Ani Tenzin Palmo teaches that doubt is an essential tool on the path to
enlightenment.
By Ani Tenzin Palmo
Perhaps because of our Judeo-Christian background, we have a tendency to
regard doubt as something shameful, almost as an enemy. We feel that if we
have doubts, it means that we are denying the teachings and that we should
really have unquestioning faith. Now in certain religions, unquestioning
faith is considered a desirable quality. But in the Buddha-dharma, this is
not necessarily so. Referring to the dharma, the Buddha said, "ehi passiko,"
which means "come and see," or "come and investigate," not "come and
believe." An open, questioning mind is not regarded as a drawback to
followers of the Buddha-dharma. However, a mind that says, "This is not part of my mental framework, therefore I don't believe it," is a closed mind, and such an attitude is a great disadvantage for those who aspire to follow any spiritual path. But an open mind, which questions and doesn't accept things simply because they are said, is no problem at all.
A famous sutra tells of a group of villagers who came to visit the Buddha.
They said to him, "Many teachers come through here. Each has his own
doctrine. Each claims that his particular philosophy and practice is the
truth, but they all contradict each other. Now we're totally confused. What
do we do?" Doesn't this story sound modern? Yet this was twenty-five hundred years ago. Same problems. The Buddha replied, "You have a right to be confused. This is a confusing situation. Do not take anything on trust
merely because it has passed down through tradition, or because your
teachers say it, or because your elders have taught you, or because it's
written in some famous scripture. When you have seen it and experienced it
for yourself to be right and true, then you can accept it."
Now that was quite a revolutionary statement, because the Buddha was
certainly saying that about his own doctrine, too. All through the ages it
has been understood that the doctrine is there to be investigated and
experienced by each individual. So one should not be afraid to doubt. In
fact, Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor wrote a dharma book entitled The
Faith to Doubt. It is right for us to question. But we need to question with
an open heart and an open mind, not with the idea that everything that fits
our preconceived notions is right and anything that does not is
automatically wrong. The latter attitude is like the bed of Procrustes. You
have a set pattern in place, and everything you come across must either be
stretched out or cut down to fit it. This just distorts everything and
prevents learning.
If we come across certain things that we find difficult to accept even after
careful investigation, that doesn't mean the whole dharma has to be thrown
overboard. Even now, after all these years, I still find certain things in
the Tibetan dharma that I'm not sure about at all. I used to go to my lama
and ask him about some of these things, and he would say, "That's fine.
Obviously, you don't really have a connection with that particular doctrine.
It doesn't matter. Just put it aside. Don't say, 'No, it's not true.' Just
say, 'At this point, my mind does not embrace this.' Maybe later you'll
appreciate it, or maybe you won't. It's not important."
When we come across a concept that we find difficult to accept, the first
thing we should do, especially if it's something that is integral to the
dharma, is to look into it with an unprejudiced mind. We should read
everything we can on the subject, not just from the point of view of
Buddha-dharma, but if there are other approaches to it, we need to read
about them, too. We need to ask ourselves how they connect with other parts
of the doctrine. We have to bring our intelligence into this. At the same
time, we should realize that at the moment, our level of intelligence is
quite mundane. We do not yet have an all-encompassing mind. We have a very limited view. So there are definitely going to be things that our ordinary
mundane consciousness cannot experience directly. But that does not mean
these things do not exist.
Here again, it is important to keep an open mind. If other people with
deeper experiences and vaster minds say they have experienced something,
then we should at least be able to say, "Perhaps it might be so." We should
not take our limited, ignorant minds as the norm. But we must remember that
these limited, ignorant minds of ours can be transformed.
That's what the path is all about. Our minds do become more open and
increasingly vast as we progress. We do begin to see things more clearly,
and as a result they slowly begin to fit into place. We need to be patient.
We should not expect to understand the profound expositions of an
enlightened mind in our first encounter with them. I'm sure we all know
certain books of wisdom that we can read and reread over the years, and each
time it seems like we are reading them for the first time. This is because
as our minds open up, we begin to discover deeper and deeper layers of
meaning we couldn't see the time before. It's like that with a true
spiritual path. It has layer upon layer of meaning, and we can only
understand those concepts that are accessible to our present level of mind.
I think people have different sticking points. I know that things some
people find very difficult to grasp were extremely simple for me. I already
believed many of the teachings before I came to the Buddha-dharma. On the
other hand, some things that were difficult for me, others find simple to
understand and accept. We are all coming from different backgrounds, and so we each have our own special problems. But the important thing is to realize that this is no big deal. It doesn't matter. Our doubting and questioning spur us on and keep us intellectually alert.
There have been times when my whole spiritual life was one great big
question mark. But instead of suppressing the questions, I brought up the
things I questioned and examined them one by one. When I came out the other end, I realized that it simply didn't matter. We can be quite happy with a question mark. It's not a problem at all, actually, as long as we don't
solidify it or base our whole life on feeling threatened by it. We need to
develop confidence in our innate qualities and believe that these can be
brought to fruition. We all have Buddha-nature. We have all the qualities
needed for the path. If we don't believe this, it will be very difficult for
us to embark because we have no foundation from which to go forth. It's really very simple. The Buddha-dharma is not based on dogma.
But why is it so difficult for us? Basically it's because of our state of
mind, because we lack knowledge of who we are and our role here in this
life. Because we don't know who we are, we feel separate from everybody
else. There's this sense of "me" that creates all our fears, angers,
attachments, jealousies, and uncertainties. But the Buddha said that it
doesn't have to be like that. Our inherent nature is pure. All we have to do
is rediscover who we really are, and that's what the path is for. It's very
simple. It's not based on faith, but rather on experiments and experience
leading to realization. It's not a matter of learning what this lama says,
or what that tradition says, and then believing it's going to save us. It's
not going to save us. Of course we need to know what the Buddha said. We
need to know what great teachers in the past have said, because they have
been there ahead of us and have laid down maps for us to follow. But it's a
bit like reading a travel book. You can read a travel book and feel you're
already there, but in reality you're not there. These are somebody else's
travel experiences. And when you do go there, you will have your own unique
experiences. Following the path is about experiencing it for ourselves. It's
not taking on what other people have described. It's not based on blind
faith. Of course, you need a certain amount of confidence to buy a ticket
and start on your journey. You have to believe that the country exists and
that it's worthwhile to go there. But beyond that, the important thing is
just to go. And as you go, you can say to yourself, "Yes, that's just the
way they described it. That's right. It does look like that."
Born in London
ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun and gained an international reputation
for spending twelve years in retreat in a Himalayan cave. From Reflections
on a Mountain Lake
with permission of Snow Lion Publications, www.snowlionpub.com.
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