What do you mean by faith?

Sorry for the late reply,

Well lets say in the case of the qi sensitivity exercise. You feel a sensation of qi between your palms and then you have faith that that sensation exists; even though you were looking for it in the first place. Then the next time you do it, you expect that same sensation and get it. It repeats, and over time you build stronger faith that whenever you put your palms close together, you will a push/qi of some sort.

Usually this is fine... In the case of the qi sensitivity exercise, physical routines seem fine to me but still not ideal...

But lets say you're doing something like visualizing spirits and you feel like you finally see one because your visualizations. Then you repeat... build up the faith that you'll see one once again... and then you can't really be sure whether its the real thing or just something you created.

I should also mention that faith is a very powerful thing.

It can do a lot of good for us by pushing us in the right direction and allowing us to take leaps that we otherwise wouldn't...

but what worries me is that it can also delude us.

My observation has been that this phenomenon is pervasive in Qi related arts, far more among Westerners for several reasons. One is that, as you observe, in the East there is a trust and dedication in the master, the lineage, and the practice that I think fosters a commitment to practice with fewer expectations. Secondly, Westerners are less likely to have access to a lineage holder and expert, direct instruction. I think this is seen especially in those studying Qi related practices on their own, through books and video. By Qi related practices I include taijiquan, qigong, baguazhang, xingyiquan, neigong, and Daoist meditation. 

And I will agree that faith can also be an extremely important fuel to allow someone to remain dedicated enough to a practice to see results. Once incontrovertible evidence of the effectiveness of the practice arises, it becomes self-sustaining and the faith becomes more akin to confidence. I personally make a distinction between faith and belief. Belief is accepting an explanation for something you have no personal experience of or factual basis for. Faith is more like trust, in that we can let go all beliefs to the best of our ability and trust that what remains is something close to truth, at least for us.

@mithras

Posted by: @mithras

Well lets say in the case of the qi sensitivity exercise. You feel a sensation of qi between your palms and then you have faith that that sensation exists; even though you were looking for it in the first place. Then the next time you do it, you expect that same sensation and get it. It repeats, and over time you build stronger faith that whenever you put your palms close together, you will a push/qi of some sort.

That's not how I learned it actually. Nor how I teach my students. The way we do it in our style of taijiquan is by relaxing as much as possible. When you are sufficiently relaxed, which for beginners takes between a couple of weeks to a couple of months (usually, depending on how frequently they practice their forms). It starts with mimicking the teacher, who instructs them to hold a "Taiji ball" between their palms. It starts off as imaginary. When the student relaxes sufficiently, they start to feel this palpably -- and it becomes progressively more tangible as relaxation increases. 

I would not call it faith, but more an open-mindedness -- to say, "I don't know if this will work, but let me see if it has some merit to it." 

After the initial breakthrough where one starts to feel the qi between the palms, the worst thing one can do is to seek it. When it first happened to me, I got really excited and went to my teacher and told him what had happened. He grinned at me and said, "Now that you've sensed it if you keep looking for it, it will elude you. It's better to not seek any experience but to let the experience manifest on its own. Just maintain the correct conditions during your practice when you do so." 

Those were prophetic words because I went back and did exactly the opposite of what he told me for a few weeks, and then zilch! nada! Finally, I had the good sense to remember what my sifu had told me. And lo and behold! When I managed to stop 'seeking the experience', the experience presented itself. Over and over again, until it became very clear to me, that it is always there, only the mind blocks the direct experience 🙂 

Usually, the skeptical individuals find it the hardest to learn esoteric arts because they are so caught up in their materialistic worldview, that their minds are not open to new possibilities. 

In the Indic traditions, we have a concept of pramāna (or knowing/validation of something). In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, he writes --

pratyakshanumānagamāh pramānani

Knowledge can be Direct Experience (pratyaksha), intuition (anumāna) or testimony of a reliable witness (agama). 

So faith can be considered in the realm of "agama" when a reliable witness tells you something, you accept that at face value. Liken that to "accepting" the teacher's words. 

Then comes anumāna or intuition -- where we have some experience with the system and based on some experiences, intuitively know that which is being taught has validity. It's akin to intuiting that there must be a fire somewhere, by seeing the smoke.

Finally comes direct experience or pratyaksha -- this is the culmination of continuing to practice in the said tradition progressively going from faith to knowing. 

@steve puts it here very beautifully --

Posted by: @steve

I personally make a distinction between faith and belief. Belief is accepting an explanation for something you have no personal experience of or factual basis for. Faith is more like trust, in that we can let go all beliefs to the best of our ability and trust that what remains is something close to truth, at least for us.

My Daoist teacher was a very traditional teacher from Taiwan. At no time in the 12 years I trained closely with him do I ever recall him instructing, asking, or suggesting that I make any effort to explicitly feel or intellectually understand Qi. Never did we hold our hands apart trying to feel a connection. Nothing like that. Of course, we did train to guide Qi using Yi, sink the Qi, and the Daoist meditation practices focused quite a bit on cultivating and refining the Yi. Through his instruction my approach has been to become very sensitive with my awareness and precise with my intention and to work with that. To do the practice precisely as instructed and be as quiet and open as possible and feel the effects and changes. Then to apply that 'body/kinesthetic/energetic knowledge' in the martial and healing applications, generating different types of forces (Jin), pushing, yielding, etc...

