Faith and Belief

I was talking with some friends about śraddhā on Facebook and I thought I would post this from Swami Veda's Volume I of the Yoga Sutra (1.20).

श्रद्धावीर्यस्मृतिसमाधिप्रज्ञापूर्वक इतरेषाम्॥२०॥

śraddhā-vīrya-smṛti-samādhi-prajñā-pūrvaka itareṣām ||20||

The samādhi of (some) others has as its preconditions faith, strength, intentness, meditation and the awakening of wisdom in samprajñāta. 

[Vyāsa] upāya-pratyayo yogināṁ bhavati | śraddhā cetasaḥ samprasādaḥ | sā hi jananīva kalyāṇī yoginaṁ pāti | tasya hi śraddadhānasya vivekārthino vīryam upajāyate | samupajāta-vīryasya smṛtir upatiṣṭhate | smṛty-upasthāne cittam anākulaṁ samādhīyate | samāhita-cittasya prajñā-viveka upāvartate | yena yathāvad vastu jānanti | tad-abhyāsāt tad-viṣayāc ca vairāgyād asamprajñātaḥ samādhir bhavati ||20|| 

Samādhi, the causal cognition of which is cultivated through method (upāya-pratyaya) accrues to the yogis:

• Faith (śraddhā) means full clarity and pleasantness of the mind-field. Benevolent like a mother, she protects the yogi.
• When that yogi holds to faith and seeks discriminating wisdom (viveka), strength (vīrya) gathers in him.
• As strength gathers in him, intentness attends upon him.
• At the presence of intentness the mind, free of disturbance, becomes harmonized and established in samādhi.
• When the yogi’s mind-field has become harmonized and established in samādhi, the discrimination from awakening wisdom (prajñā-viveka) appears, and one then knows the exact reality (yathārtha-vastu).

By the practice (abhyāsa) of that and through dispassion (vairāgya) concerning it, the asamprajñāta samādhi occurs.

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Swami Veda Bharati’s commentary (on śraddhā)

Śraddhā is a feminine word, expressive of a gentle quality, associated with humility and reverence, and not over assertiveness or fanaticism. Vyāsa says: "Benevolent like a mother, she protects the yogi."

She is a capable and strong (samarthā) mother, who protects the yogi from the possible calamity of falling onto the wrong path and from becoming attracted to allurements of pleasure (NB). She crushes the power of a thousand impediments so that no breach in the process of yoga may occur.

Such is not the śraddhā of those who have wavered and gone off the path to become videhas and prakṛti-layas. Even though they may have started off with a certain strength of faith and all the rest, they have weakened and turned away from unwavering pursuit of self-realization. This śraddhā, the will to attain the final objective, produces endeavour, maturing in a certain virility and vigour (vīrya).

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This is worth meditating on. Vyasa seems to be equating faith with the desire to find the truth, vivekārthī. In other words, faith means there is a truth to be believed in. Even the most atheist scientist and believer (!) in chaos theory has to admit to that.

So, we satkārya-vādins say, "Just as hunger indicates the existence of food, but not the quality of the food, so similarly faith indicates the existence of truth, but not necessarily the shape of that truth."

Belief is the shape truth takes. It is never objective because it is not based on fact but on interpretation of fact.

Nevertheless, after the fact of experience we use our rationalizing powers to interpret that experience in order to be able to reproduce it. By experience I mean of course "peak" experience. The goal of all śāstra and philosophy is quite simply happiness.

Faith means to believe that happiness exists (because I want it, therefore it must be there to fulfil that natural need), but not necessarily in the means to or content of that happiness.

But rationality applied to experience, engineered by faith can result in perfecting the problem of human happiness.