For those of you who don't know, Saddha is a Pali word, which means confidence or faith, but it is not a blind faith, we don't just believe something because we were told to believe it or it is in a book. It is a confidence-faith, because you know for yourself something works. Now, blind faith, just believing something you were told or what is written in a book, is a lot of what Christianity, Judaism and other religions are based on, you must believe this or that. There it is, this book is important, this story is important, you must believe it. And that sort of faith is very blind, because we can't see it, we can't prove it for ourselves that what we are believing is actually something that we should believe in.
Theravadin Buddhism does not rely on blind faith, but is based on a confidence arising from experiential understanding.
To give you an example of how this works: All of you here now are in at least your 3rd retreat with us. You have had at least 6 interviews with us, you have asked approximately at least 20 questions, some of you we have been seeing for 10 years and more, you have asked 100 questions. You practiced what we encouraged you to do and gained confidence through your practice that our suggestions worked. You came back to this retreat, because you got good answers to your previous questions. You listened to good talks, you were able to use these techniques to find more peace and happiness in your life, you developed a confidence in what Rosemary and I were teaching, in something that was valuable for you.
Out of that confidence you developed a faith, a belief that if you come back for another retreat you are going to get more benefits. You had that as conviction in you before coming to do this retreat, even though you are not totally sure, we can't actually prove that you will get benefits the day before the retreat happens, but you had a confidence, a faith that, yes, you would get benefits, because you know you have received benefits before.
So this is what Saddha is, it is a type of confidence-faith. You believe when you come into the interviews with Rosemary and me, you're going to get something important. Maybe little, maybe big, but you believe that you are going to get something even before you walk into the interview. That is a good type of confidence-faith, based on your experience, that all the times before you always got benefit. So that is what Saddha is.
Now it is very important in this practice, to be able to develop Saddha. If you don't have Saddha in me and Rosemary, you don't come back for another retreat, it is that simple. If you go to 100 teachers and you can not develop any Saddha in any them, then you just don't care, there is no energy there to keep practicing, because you don't get something that you can build Saddha on. Fortunately all of you here, you have been able to develop your practice, develop your Saddha and that then encourages you to do more practice in the future. That is how important it is. When we have Saddha it encourages us to do more work.