You Got To Have The Faith
Steve Jarand, a vipassana meditator from the Goenka tradition, spent an extended period of time at Burmese monasteries with his wife, several years ago. In our podcast discussion, he reflected on the experience of being in a living Buddhist society where faith was paramount; both what he learned and gained from the experience, as well as how it was uncomfortable or confusing at times.
“It was also a little bit of a shock to see how external [the Buddhist practice] is compared to how internal we were [as meditators]. We were kind of trained to always look towards. ”
“Well, for people who know the Goenka tradition, it's tailored much for Westerners who try to step away from any religious inclinations of a practice like this. So I was really brought into it just on the personal practice and what you get out of it, in terms of hard work, what you put into it, and nothing about faith and nothing about trusting or expecting just because you know or trust someone or they're in authority that something good should happen to you.
In fact, I remember being at Dhamma Joti, the Goenka Vipassana center in Yangon. And one of the signs on the walls was referencing this element or this part of one of the discourses of the Buddha that said, "Don't believe anything you say. It doesn't matter if they're your teacher, it doesn't matter if they're high authority in your society, it doesn't matter if it's the Buddha, just see what happens when you experience it when you practice it.’
And it was this message that really gets ingrained. So when we went there [to Burma] and we saw how much [then faith] was gushing in society, both in people's own lives and how many people had been ordained for longer or shorter periods, and how many Buddhist sites, old and not so old and new, were still being constructed all over the place, that was an amazing thing… but also a little bit of a shock to see how external it is compared to how internal we were. We were kind of trained to always look towards.
So I was both amazed by that, but also struggled a bit to understand what the Buddha's essential type of teaching was compared to how people who also came from probably similar traditions that really held the essential teachings of just seeing what's happening and what's passing. But also this life of continual beliefs and donations and getting into the possible magic and the power of enlightened ones. I struggled with it, but by the end, and I think being there longer, I was able to understand it as a culture that's much more rich and complex than just what is known about the practice. And that you can go back and forth from one to the other, and they can enrich each other, this outside and inside and family and community as well, involved in as well as a personal practice.”