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This one time a friend and me were planning to go watch a movie, but I was tired and told him I wanted to take a nap, so we planned to go watch the next showing, I told him to call 15 minutes before it started if I hadn't waked up and notified him.

Well as I was getting ready I accidentally turned my phone ringer off and having it cupped in my right hand, put my hand under my pillow of which my head laid upon. I was laying on my right side.

A little bit later, caught up in a dream, things started changing, I felt the vibes, dream disappeared, came out of body, went exploring, about a minute later, zapped back in body. Woke up, checked time, it was like about 2 minutes from which my friend was supposed to call. I opened the phone and I had a "missed call" message, it was my friend. I didn't hear it because I turned it off. I figured the cell phone Radio frequency had something to do with it.

There are two types of Faith.
1. a) one's religion, b) what one believes in
2. that which overcomes doubt.

Since everybody understands Definition #1, I' ll discuss Definition #2.
You cannot understand faith, without first understanding doubt.

How to experience doubt:
When in meditation after a period of time, you may hear a noise, like someone speaking to you and no one is there. Or you may see an image as crystal clear as you see your own computer screen. The moment you think WTF? or What is this? or even the simple "Huh?", it disappears. That was doubt. And the longer you can hold the vision without questioning it is the strength of your faith increasing.

Faith is not something you just say, "I believe"and then go walk on water. You have to train it.

Faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mountain, but most people can't even move the mustard seed, so what faith do they have? Their faith is weak, or non-existent.

Buddhism is a journey into the depths of one's heart and mind, the inner reality of one's essence, an exploration of who we are and what we are. This spiritual journey is nothing more and nothing less than discovering this inner reality.

Buddhist spiritual teachings present a genuine science of mind that allows one to uncover this inner reality, the nature of the mind and the phenomena that our mind experience. When we say that Buddhism is a "science," we do not mean the dry science of analyzing material things. We are talking about something much deeper. We are talking about going into the depths of the reality of our inner world, which is the most powerful world.

The teachings of Lord Buddha Shakyamuni, which we often refer to by the Sanskrit term buddhadharma, set forth a path that frees one from disturbing emotions and fundamental ignorance. This dharma frees us from existence in samsara, defined by samsaric fear, and leads us towards the fruition of independence, the fruition of the state of complete freedom, the state of fearlessness, going beyond fear.

By closely looking at buddhadharma, or Buddhism, we thus find that it is a pure path, pure teachings, a pure science, a science of mind. In this sense, Buddhist spirituality is not what is ordinarily meant by the term "religion." It is rather closer to a humanistic science, a pure and genuine philosophy of humanity and science which works with the two sides of our samsaric mind, the negative aspect and the positive aspect of our mind. Fundamentally it is the science of working with the very basic nature of our mind.

"Nangpa" - Insider

The Tibetan term for Buddhism illustrates the nature of this inner science. What we call Buddhism in Tibetan is nang pa, which means insiders. It's an interesting term, insiders; it can have two meanings. Literally, it means someone who is within a certain boundary, within a certain fence, but another meaning of this word insider is the sense that we are working with our inside, our mind, our fundamental confusion, ignorance. Therefore we can see what Buddhism is fundamentally, from this term, insider: it is a science, working with our mind, a philosophy of humanity, a human science.

Is Buddhism A Religion?

Buddhadharma is not a religion in the everyday connotation of the word. We are not talking here about the sophisticated ways of explaining religion used by university Departments of Religion. Rather, the ordinary use of the word religion, our regular mundane understanding of religion, is somewhat simple: it's a belief, a dogma that we have about some superhuman beings outside our self, some supernatural energy outside one's being which has power, control, over our universe and over sentient beings. This mundane understanding of religion is a theistic view.

In this usual meaning of religion, it is as if a particular external being or external energy is holding our computer keyboard and is doing the programming for us; we don't have any power, we don't have any energy, we don't have any choice. We ourselves have to work with it; we have to wait and see what comes up on the screen.

Holding The Keyboard To Enlightenment

In Buddhism, however, we are holding the keyboard; we ourselves are the programmer. We program our software and we press the command keys on our keyboard. So depending on our own skill, our own energy and our own knowledge, we get what we want on the screen.

The reason why Buddha taught the dharma is to teach us the command keys. The Tripitaka is the manual, teaching us how to program, how to use the right command keys, and depending on this knowledge, we can have a successful progression of programs. Therefore there is no external energy or external being holding our keyboards in Buddhism; even Buddha himself does not hold our keyboard.

