Can Faith Be Useful - Even for Atheists? | Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel
Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, retreat master and author, discusses faith as an open question and a realistic response to impermanence. She explores how "sitting like a log" can be a form of activism and the importance of bearing witness to life's full spectrum.
Deep Dive Analysis
9 Topic Outline
Living in a Rural Area During the Pandemic
Caring for a Dying Parent and Finding Beauty in Death
The Practice of 'Letting Be' and Relaxing with Experience
Cultivating Curiosity and Openness in Life
Re-examining 'Faith' as an Open and Realistic Response
Spiritual Materialism vs. Embracing Suffering and Impermanence
Interconnectedness and Personal Agency Amidst Global Challenges
Tenderness and 'Being Like a Log' as Forms of Activism
Developing Patience and Skillfulness in Daily Interactions
6 Key Concepts
Letting Go / Letting Be
Elizabeth clarifies that 'letting go' means being relaxed around your experience and bearing witness to what's happening without grasping or rejecting. It's about allowing yourself a full, nuanced experience of reality rather than clinging to preconceived notions or wanting a different experience.
Map vs. Territory
This mental model distinguishes between our conceptual understanding or expectations of life (the map) and the actual lived, moment-to-moment experience (the territory). The practice encourages moving beyond the map to fully engage with the dynamic, uncertain, and surprising territory of life, rather than concretizing it through fear.
Faith (as a verb)
Elizabeth defines 'faith' not as a static belief or doctrine, but as an active engagement or 'faithing.' It implies a relaxation around not knowing for certain, an openness to the unknown, and a trust in the process of life based on direct experience, rather than a fixed belief system or fundamentalism.
Spiritual Materialism
This concept describes the tendency to use spiritual practices or traditions to make oneself comfortable, substantiate the ego, and reject aspects that challenge one's habitual, reactive mind. It's seen as an obstacle to true transformation and genuine connection with the full spectrum of human experience, including suffering.
Tenderness
Described as a natural, pre-love characteristic of the human mind, a raw, strong, visceral response to the world. It's a natural warmth that arises, like a spring, and is expressed through caring for others, even in simple interactions, fostering connection and mutual warmth.
Being Like a Log
A practice recommended by Shantideva, it means to simply refrain from action or reaction when anger or strong emotions arise, especially when one cannot relax and bear witness. It's a form of activism against one's own reactive mind, preventing harmful responses and allowing for a pause.
8 Questions Answered
Everything extraneous falls away, revealing moments of honesty, humility, and peace. It's a raw, poignant encounter with the human condition and a reminder of one's own mortality, which can be a powerful and graceful experience.
'Letting go' means being relaxed around your experience, bearing witness to what's happening for you right now, and allowing the natural vitality of your mind to express itself without trying to stop it or wanting a different experience. It involves moving from relating to the 'map' of preconceived ideas to walking the 'territory' of nuanced, moment-to-moment experience.
In Western culture, 'faith' has often come to mean fundamentalism, doctrine, or dogma, implying something unexamined. Many in the meditation community actively reject Western religions, leading to a negative reaction to the word.
She defines 'faith' as a verb, 'faithing,' which means being able to bear witness or relax with the fact that we can't know anything for certain. It's an openness and curiosity, protected from belief and doubt, that allows for a nuanced and dynamic response to life.
Spiritual materialism involves using spirituality to make oneself comfortable, substantiate the ego, and reject challenges to one's habitual mind. This approach prevents true transformation and deep connection, as it avoids the necessary engagement with suffering and impermanence.
By practicing to not be reactive, training the mind to bear witness to these emotions without grasping or rejecting. If unable to relax, one can 'be like a log' and refrain from action. This non-reactivity, combined with an understanding of others' humanity and the impact of one's actions, allows for tenderness to arise.
It means to simply refrain from doing anything, to stop and not react. This simple act of refraining is a form of activism against one's own reactive mind, allowing for a pause and preventing actions that might inflame a situation or cause harm.
