To Love Is to Know Me by Eknath Easwaran

Author:Eknath Easwaran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nilgiri Press
Published: 2012-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Power of Faith

ARJUNA:

1. O Krishna, what is the state of those who

disregard the scriptures but still worship with faith? Do they act from sattva, rajas, or tamas?

“Faith” here is a not very adequate translation of shraddha, which means much more. Literally, shraddha is ‘that which is placed in the heart’: all the beliefs we hold so deeply that we never think to question them. It is the set of beliefs, values, prejudices, and prepossessions that colors our perceptions, governs our thinking, dictates our responses, and shapes our lives, generally without our even being aware of its presence and power.

This may sound philosophical, but shraddha is not an intellectual abstraction. It is right at the bottom of our hearts. It is our very substance, Sri Krishna will say: it reflects all that we have made ourselves and points to what we will become.

And there is nothing passive about shraddha. It would not be quite correct to call it a force; it is a mental state. But shraddha is full of potency, for it prompts action, conditions behavior, and determines how we see and respond to the world around us.

When Norman Cousins talks about a “belief system” analogous to the body’s organ systems, that is one aspect of shraddha. He is referring to the power to heal or harm that is inherent in our ideas about ourselves. One person with a serious illness believes she has a contribution to make to the world and recovers; another believes her life is worthless, or that she has no hope, and she dies: that is the power of shraddha.

Similarly, I would say, when psychologists talk about “self-image,” they are often referring to one aspect of shraddha. One person believes he will succeed in life, and despite overwhelming obstacles he does. Another, who believes he can do nothing, may be more gifted and face fewer difficulties, yet make very little of his life.

Yet shraddha is not brute determination or self-confidence. It is a highly sensitive expression of our values: what we deem worth having, doing, attaining, being. The things we strive for show what we value; we back our shraddha with our time, our energy, our very lives.

In fact, shraddha literally determines our lives. In those tremendous verses from the Upanishads –

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