Buddhists distinguish three stages or level of faith: inspiration, desire and convictions.
Inspired faith is the kind of admiration you might feel by reading a text, meeting an exceptional person or hearing someone speak about the Buddha.
Faith based on desire involves the idea of emulations: we aspire to know, to go deeper and to become the same as what we admire. Both these kinds of faith are unstable because they are not founded on true understanding.
Faith based on conviction, on the other hand, is based on a clear understanding that what we aspire to is possible. It is supported by reasoning.
In the Sutra, the Buddha asks his disciples not to believe blindly in what he tells them, but to test his words just as a goldsmith tests the purity of gold by beating it, heating it and pulling it.
