The Nature of Reality and Faith

 Quite a pretentious title but no matter. I simply sit down in McDonalds with my white coffee (no sugar) and begin to waffle to my hearts content. No control over what others think. Twat or whatever. Less and less interested. Sometimes, amid all the confusion the dustbin of my mind seems to gather a glimmer of light and clarity and a few things fall into order. Merely conceptual, of course, but order just the same.

As I see it it is simply the nature of Reality itself that gives enlightenment (or "salvation" or whatever else it has to be called......authenticity? Finding our own path, time and place? Finding our "true self" and all the rest of the jargon) It is the very nature of Reality itself that is the causal basis of enlightenment. The exact particulars, within our own experience, are obviously diverse, yet enlightenment is pure gift, grace. Realised, not attained. Found in all of our world's so called "Faith Traditions".

In Buddhism, the Dharma, it is "Original Enlightenment". More a negative path where the way unfolds more as losing the illusion that we are not already enlightened. And where Reality is "empty" - rather than being a "God" who is this, that and the other, wrote a book, gave commandments, etc etc etc etc whose followers often created conflicts and Inquisitions to protect the primacy of their own particular conceptual illusions. Reality is better seen as "empty" and therefore can more easily unfold as all things, each of us knowing according to our own unique personhood, in our own particular time and place.

Superficially, "emptiness" (sunyata) is deemed nihilism by many and then such superficiality projected upon the "languid East", this in contrast to the go-getting West. Yet what has the "west" gone and got? The nuclear bomb, and a walk on the moon - from where we can gain a picture of our fragile earth that will soon, all things considered, perhaps be no more - or at least, bereft of us humans.

Anyway, I am waffling as usual. But I do find that as I gradually step back Reality itself has more chance to be, that more compassion and acts born of it actually flower and come to be and pass. Which supports Faith, the trust that - despite so many appearances to the contrary - Reality itself is infinite compassion, infinite wisdom, infinite potential. Simply because such compassion it is not of "me", and therefore must have another Source.

Following on, I see and understand "faith" as being virtually the polar opposite of belief. Belief clings, faith "lets go". Often belief clings because salvation itself is identified in our mind/hearts with believing correctly - therefore any challenge to our beliefs is experienced as a challenge to our salvation.

Faith rests in grace. All is the work of Reality-as-is.

In theistic terms:-

By God's grace alone is God to be grasped. All else is false, all else is vanity." (Guru Nanak of the Sikh Faith)

"They who have known God have known also this one certainty; that it was God's grace that led them to it, and framed them in readiness for it, and prepared their heart and mind for it; and it was God alone who lifted them to that embrace." (Swami Abhayananda of the Hindu faith)

When we instead associate the causal basis of salvation with our own "choice"/"decision"/"belief" then we get what we see and read about so often in heated conflicts.