The Distance Between Faith and Doubt
- Sensei Sevan Ross
One could say that there are three main
ways of addressing spiritual work. We will call these the literal, the metaphorical, and the transcendent. One way to examine these
approaches is to look into the manifestations of faith - faith can be kind of a protein we track to gauge the spiritual development of
practitioners.
The literal approach to spiritual work
rests on the premise that religion is a system designed to solve some of life's problems - and make them go away - so we can get on with the
business of living. As a Catholic child I remember that my pals and our parents pretty much adhered to this approach. In our Catholic mode,
the Church owned the system and apparently the rights to change it. I remember that the Church eliminated a saint when I was in high school.
The event's importance to me is relected in my total inability to recall the saint's name, but I knew Catholic kids, especially girls, who
were really upset. The rules had been changed. These kids' faith - their involvement with their tradition - is best described as playing a
life game of Dungeons and Dragons. The Church said that if you committed a mortal sin you would go to hell, unless you went to the priest
(who had a degree of wizard's power in the game) and confessed. He would assign you a witch's broomstick (for example, a prayer of
repentance), which would erase the sin and put you on the good path. He would grant absolution. Nifty. And clear. No mystery. No doubt. You
are you. God is God.
The literal mode of practice does not
lend itself well to soulful expression, to passion for the expression of the Ultimate. It is too trapped in the "God vs. Us"
dichotomy. While I was in college, the manager of our rock and roll band became a born-again Christian one night. On Wednesday he was a
Presbyterian, on Thursday he got Religion. On Wednesday he never mentioned God, and after Thursday you couldn't shut him up. "Praise
the Lord" was heard as often as "Hey baby" at rehearsals. It was suddenly God this and God that. But he never made the jump
to the metaphorical level. That happened for our lead guitarist and me, however. And it happened in a Revival Church where we were the only
white people present.
We got the notion that we needed to learn
to sing with the passion and technical harmony of the soul bands we competed with in the Pittsburgh area. So we went to a revival church to
pick up some pointers. We found out where the "soul" in Soul Music comes from, and we lost ourselves in the music, the rhythm, the
movement, the letting go. No Dungeons and Dragons here. Get up and move. You become the Jesus you have heard about. You have a living
spiritual tradition. That Jesus died for your sins has receded into the background. That Jesus and you can do great three-part harmony moves
Jesus and the Church, and even the Bible to the level of metaphor. Faith becomes a way to free the soul, not so much for the journey to
heaven, but for the expression of heaven, right here, right now.
Generally, metaphorical practice means
that you and I as practitioners can doubt the literal presentation of the tradition, but not in an intellectual way. We doubt with our gut.
As Catholic boys, some of us knew the
rule against masturbation was bunk. God would not make up such a rule: nobody gets hurt, so of course God wouldn't care about it. But we
could never prove it. We could not argue with the literalists - they would find something in
the Bible about it. But we knew God by instinct, not by the Bible.
When the universe squares at a deeper
level with our experience, and this experience unfolds without a deity and the structures needed to support that deity, then we approach the
third of our categories, the transcendent. Buddhism keeps us poised for the transcendent, and Zen, in particular, encourages the doubt that
has formed at the metaphorical level. No longer at the literal level, and encouraged by the tradition itself, we are taught to uncover our
deeper questioning, to expand it, to engage it physically by sitting. In doing so, this questioning becomes the center of our spiritual
life.
Our faith now shifts to faith in the
nature of humanity and reality. Right here, right in front of us, somehow, somewhere, is our truth. If we engage our doubt, and have the
faith that the answers are here, we come closer to the level of spiritual practice that will produce those answers.
Doubt is what unseats the ego as we have
come to know it. Doubt is the questioning that, if it grows enough and we have determination, can come to encompass everything. Life becomes
questioning, period. In Zen practice, one can - and it can be argued must - reach the point where life and death, let alone the small stuff,
cease to matter. Only breaking through the doubt to Understanding matters. This is Great Doubt.
Often someone can be convinced that they
have Great Faith, but lack this kind of Doubt. When asked about this, I am thrown all the way back to memories of my Catholic childhood.
Some of us had what we thought of as Great Faith. We accepted our inadequacy in God's eyes and put our faith in His mercy. Or so it seemed.
But you see, we had no Doubt. Not the Doubt of Zen, the Doubt of intense questioning. We started out with no questions at all. We took it
all literally.
So, we never really had Great Faith. We
couldn't have, because Great Faith and Great Doubt are two ends of a spiritual walking stick. We grip one end with the grasp given to us by
our Great Determination. We poke into the underbrush in the dark on our spiritual journey. This act is real spiritual practice - gripping
the Faith end and poking ahead with the Doubt end of the stick. If we have no Faith, we have no Doubt. If we have no Determination, we never
pick up the stick in the irst place.
Our problems often come from thinking of
Doubt and Faith as opposites, and forgetting that they are connected. We look down at our hand as we go and we see the Faith end, so we
think that that's all we have, and we don't probe. Or we are only aware of the Doubt end, and declare that we have no Faith. So we have a
hard time moving ahead because deep down we feel that we are a hopeless case. But both of these perceptions are clearly one-sided. As we
mature spiritually, we move along a continuum. When we are very young we start out in a place of wonder; but often this wonder gives way to
a level of questioning that can be satisfied in a more literal spiritual tradition, or at least in a literal way within whatever tradition
we find ourselves. We lean on the Faith/Doubt staff, but we do not progress. The staff is not in motion, and we only have faith, and faith
in something outside ourselves.
We may have one of those accidental
"peak" experiences, or we may just run out of patience with a tradition's logic. We may lose someone close to us. We may just
start to question. Whatever shifts in us, our faith changes. We begin to stir that stick around. If we move it enough, we may reach the
metaphorical mode, where our faith lives in us, informs our lives, affects others. But if we come to test the ground itself with a deep
questioning, then we have engaged our spiritual Doubt. And to whatever degree we do this, our Faith is at work, and with determination we
can really reach the plane where we arrive at the transcendent. Here we are truly the Truth looking to realize itself.
So, it is important to realize that real
Faith and real Doubt are linked, feed each other, and are not generated by the stories that come from outside us, the literal or
metaphorical structures that define spiritual traditions. We are all equipped with what we need. All we have to do is use that stick to poke
the underbrush.
Reprinted
with permission of Rochester Zen Center