Awareness

Here is an excerpt that I liked from the book Reflections on a Mountain Lake.

This talk is about areas which pose difficulties for some Westerners when they first come to the Dharma, and which may continue to be problematic for them further along in their practice. I would like to begin by talking about doubt. 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 Buddhadharma, this is not necessarily so. The Buddha described the Dharma as 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 Buddhadharma. However, a mind which 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.

There is a famous sutra which 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 2,500 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. In fact, all through the ages it has been understood that the doctrine is there to be investigated and experienced,“each man for himself.” So one should not be afraid to doubt. 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 which 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 which 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.”