Faith and Energy

One of the things that I realised is important in my own practice is to support this sense of faith - faith that it is a practice worth doing, that it brings good results, and that I too have the capacity to practise and achieve these results.

In the teaching on Dependent Origination, one of the links is that faith arises out of suffering. This might sound a little strange but, in a sense, it’s obvious: we have to realise we are sick before we have any inclination to take medicine! If we realise that we are suffering, that we need help, then naturally we will be interested when we have an opportunity to hear teachings that encourage and inspire us; we will have the faith to pick up the teachings and apply them in our lives.

This faculty of faith, saddha, is extremely important for us in our practice. It is one of the Five Spiritual Faculties that I will talk about this evening.

When you go on retreat you may think, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this.’ You don’t have quite enough faith, and you may be tempted to leave. But if people come to me on a retreat and say, ‘Oh, Sister Candasiri, I think I’m going to leave’, I say, ‘No, stay, you can do it!’ I try to give them some encouragement to strengthen their confidence, so that there will be sufficient confidence and faith to support the arising of energy or viriya, which, as the second spiritual faculty, enables the putting forth of effort.

Just faith on its own is not enough. Faith is very important for setting us on the right track, but then we need to apply ourselves, to make an effort, viriya. A retreat calls for tremendous efforts: to come and sit for quite long periods of time, and then to do the walking practice; to get up early; practise restraint; keep silence, and so on. When we put in that kind of effort we are able to experience some of the good results of our practice, of our effort.

Noticing those results increases our faith, and that makes us want to put in more effort!

This reflection by Ajahn Candasiri is from the book, Simple Kindness, (pdf) pp. 90-91.