The Good Heart by Dalai Lama

Author:Dalai Lama
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Published: 2016-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

8

FAITH

John 12:44–50

Father Laurence: Welcome again, Your Holiness. In this session, His Holiness will be reading and commenting on the last two Gospel passages, both from the Gospel of Saint John. The first concerns faith and the second contains the account of the Resurrection.

Jesus proclaimed: “To believe in me, is not to believe in me but in him who sent me; to see me, is to see him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that no one who has faith in me should remain in darkness. But if anyone hears my words and disregards them, I am not his judge; I have not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There is a judge for anyone who rejects me and does not accept my words; the word I have spoken will be his judge on the last day. I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself commanded me what to say and how to speak. I know that his commands are eternal life. What the Father has said to me, therefore, that is what I speak.”

[John 12:44–50]

THESE PASSAGES FROM the Gospel of John seem to be an important section of the Bible. When I read them, the first thing that strikes me is a close resemblance to a particular passage in the Buddhist scriptures in which the Buddha states that whoever sees the principle of interdependence sees the Dharma and whoever sees the Dharma sees the Tathāgata, the Buddha. The implication is that through understanding the nature of interdependence, through understanding Dharma, you will understand the true nature of buddhahood. Another point this raises is that simply having a visual perception of the Buddha’s body does not correspond to actually seeing the Buddha. In order to actually see the Buddha, you must realize that the dharmakāya — the Truth Body of the Buddha — is suchness. This is what it means to actually see the Buddha. Similarly, these passages point out that it is through the historical personification of the Christ that you are actually experiencing the Father that he represents. Christ is the gateway to this encounter with the Father.

Here again we see the metaphor of light, which is a common image in all the major religious traditions. In the Buddhist context, light is particularly associated with wisdom and knowledge; darkness is associated with ignorance and a state of misknowledge. This corresponds to the two aspects of the path: there is the method aspect, which includes such practices as compassion and tolerance, and the wisdom, or knowledge, aspect, the insight penetrating the nature of reality. It is the knowledge, or wisdom, aspect of the path that is the true antidote to dispelling ignorance.

Since these passages also seem to point out the importance of faith in one’s spiritual practice, I think it might be useful here to give some explanation of the Buddhist understanding of faith. The Tibetan word for faith is day-pa, which perhaps might be closer in meaning to confidence, or trust.

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