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The Buddha's disciple Ananda appears throughout the early scriptures as someone who was faithful, humble and above all, human. In many ways, he wasn't the perfect monk. There are occasions when his sensitivity and his expressions of grief seem at odds with the Buddha's teachings on non-attachment and impermanence.
His honesty makes him an excellent role model. It’s easy to get uptight and self-absorbed about our practice. If we can be completely honest about our imperfection, our complete lack of enlightenment, the times when we lose our equilibrium and the times when sadness overwhelms us, then we open up to being fully alive.
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In our meditation practice we’re not trying to rise above the raw and messy. We’re not trying to transcend our humanness. We’re practising opening to our tenderness, our vulnerability, our sensitivity, our insubstantial nature.
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Our experience of body and mind is constantly changing. That means our sense of self keeps changing. There’s nothing solid to hang on to.
Our need for security means we spend a lot of time and energy trying to hang on anyway, and that clinging generates a lot of our suffering and dissatisfaction.
With practice, we start to see just how insubstantial the sense of self really is. We see that it’s just part of the flow of experience.
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The Pali word ‘saddhā’ is often translated as ‘faith’, but a better translation might be ‘trust’ or ‘confidence’.
Saddhā conveys a willingness to engage in and commit to practice. There’s no need for belief in a higher power or a deity because saddhā is grounded in direct personal experience.
