When we listen to the dharma it is not enough that it pleases us. It is not enough that we enjoy the experience that on a social level it is gratifying. We feel comfortable. We enjoy it. When we listen to dharma we do it in order to learn something practical, something that we can use to change, to cleanse our minds of whatever flaws afflicts us in order to achieve perfect wisdom.

What we are attempting to do or begin when we listen to dharma is not a hobby. It is not some kind of project that we will complete in whatever spare time we have in one year. It’s a project that cannot even be measured in lifetimes. We can’t say, “It’ll take me a hundred or a thousand or billion lifetimes to do this.” We have no idea. It’s a very gradual and very long climb up a very, very long staircase. If we see it that way, we will get the most out of the teachings.

The teachings themselves, as you know of course, comes in all kinds of formats: commentaries and texts of practical instruction, songs, even memoirs. The point of most of them is inspiration and that comes from faith. But we have a problem with faith because we have a dream, an expectation about what faith is that doesn’t fit the facts, and especially doesn’t fit the facts in this 21st century. We dream or imagine that faith is just going to happen to us like some kind of instantaneous mind-blowing infatuation with a charismatic lama, that we’ll be swept off our feet in an instant and never have any questions, never have any doubts, never have any problems.

If it was ever that way, it certainly isn’t nowadays. In this 21sth century blind faith and obviously what I’ve just described to be a case of abject blind faith is hopefully less prevalent than it used to be. Nowadays we’re highly educated by which, I mean, we’re trained in critical thinking. In the faculty of critical examination and evaluation and we all grow up learning the scientific method.

This gives us a problem because we tell ourselves, “I want to feel faith and I want to feel it right now but I’m not feeling it because I’m not convinced.” It’s fine that you’re not convinced. Do not be in any hurry to accept the truth of dharma. Do not be in any hurry to believe or be a true believer. And don’t try to rush faith. Don’t try to induce it.

The Buddha taught that we should examine his teachings with as much critical rigor as we would involve in chemically testing gold supposed gold before buying it.

Faith – good faith, genuine faith – only comes from personal experience. The wondrous qualities of the three jewels, the buddhas, dharma, and sangha, and the wondrous attributes of the results or fruition of this path have to be learned gradually. And as you gradually gain reason in your own experience to believe in these things, you will gradually, naturally develop informed faith. This does not happen suddenly. And it does not happen through some kind of brainwashing or induction.

[From a teaching on Songs of Barway Dorje, Part 5, by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]