Absolute faith

This is it, the place where, as they say, "the rubber meets the road." In zazen, absolute faith is when the lower extremities meet the cushion at the end of a heartbreakingly bad day, when the sitter faces the wall in absolute stillness and solitude. There are no comforting words, no messages of hope to fall back on, just silence. This is the point where we begin again, over and over, day after day, with only the mystery of our buddha nature to guide us. It's not easy. The stillness frightens many off the cushion, and they go back to television, food, or whatever other comforting distraction is available. So it takes a certain kind of absolute faith to keep coming back to face that wall.

And lo and behold, I've been finding that it takes a kind of absolute faith to practice psychotherapy as well. It is incredibly difficult to sit with a patient and to have enough faith to know silently that things will be okay, despite evidence to the contrary. Or, conversely, that things aren't and never will be okay for that person. That takes faith too. The need to judge, to try to fix and to soothe with comforting words always wants to bubble up to the surface, even though doing so is not always the most helpful approach.

The other day, at the end of a session with a woman who has experienced unspeakable cruelty all her life, I said goodbye and was walking away. From behind me came a soft voice filled with sincerity. "l love you," she said. As I think about it now, my eyes fill with tears. Coming from someone who's heart has been repeatedly torn out and discarded like garbage, what better example is there of absolute faith? At night she faces that lonely wall and starts over, just like we do.