Buddha is a teacher, a human being with great knowledge, great wisdom, who can teach us the right keyboard, who can teach us how to work with it, who has the great compassion to share his knowledge, the great compassion to hand over the keyboard to us. Even though he has all this knowledge, he does not guard the copyright, saying: "Nobody can use it except me." So we can see his great compassion, his great knowledge, which he shares with us, giving us the keyboard, giving us the knowledge, giving us everything.

This path of buddhadharma is totally free from any theistic view and is totally free from any shape or color. It's like pure water; it has no shape, it has no color. Depending on the container that we pour the water into, the water adopts that particular shape. If you want to freeze this pure water, you can do it by putting the water into the freezer, but as soon as you take the ice out of the freezer, it will return to its natural state of pure water having no shape and no color.

Different people have different capacities for spiritual understanding and practice. For this reason, out of his compassion, Buddha Shakyamuni gave teachings at many levels, just as a skilful doctor administers a variety of remedies to treat different types of sick people.

For those who wish merely to attain human happiness Buddha gave teachings revealing actions and their effects, or karma; and he taught moral discipline as their main practice.

For those who wish to experience the permanent inner peace of liberation, or nirvana, for themselves alone, Buddha gave teachings on the faults of samsara; and he taught the three higher trainings - training in higher moral discipline, training in higher concentration, and training in higher wisdom - as their main practice.

For those who wish to attain the ultimate goal of full enlightenment Buddha gave teachings on the development of great compassion and bodhichitta; and he taught the six perfections - the perfections of giving, moral discipline, patience, effort, mental stabilization, and wisdom - as their main practice.

All these teachings are open to anyone who wishes to study and practice them. The experiences that are gained from practicing them are called the 'common spiritual paths'.

Besides these teachings, Buddha also gave teachings on Tantra. These may be practiced only by those who have received Tantric empowerments.

THE SIX YOGAS OF NAROPA

1. Yoga of Psychic Heat, better known as Tumo. The foundation and ongoing support of the Path of Means, Tumo is the only one of the Six Yogas which is practiced throughout its entirety. It depends on the absolute retention of generative fluids -- sexual, endocrinological, and psychic -- for the conscious redirection and transmutation of subtle energies for spiritual purposes. In its most subtle and transcendent form, Tumo is known as the primordial energy at the very core of all manifestation.

2. Yoga of the Illusory Body. This practice begins as a powerful psychological technique. Through studying his mirror reflection and then visualized images of his own body, the aspirant comes to understand the arbitrary and illusory nature of perception. Next, he projects all his subliminal self-imagery, positive and negative, onto this image and thus disentangles himself from the web of identification with these things. Then he visualizes his Yidam, his personal Patron Buddha, and identifies his consciousness with it. He must transform his mundane life into the archetypal realm or body of the Buddha: his friends become Bodhisattvas, the outer world becomes a Mandala, and all incidents resonate with the Self-Illuminating Void.

3. Yoga of the Dream State. By maintaining waking consciousness during the nocturnal dream state, the yogi comes to realize the equally illusory nature of both the waking and dreaming conditions. Not only must he remain conscious while asleep, but he must also learn to dictate the incidents of his dreams, eventually performing heroic magical feats in his dreams. Through this practice the psyche is purged of many of its habitual limited assumptions about the nature of the manifest worlds.

4. Yoga of the Clear Light. According to the Tantric tradition, everyone experiences the Clear Light of the Void shortly after death. Its brilliance, however, is so overwhelming that the departing consciousness usually recoils in fear and is drawn instead into another samsaric rebirth. By learning to recognize the transcendent Light of the Nirvanic Buddha Consciousness during his lifetime, an adept may return to it without difficulty when the shock of death threatens to disorient him.

5. Yoga of the Bardo. The Bardo is the "nowhere" realm between death and rebirth. It is also the "nowhere" of the present moment. Whichever way you look at it, this yoga confronts the adept with his own naked and unmodified karmas. If he has not been sufficiently strengthened by his previous sadhana, he may easily become entangled in this display and fall into a realm corresponding to some aspect of his own karmic destiny.

6. Yoga of Consciousness Transference. Mastery of this yoga enables the adept to direct his consciousness at death through an aperture in the crown of the head to a chosen incarnation or a realm of light. This is his means of transcending the mechanics of karma and rebirth when he dies. The most desirable realm, of course, is the Dharmata, the Buddha realm of pure luminosity, the transcendent Light of Buddha Consciousness.

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