Recognize that people are in different places and have varying ideas. One can humanize them by thinking of them as someone's mother or son, or by expressing warmth and understanding. The goal is to accommodate adversity and develop patience and tolerance, rather than expecting the world to conform to one's preferences.
17 Actionable Insights
1. Embrace Openness & Curiosity
Poise your mind with curiosity and openness, asking open questions, as this protects your mind from the limitations of belief and doubt, allowing for a more intelligent and flexible response to reality.
2. Bear Witness to All Experience
Learn to bear witness to both your own pain and beauty, relaxing around your experience without grasping or rejecting, as this is essential for true happiness and a full, nuanced understanding of life.
3. Focus on Lived Experience
Shift your focus from abstract ‘maps’ (grand ideas, concrete thinking, fixed plans) to the ’territory’ (the actual, nuanced, changing lived experience) to discover surprises, beauty, and difficulties in the present moment.
4. Cultivate Personal Well-being
Prioritize creating well-being for yourself by working with your mind, fears, and uncertainty, as this prevents trauma and enables you to respond to others and the world with intelligence, creativity, and compassion.
5. Release Strong Preferences
Let go of strong preferences for how life should be, as they can obstruct your ability to see things as they truly are and prevent life from revealing itself to you.
6. Practice ‘Being Like a Log’
When anger or reactivity arises and you cannot relax with it, practice ‘being like a log’ – refrain from acting, stay like a piece of wood, and do nothing to avoid negative consequences.
7. Adopt a Service Mantra
Ask yourself, ‘How can I serve? What can I do to make things move in a better direction?’ to influence positive change and leverage your agency in the world.
8. Connect with World’s Suffering
Avoid isolating yourself from the suffering of the world, and allow heartbreak to foster connection, as this is crucial for empathy, tenderness, and awakening.
9. Humanize Others
When encountering irritating behavior, humanize the person by thinking of them as someone’s mother or son, which can help you respond with less reactivity and more understanding.
10. Express Tenderness
Express warmth and tenderness towards others through simple acts, as this exchange allows you to feel the warmth of your own mind and provides sustained well-being.
11. Practice Intelligent Selfishness
If you wish to be selfish, do so intelligently by practicing kindness, as your actions and intentions must align for your own happiness and well-being.
12. Focus on Controllables
If you have the agency to change something, change it; otherwise, let it be and work only on what you can fix, avoiding fixation on things you have no control over.
13. Observe Actions Carefully
Be very careful and observant of your actions, recognizing that everything you do has an effect, impact, and influence on the interdependent world.
14. Cultivate Patience & Tolerance
Develop patience and tolerance, which are essential skills for bearing adversity, complexity, and beauty in life.
15. Approach Situations Playfully
View difficult situations as a playful exchange, and skillfully assess whether to finesse, engage, disengage, or walk away, using creativity to navigate them.
16. Resist Capturing Beauty
When encountering beauty, resist the impulse to capture it (like taking a photo) or flee from it, and instead try to just stay open and present with the mysterious and interesting experience.
17. Limit News Consumption
Limit watching too much news to prevent reifying or concretizing your experience, which can lead to fear by looking at everything through a concrete lens instead of a nuanced one.
5 Key Quotes
Forget enlightenment is some sort of far away, remote, abstract concept. But there's a certain freedom in seeing that things are not what you thought they were.
Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel
Cows have faith in grass.
Tinley Nobu Rinpoche (quoted by Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel)
If you want to be selfish, do it intelligently. And practice kindness.
The Dalai Lama (quoted by Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel)
The greatest respect we can have for anyone is not to decide that we know who they are in a determinate way.
Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel
The biggest fear of the Bodhisattva, the practitioner, is to be separate from the world of suffering.
Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel
1 Protocols
Responding to Anger/Difficult Situations (Shantideva's Advice)
Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel (attributing Shantideva)- If something comes up and you're starting to feel anger, and you can't just relax with it, just be like a log.
- Stay like a piece of wood; don't do anything.
- Refrain from reacting.
- If you can fix it, change it. If you don't have the agency to change it, just let it be and work on the things you can control.