sawfoot _:
Yet for you, the turning point on your path was the complete and unconditional acceptance of what the Buddha taught as being "true, correct and lasting". For you, it appears it wasn't weird phenomena, but the full emergence of religious faith.
Sawfoot, you have
completely misread what I wrote, and are only seeing what you "believe" it is that I wrote. You have put words in my mouth that I did not speak (or write). I would caution you to read more carefully in the future.
Nowhere did I say or even imply that "the complete and unconditional acceptance of what the Buddha taught" was the "true, correct and lasing" end for me. What I was saying was a confirmation of the Kalama Sutta which is to test things out for oneself (to think for oneself) before accepting something as being true and conducive to wholesomeness.
Nyanaponika translation:
"Come, Kalamas. Do not go by oral tradition, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of scriptures, by logical reasoning, by inferential reasoning, by reflection on reasons, by the acceptance of a view after pondering it, by the seeming competence of a speaker, or because you think, 'The ascetic is our teacher.' But when you know for yourselves, 'These things are wholesome, these things are blameless; these things are praised by the wise; these things, if undertaken and practiced, lead to welfare and happiness', then you should engage in them."
Here is another translated version of that same passage, the version that I first came across and was initially impressed by. I came upon it in the book
Three Ways of Asian Wisdom by Nancy Ross Wilson:
Although the Buddha went forth personally to teach his doctrine of "mindfulness" as the way to enlightenment,
he never failed to stress the necessity for freedom from all sacrosanct religious authority. "Believe nothing," he said to his followers, "just because you have been told it, or it is commonly believed, or because it is traditional or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your Teacher tells you merely out of respect for the Teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine accept and engage in and take as your guide."
sawfoot _:
Faith is the foundation of the determination and confidence that comes when all doubt is vanquished.
So Zendo, you just need to believe.
There is a difference between faith, on the one hand, and belief, on the other. Alan Watts once wrote in his book
The Wisdom of Insecurity something I found to be true in my experience, also. I will share with you what he wrote:
"We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would 'lief' or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth
on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand,
is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception."
A wise man once said: "Belief is the boobie prize. Belief is a disease." What he meant to imply by that comment was that only first hand experience (only what you
know directly from your own experience as being true) is acceptable to accept as the truth. He went on to emphasize that: "The problem with a belief is that we take it to be truth -- and get stuck in it. That means that most of us persist in thinking and doing what we learned from our acculturation, rather than acting out of our experience in response to whatever is happening now."
If you bother to read the discourses of the Buddha, you will find these same ideas being taught there, too.