I'm not quite sure what is meant: "proud of the Dhamma". Maybe confidence in the Dhamma? "Proud" is a difficult word. Sometimes pride can be misinterpreted and people who have a lot of confidence can be misinterpreted as having a lot of pride. So there's an important balance with these words: pride, proud and confidence. If we're proud of the Dhamma in the sense of, on the ego side, "I have it and you don't", then probably it's not a good idea. If we have confidence in it, confidence that's unshakable, that's a different matter. And it can, as I said, be misinterpreted by many other people. But if we understand that we have confidence rather than pride, confidence in ourselves and our own good qualities so that we're not shaken so much by the worldly conditions of blame, loss, pain or obscurity, then that is a good thing. Actually if we do have pride in a negative way, we'll be much more shaken by these, because someone else may come along and say, "Well I have something better than you, and your practice is terrible." Then you can get into arguments with these people, whereas if you have a real confidence, you don't actually feel like you want to get into arguments at all. You may try to understand their viewpoint, and see what is common ground, and try to have a dialogue in that way. But when we're confronted with people who don't like us for certain reasons - because we practice the Dhamma or because we have a lot of confidence - then that can be very helpful for us to nurture confidence.
So confidence in the Dhamma and confidence in oneself is very important to nurture, because unless you have confidence in yourself you won't put in the energy and determination to develop yourself. If you don't have confidence in the Dhamma, you'll have too much doubt and this doubt will keep you turning away from the practices that will help you lessen your suffering.
Actually confidence, from my understanding, is very important in reaching the first level of Enlightenment. Because, from what I've read and what teachers have told me, complete confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha and the Four Noble Truths, is one of the requirements by which you actually reach the first level of Enlightenment. If you don't have confidence, you don't put in the necessary effort and energy to apply skillful means to control yourself and develop the practice. So developing confidence is very important. Especially from what Steve and I have seen in most Westerners, there's usually a lack of confidence in one's abilities, a certain type of unworthiness and self-hatred that needs to be overcome.
However, Buddhism talks about the great human potential. Starting to have confidence in your inner potential is very important for developing the practice. This is because the practice is often very difficult. Sometimes doubt arises that you're not capable of doing it, this is too hard to do. So having a certain confidence in your ability to understand is very important. Having a confidence in the human potential keeps us going until we can overcome some of the difficulties in the practice. Because sometimes we realize it's just a matter of applying the methods, letting the tree grow, and it will fruit in its own time. Developing confidence, in that sense, is very important.
Now how to do it? How can we nurture and develop confidence? The Buddha gave us confidence-inspiring objects of meditation. For old students, they get to know quite a few of them when they come and practice with us because we feel they're essential for the practice. Three are reflection on the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. Another one is reflection on one's good past Kamma; and another one is reflection on one's generosity. These are very important confidence-inspiring objects because sometimes we lose sight of our human potential, and by reflecting on the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, we remember our human potential. Reflecting on our good past Kamma helps us to balance the negative self-image that we often develop by focusing just on the things that we can't do in our practice. Instead of forming this negative self-image, we can see that there's another side of ourselves that we're not giving enough attention to, and this helps to balance the negative self-image. Reflecting on our Generosity helps give us Joy, and again helps to balance some of the negative self-images that we develop through focusing simply on what we cannot do rather than focusing on what we can.
Another thing that can help develop confidence is to understand the impermanent nature of self. Sometime we will freeze ourselves in a time moment and say, "This is the way I am." Especially if it's a negative time moment - we had a bit of a multiple hindrance attack - we will freeze ourselves in that moment and think, "Oh I haven't got any potential. After all these years of practice, I'm still doing this." But try to focus more on the fact that anyone who has not reached full Enlightenment is going to have some of these negative mind states arise from time to time, and sometimes they will arise as ripples from our past Kamma. Focus more on the ability to see them pass away more quickly than they did in previous times. How it arises, you see it, and it passes much more quickly. We don't hold onto it so long. Then there's a certain amount of Compassion that can arise for ourselves, to nurture ourselves. And we don't have to freeze ourselves in that moment because we're just changing moment to moment, and the next moment is another opportunity.