faith that is faith in Buddha having trust in a certain kind of belief and effect active faith or confidence in a person or an organization.
My point is that these things run together that as we have faith in people or organizations what that means how that sort of cash out is that we often are supposed to have then confidence in what they say. So we end up having faith in beliefs just the same, and again this does lead many traditional believers to, therefore, accept the notion of prior lifetimes.
The Buddha said it to accept the notion of active karma having led from lifetime to lifetime because again the Buddha said it he said that he saw such a thing and similar kinds of ideas now this isn't necessarily blind faith the idea here is that you accept these things on confidence given the amount of let's say wise teachings on other matters that we have been able to verify for ourselves so it's not entirely blind faith it's perhaps a faith with some reason.
However, it's somewhere in between it's not something that's verified by ourselves because we haven't seen these with our own eyes it's it is to an extent the conviction of things not seen because we haven't at least to my knowledge most of us haven't seen or haven't even begun to see prior lifetimes for ourselves now having said all that the Buddha did believe that seeing something for yourself was much more important than holding a belief in something based on faith or based on trust confidence.
A trust or confidence sudah in early Buddhism that was an impetus gives us energy it was a way of overcoming what's known as the hindrance of doubt one of the five obstacles I did an earlier video on the five barriers I'll put a link to that down below in case you're not familiar with that concept but, in our practice, certain things hinder us that keep us from moving forward and one typical hindrance. We might understand why the barrier of doubt is doubtful if we doubt what we're doing if we're not sure about ourselves, then it's going to be difficult for us to progress. Indeed, one way to counteract that kind of doubt is to foster inner confidence in what we're doing, and another word for this kind of inner confidence is sudden or faith.
They mean the same thing like Buddhist architecture. It's just a different translation. Hence, having that kind of confidence is necessary as we get started on our path and indeed as we progress along with it to quite some degree however from the Buddhist standpoint if that kind of confidence is not going to take us the whole way it's not going to get us to the end the goal to get to the end goal.
We're going to need to do the seeing for ourselves faith can take us so far, but it can't make us the whole way while faith can give us the energy and confidence to proceed it can't do the real deep work of insight by itself the deep work of idea has to be done by direct seen by ourselves.
We have to be able to see the way the world is the changeable nature of reality the selfless nature of all experience the fact that all knowledge is unsatisfactory these aspects of reality which indeed if appropriately understood can help free us this can't be done on faith knowing these things cannot be done simply on confidence.
Summary of Buddhist Architecture & Faith
We can't know them because someone's told us. We agreed to them to do the work of insight we have to see them for ourselves, and this the fact that that faith does not take us the whole way to the final goal I take to mean that that Buddhism isn't a faith tradition in the same way that Christianity.
Let's might be described as that in Buddhism; faith has a role to play again. We might say confidence has a role to play in our practice, a central role because, without it, we really wouldn't be able to proceed. Still, it's only a kind of a tool in our toolbox. It doesn't get us the whole way to another place where we can see this directly or is in a very a Sutra that's become famous in the contemporary world, known as the suit of the calamus.
So this is all about Buddhist Architecture & Faith, hope you are like this article.
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