The awareness of what Qi means for me dawned gradually with occasional quantum leaps, as understanding often does. And frankly, I still feel that it is to some degree a bit ambiguous and flexible in my personal understanding and I don't really make a connection with the way many people use the term. I find it to be a completely experiential undertaking, for me, and I have little or no interest in the scholarly side. And I do think there is a role for theory and scholarly endeavor in the field, it just doesn't appeal to me. I've spent my life being too in my head, too intellectual and these experiential arts and practices help me to balance that. I'm pretty much the same way in my Bön practices. Luckily both my Dao and Bön teachers heavily emphasize the experiential approach over the theoretical. 

Posted by: @steve

At no time in the 12 years I trained closely with him do I ever recall him instructing, asking, or suggesting that I make any effort to explicitly feel or intellectually understand Qi. Never did we hold our hands apart trying to feel a connection

We do that quite heavily in Temple style...learning how to generate a Taiji ball (essentially a qi ball) which an excellent means for directly accessing the energetics (looks very woo woo to the onlookers, but is very powerful). In fact a lot of the taijiquan forms involve rolling a ball-like shape, splitting (part wild horse's mane, repulse monkey, slanted flying etc), compressing (press form), pushing (An). In our system, if we don't learn to work with the Taiji ball, the forms don't have any meaning/power.

I know this approach is very different from the way the family styles teach Taijiquan, even though they too have the same (or similar) forms in their repertoire. 

But we don't try to feel it. We hold the shape and relax, and the feeling arises on its own. 

I think another point on the Western vs. Eastern methods is that Western may be more goal-oriented in a Yang sense.  The Eastern methods seem to place emphasis on the Yin.  This is vividly seen in Daoism where the operative action can be non-action.

As to the belief and/or faith idea, I think there is a third category as well.  It's the capability for Knowing (sometimes spelled 'gnowing'), in which the clarity of the individual gets more crystalline.  It is in alignment with the creative intelligence, when practiced.  When the mind is clear, not yapping at itself, calm, at ease - this voice can be heard and it can be followed.  The answers are already there; all that is needed is a relinquishment of the conditioned ego - even momentarily - for the focus to occur.  Just a small opening of the mind, a relaxation and an admission that anything other than complete compliance with What Is is going to be an inferior action.

When you are told you can learn to read and write, it's not enough -- this belief won't create the reading ability.  When you've mastered and practiced reading and writing, a special organ is created in your brain, discernible by MRI, with its own axonal pathfinding techniques that are working as reliably once created as the ones that allow you to see, hear, walk or talk.  But this new organ you created is not created out of nothing plus faith.  It's created out of you brain's potential to make neural connections that persist in a  network of dedicated and cooperating neurons that your faith in your ability to learn to read and write has given the initial developmental impulse to.  After that, they don't need faith anymore in order to work.  You can still read even if you don't believe this organ in your brain exists and was created by you out of your potential.  It doesn't matter what you believe.  You just read it because of your having had faith in the past.   

It's exactly the same with dantiens and qi cultivation.  You have all the parts for the machinery to be operational; an adequate practice assembles them into a working unit.  This unit proceeds to work quite independently of your faith.  When the shore is reached, the boat is left behind.  Once you can read and write, you don't have to study your ABCs anymore.  Once you can operate your qi and your dantiens, you don't have to have faith in them.  Faith is that boat that helped you get there.  You can leave it behind and proceed "on foot." 🙂 

And that's one reason you don't want to mix practices.  You don't learn to read and write by learning, simultaneously, a bit of English, a bit of Greek and a bit of Japanese.  

And learning a lineage art is like learning to read Shakespeare vs. whatever graffiti someone has left on the nearest wall.  There's more graffiti writers than Shakespeares in the world.  They are in your face -- everywhere (at least in the dedicated neighborhoods).  That's why most people find just that.  

Final thought: some of those who have learned a bit of the English-Greek-Japanese hodge-podge will often try to exaggerate their reading/writing ability, or else try to apply faith to a book in any one of those languages they can't possibly understand, and then make garbled pronouncements that one has to "believe in."  Whereas those who know English might write a novel in that language, those who know Greek might compose an epic poem in hexameter, those who know Japanese might sketch a haiku which those who don't don't even know is really a painting, not just a set of 5-7-5 lines.  It's the same with cultivation arts.  If you "have it," you know.  You don't have to write that novel just because you can.  But you know you can -- anytime, and you don't need faith, you just need to actually do the work. 🙂 

I'm often struck by the difference between belief, faith and thoughts.

All beliefs are thoughts, but not all thoughts are beliefs... that threshold of when does a thought cross over into belief/faith and when is a thought, just a thought?

I'll likely never forget the moment this piercing realization arose unbidden in my mind and has never stopped ringing in awareness.

"just because you thought it, and perhaps even felt strongly about it, does not make it true, relevant, or even important.  They're just thoughts Creighton.  Don't believe everything you think."

Posted by: @silent_thunder

"just because you thought it, and perhaps even felt strongly about it, does not make it true, relevant, or even important.  They're just thoughts Creighton.  Don't believe everything you think."

When I first got sober I came to the horrid conclusion that every conclusion I'd ever come to in my life was wrong.  That humbling experience was one that caused a crack that resulted in an inner journey that has lasted for years.  I'm not sure it ever ends.

This is a strange topic for me to come back into... especially since my life is shifting so quickly right now that my rigid view of reality just can't really exist anymore. What I've realized is that you can start with a western technique, or an eastern one; but sooner or later you'll realize that these senses and thoughts don't add up. At some point, you'll realize that you were truly insane before you realized and not after.

That's kind of what I'm going through right now. Sure I might have known about it before because I read a sutra and some books, but its something else entirely to understand it.

One of may favorite teachers, Jiddu Krishnamurti, said “it is no sign of heath to be well adjusted to such a sick society.” It’s never been so clear as in the era of Trump and his ilk.