For faith to be grounded in the reality of our experience, it must also be
open enough to include what the Buddhist scholar, writer, and teacher Stephen
Batchelor calls “the faith to doubt”. If we use faith to push doubt aside, we
construct a defensive wall to keep out any unsettling questions, to keep from
having to acknowledge own fears and uncertainties. The inclusiveness of faith
lets us be with whatever arises, investigating the very nature of doubt itself
and whatever other difficulties arise. By embracing doubt skillfully we
strengthen faith.
Doubt is the difficult mind state of perplexity. It’s like being at a
crossroads and not knowing which way to go. We go back and forth between
alternatives and are then brought to a standstill by bewilderment and
indecision. When doubt is overpowering, we can’t move. It doesn’t even allow us
the opportunity to take a wrong turn and learn from our mistakes.
Almost all spiritual traditions speak of the difficulty of this state and
how common it is at different times on our path. Doubt can take many forms.
Sometimes it is doubt about ourselves, about our ability to practice and walk
the path. It is the voice that says, “I can’t do this. It’s too difficult.
Perhaps some other time.”
Doubt is seductive because it come masquerading as wisdom. We hear these
wise sounding voices in our minds trying to figure out the dilemmas,
difficulties, and paradoxes of our experience through thinking about them. But
thinking can take us only so far. It’s like trying to know the experience of
music by reading a book about it or the tastes of a good meal by looking at the
menu.
We need some other way to understand the nature of doubt, so that we can
address its concerns appropriately.
The first step is to recognize when the doubting mind is present and, in
recognizing this, to become familiar with its various voices. If we become aware
of these voices as mental tapes, simply more thoughts in the mind, we’re less
likely to become ensnared by their content. In that moment, we cease to give them
power; “I can’t do this" becomes just another thought. We can then bring wisdom
to bear on the process of doubt itself, noticing how it takes us away from the
direct experience of the moment.
from One Dharma by Joseph Goldstein
