In December of last year, I attended an online lecture by Dominick Scarangello, PhD, international advisor to Rissho Kosei-kai. The subject of the lecture was “Actualize Your Inner Potential By Modeling the Lotus Sutra’s Bodhisattvas,” but that was not the focus. Instead, he offered a discussion on how the rise of western scientific thought destroyed faith in the west, and how we might restore faith without giving up science. (A recording of the lecture is available here.)
For me, the takeaway was something described as the “faith frame,” a frame of reference adopted by the faithful that coexists with our perceived real world and within which we enrich and strengthen ourselves.
Dr. Scarangello introduced the “faith frame” by first discussing the importance of play among bear cubs.
“Play allows for the permanent extension of competence and confidence through pretense. … Play creates a world in ‘rule-governed’ fantasy – in episodic or imagistic representation – in which behavior can be rehearsed and mastered, prior to its expression in the real world, with real-word consequences. Play is another form of ‘as-if’ behavior, that allows for experimentation with fictional narrative – pretended descriptions of the current and desired future states of the world, with plans of action appended, designed to change the former into the latter.” [Psychologist Jordan Peterson]
That “play frame,” Dr. Scarangello explained, is essential to the development of the cubs. Without it, they would not survive on their own.
When done as religious practice, Dr. Scarangello said, such serious play is accomplished within the “faith frame.” Quoting from Stanford University anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann:
“To choose to think with the faith frame is a decision to enter into another mode of thinking about reality that calls on the resources of the imagination to reorganize what is fundamentally real. … This involves a shift in perspective similar to the shift in and out of imaginative play – except that the play claims are also serious claims about the world.”
This “imaginative play” is not fanciful as much as it is “imaginal” – “as if…” As Scarangello explained:
“Founder Niwano was convinced that Buddhism is rational and compatible with modernity, but there is very much of the imaginal in his approach to practice, and I think it’s those aspects of his teachings and guidance that prove difficult for people in other cultures today.”
As Luhrmann explains in her 2018 article “The Faith Frame: Or, Belief is Easy, Faith is Hard”:
“People of faith want to live as if the faith frame is really true, and it is hard, because faith is always under assault by the small (and large) unfairnesses and brutalities of life.”
For me, this “faith frame” is the domain of our Buddhist practice, an essential environment necessary to our development as Buddhists. Within this “faith frame” we can actualize our inner potential by modeling the Lotus Sutra’s Bodhisattvas and by so doing surmount the small and large unfairnesses and brutalities of life.
Without the “faith frame” we would not survive on our own.
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