Necessary
Doubt
Ani Tenzin Palmo
tricycle
Ani Tenzin
Palmo teaches that doubt is an essential tool on the path to
enlightenment.
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.”