February 2009
Dear Friend,
You wrote:
We can apply the Zen debate between sudden and gradual awakening to the question of faith, refuge and salvation. My local vicar in Sussex once told me that there is a difference between salvation and sanctification. Salvation is sudden and occurs the moment you give your life to Jesus. Sanctification is the gradual process that follows. Perhaps the act of faith is necessarily a sudden shift to the objective perspective, whereas the assessment of our faith is part of the gradual subjective process. In this sense, in one moment of pure faith we are already outside samsara. Sure some Pure Land teacher must have said this? And if this moment of pure faith occurs at the point of death, perhaps this means we lock into the objective perspective – forever, or until we freely decide we need to work on our subjective side again.