Friends:

Clearing, Crossing and Leaping Faith!

 

Faith is like a Water-Clearing Jewel:
Faith is like the Water-Clearing Gem that clears & calms

water that is stirred & muddy, making it fit for drinking...

Faith as Motivation:
Faith is like the inspiration a crowd get by seeing a strong
man leap over a swollen river, they thereby get to cross...

By Faith is the Flood Crossed... Sn 184

Faith as both clearing the mind and spurring it on:
Faith first makes mind ready by calm clearing composure.

This then induces a desire to act, with purpose & intention.

Enthusiasm, energy, strength and persistence soon follows.

Manifested is decision, determination & fine commitment!

 

The soil in which faith grows is the 4 ways to Stream-Entry:
1: Association with Good People. (sappurisa-samseva)
2: Hearing the True Dhamma. (saddhamma savana)
3: Rational Attention. (yoniso manasikara)

4: Training Dhamma in praxis. (dhammaanudhamma-patipatti)

 

Arahat Nagasena once explained to King Milinda:
Faith, your majesty, evaporates the mental hindrances when
it emerges. Any mind without the mental hindrances is clear,

composed, & unagitated! It is exactly so, your majesty that
faith has the characteristic of calm tranquilized composure.
When the learner sees that the minds of others are all freed,
then he leaps forward after the fruit of stream-attainment,
after the fruit of once-return, the fruit of never-return &
after the fruit of arahat-hood! He makes an effort for the
attaining of the yet unattained, for the mastering of the yet
unmastered, and for the realization of the yet unrealized...!!!