When we take a journey, we need a map or a guide, or both. The same is true with a spiritual journey. We have the map… the teachings and the meditations. And we have the guide, the spiritual guide. If we trust the teachings and the teacher for our journey, then we have faith. If we have no faith, we will fall short in our journey.

In this series, we will explore together the final meditation of the fifteen meditations that make up our Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, the meditation on improving our reliance on the Spiritual Guide. Within Buddhist meditation, faith is not an irrational leap, but rather something that we develop gradually fully. It is a mind of trust that arises in dependence upon our own thorough investigation of the validity of Buddha’s teachings through analysis and meditation. In other words, our experience of the teachings will enable us to more fully trust the teachings. This in turn will lead us to take them more deeply to heart.