FAITH

Daniel Lee

A Companion to Doubt by Dan Cavagnaro

Buddha. Nothing. I leap from the precipice where those before me have left off. In another’s arms I now find myself, in another’s embrace I am now held close. I want to believe the embrace is benevolent, that he or she in whose tight grasp I am now carried gazes upon the world around me with eyes gentle and with love.

And yet the open maw of faith does not itself draw me to my knees in either defiance or surrender. I want to feel that chill up my spine, that breath of the almighty on the back of my neck. I long for that belief, that doubtless belief, in some abstraction that need not remain abstract. Were I a Sufi, my love for a woman would be an echo of my love for God. And yet, if love is not two people gazing into one another’s eyes, but rather looking together in the same direction,

then, pray, what are the two looking at? From whence did fire come, and where does it go when it is out?

Agnosticism for me is not necessarily simply the belief that any ultimate reality is unknown and perhaps unknowable. Rather belief in the possibility of an ultimate reality, of a god, drives me, and I feel the communal water wash over me as it washes over us all: spirituality, not religion. Our footsteps are swept away by the tongue of the sea, and some piece of me is whisked into the dazzling oblivion, where abstraction is given solid form and becomes something new: no shape, no object, but a long arm of the Secret. And so if God is in every tree, in every spiral of the smoke ring, so then is It within us. And what then is God if not simply another three-letter word for the Tao?

Sing out your transcendent hymn over the deep blue Pacific as though some choral net cast out over coral reefs. Let your voice echo in the farthest corners of the Polynesian tropics like the resonating ricochet of Zeus’s lightning storm. And yet… beware the conversion of pagan ears — be they fish or man — that may hear the siren song of your structure, for in that salt water baptism may be born faith in the black-and-white myopia of paranoia known best by those who kneel before an icon. No man living knows better the nativity of guilt and the crucifixion of innocence than the orthodox. So it is that he is best suited to cry out in tongues of Babel the ancient elegy of childhood’s end, exposing to the universe the eternal arctic autumn of his soul.

How is it, then, that we now find ourselves here to set aflame the Burning Man of dogma and arise before the altar of abstraction? Indeed, what is any religion but a philosophy at its heart? And, more often than not, are not the philosophies of one common to all? Do not the most revered prophets of any scripture preach compassion, non-violence, love, peace? So then where does it lie, the line between Confucianism and Hinduism? Between Buddhism and Christianity? Jainism and Islam? Judaism and Sikhism? Shinto and Taoism? I would I were a mammoth, lowering my eyes only before the bronze chariot of the sun, as all creatures — as all things — have done, for every man bows before his own Mecca, every man bows before the same one.

And as for me, I stand beneath the overcast diffusion of the ocean sky, calmed by the aesthetic of the minimal whiteness, the backdrop against which is played out the dramaturgy of the theatre of clouds. Would that I could remain in permanence as tranquil as this, and so the sky and earth would exist in natural harmony, in full reflection of the formless completion which preceded Heaven. This, this meditative mood, this ruminating rhythm, so extends itself to the fingertips of all around me that I find myself simultaneously in wondrous awe and removed acknowledgement. Am I to remain here? Am I to achieve the inner peace and balance I have so arduously sought? How, then, am I to succeed in a cutthroat world if I follow the Taoist principles in which I believe? How am I to swim with the sharks? How am I to make myself known in an industry such as film if I am to follow the example of the Master Chef Ting, moving my blade slowly through the meat, never touching bone, thereby taking the path of least resistance?

No. There is a line in the sand, a line between Buddhism and Christianity, between Taoism and Zen. And in this groundless basin, beneath the sweltering canopy of the dying stars, that line is made clear. Zen is not about the path of least resistance, for if it were there would be no need for determination to overcome one’s doubt. “Zen is not a philosophy that attempts to explain everything. Rather, Zen is functional.” (Cavagnaro 8) Zen is not a philosophy. Zen is not a philosophy?

It is a philosophy. It has to be. For what at its widest is a philosophy if not those beliefs and principles held by a group or individual? Apply those beliefs to a style of living, say, one based around commandments, laws, or precepts, and what is left standing but a philosophy of living? Zen precepts are not commandments, one might argue. Perhaps not, but they are a system of living upheld by a group or individual. They are a philosophy of living, a means by which to channel one’s practice into one’s everyday life, and subsequently into one’s interactions with his fellow creatures. We cast our eyes into the sky, scan its face for the mirrored image of that abstract biography, and see instead our own longing reflected in the moonlight.

I am a piece of wax. Melt me down, draw me up, sculpt me in thine own image. I am a bird, a mountain, a man. I am the same piece of wax throughout, distinct. How then does the Zen non-attachment to separate individuality rise up against my metamorphic eyes? Who is to say whether my awakening is the one true satori-awakening? A roshi? A guide? It is said that the experience of enlightenment is the same for all who attain it. And yet it is written:

I have heard it said that all paths lead to the top of the same mountain. I doubt it. I think that one mountain may seem just a small hill from the top of another. Let one hundred mountains rise! (Aitken 13)

Every man climbs his own Everest, then, every man climbs the same. Still, if we are each atop our own mountain, how can it be said whether or not we are atop the right one? So then how can a roshi dictate whether or not a student has indeed awakened? Say I have not been enlightened, say I do not know Christ. One and the same.

I want to believe in an absent foundation, in a “positionless position.” (Faure 38) It is not a common frustration that has itself bled me dry. Or bled me at all. That is not my problem. How can one solidify the sky? Assign a name to the undefinable? Give a face to the abstract? Call a thing God, call a thing Tao, call a thing nothing. Wash your bowl? It is as simple as that. Great faith, great doubt, great determination. These are the three essentials. I choose my own.

The open maw of faith does not draw me to my knees in surrender. But it does not draw me to defiance. I long for a belief, one that can be questioned and survive, in an abstraction that can remain abstract. I want great faith, but not necessarily in that philosophy espoused by any group or individual. I am distinct. And from the top of my mountain I cannot see the peak reached by those who would crash airplanes into skyscrapers. Or perhaps I can. And perhaps that is what makes me question in the first place.

I am left with determination.

Sources Cited / Consulted

Aitken, Robert. Taking the Path of Zen. New York: North Point Press, 1982.

Cavagnaro, Dan. Doubt. 2001.

Faure, Bernard. The Rhetoric of Immediacy. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Kapleau, Roshi Philip, Ed. The Three Pillars of Zen. New York: Doubleday, 1989.