The Leap of Faith

 I am thinking about that experience when you are about to cross a big bridge, and you have to brace yourself to feel your feet leaping over, and what that feels like. In physics, I suppose the terminology is 'momentum', but I sense that there is this bracing energy that one must steel within oneself to finally resolve to start something (and go through it) once and for all. If the mind and energy are scattered here and there, the energies will cancel out. But at the same time, without a clear vision and a view, it's all so easy for the result to lead to unexpected consequences.
   Sometimes all the mind is really waiting for is a clear space out, to resolve the doubts that assail it. I am not so sure how this works in Chan, but even for beginning practitioners, one must resolve one's basic doubts as to whether this practice is valid for them or not, and this requires confidence in the practice and teachers. Once the more fundamental doubts are dissolved, there is a breath of relief and I find a way to make sense of what I am doing; it fits the tenor of who I am and is no longer a foreign body to me. But without that resolution, the mind finds so many reasons not to push forward, followed by intense feelings of conflict.
   I think that being in doubt is actually a good thing because it means that there is an inner conflict that is actively being resolved, even though it may seem impossible. I have sometimes heard in Chan that this is the best time to apply the method of huatou, because "impossible" only means that the 'possible' as we know it is starting to wear thin, and there is a space where it can be redefined. Without those moments of entertaining the 'impossible', one is attached to their system of known possibles, which represents the safe and orderly world of habits. So why not see these moments of hesitation as signs of inner strength, rather than signs of defeat?