I think that is stretching the idea of faith. This would mean that my taking golf lessons from a particular golf pro would entail my having faith. Which, if we keep the definition of faith very, very open, would be true, but I think it’s a trivial truth. To me faith has to do with believing despite the absence of any reason and even in the face of what seems like counterevidence - like your 12 year old daughter dies of leukemia and you still think God exists, is Good and there was a good reasons for this death. I know Hinduism fairly well, or one little portion of it. Here is why local and Westerner visitors might find themselves meditating at an asharm outside Mumbai. Good friends of theirs suggested it and they had interesting experiences and a sense of peace. It is part of a family or village tradition that they have not questioned. They met the guru and were stunned by the apparant peace and equanimity of this person. They asked how they achieved this and the gurus said ‘meditation is central’ So they gave it a try, had experiences that they liked and appreciated or that they were supposed to or were ‘supposed to’, so they keep going. Or they read about it and became curious and thought,what the heck,then experiences kept them coming back. Their intuition says it sounds like a good idea. So they give it a try. Their family or friends pressure them to go to the arsham and despite their skepticism during darshan they have a religious experience of oneness. They like this. They want more. They are told to meditate. They participated in the religion as kids, left it for a while as a young adult, went back because they missed it or hoped they would find something they feel they are missing.
These are all reasons encountered. And in most cases what people talked about were states of consciousness, sense of well being, sense of purpose, loss of anxiety, epiphenies, love of the guru and not faith. IOW they justified their continued participation on experiences and practical consequences.
Now I would like to make clear, I decided I didn’t like that tradition, though I experienced thing not considered possible in current mainstream Western science and sometimes liked what I was experiencing. But in the end I felt it was not what I want or like. I am not selling Hinduism or gurus. If asked by a friend I would say it is not for me and go into detail why.
My point is simply that the tradition talks rarely about faith. Of course any outsider can question their interpretations and their experiences do not prove the metaphysical positions of the gurus. But those are other issues.
Similar things have been presented to me by people in shamanic traditions - traditions I feel much more kinship with.
Even Christians will talk like this, especially if they have returned to the religion in some kind of crisis. IOW they are not simply going through the motions. And, again, I am no Christian. I think there are Christian communities much more focused on experience and results. They would say it is working for them in some way or other and would refer to psychological, mental state, relational, meaning changes in their lives that they attritube to the religion and that they work on to improve via the practices.
Of course Chritianity vs. Atheist type talks often present this as a gap over faith, and proofs and skepticisms around beliefs and epistemologies are the focus. And the war between the epistemologies gets center stage. Iambiguous is a good example of this. He wants people to prove to him he should believe. He has no interest in seeing if the experience of any tradition might address the pain he sometimes refers to. He wants a word-based argument that will change his mind. I think Hindus or Buddhists would be more likely to find this an odd approach than a Christian would. Unfortunately Christians are often more than willing to present arguments, call him names, bring up the issue of faith and keep the discussion in this heady non-experiential realm.
There are few things that are learned and certainly very few learned well via argument. Imagine trying to prove to someone that riding a bike is possible over the internet and they won’t go out and try. I mean, to prove that they can ride a bike or meet someone they love or feel more relaxed in nature than they do at home. And, of course, his lack of interest may well preclude learning to ride a bike or finding a tiny bit of solace in nature or meeting someone he loves. Or his hopelessness and skepticism might be well founded. Still, it’s an odd way to go about learning. Of course our educations systems wildly overestimate the value of babbling on and writing essays about stuff. Poor Dewey must be rolling over in his grave.
A wonderful critique of the education system from an economist…
The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money Hardcover – January 30, 2018
Shows how little use most education is and argues that children should play more and apprentice more and even higher education should be more apprentice based or learning by working. And he mounts a great case from that hard assed analytical anal side that I tend to be weak on, so it was a pleasant read for me since I draw similar conclusions in a different way.
The West often has this individual rationally deciding what to believe illusion myth noble image. It’s not accurate as a description of how we come to believe most of what we believe. It is non-participatory. It sees us as islands, rather than the relational social beings we are. And it’s pretty much an Ayn Rand position. And despite the fact that liberals, for example, detest Ayn Rand, they live by similar myths around learning and the monad, solipsistic individual.