Situation

When I don't know what to believe

3 traditions are shelved here, each stating the question in its own words.

Is uncertainty a failure, or the ordinary condition?

Reflection that does not appeal to a religious or philosophical authority. The pieces here were written for this collection and make no claim to be anything other than one way of putting a question.

About this passageWritten for this collection, for a reader who is unsure what they believe and is being told, from several directions, that the uncertainty itself is a failing. It takes no position on which of the traditions in this library is correct, including the position that none of them is.

There is a particular loneliness in not knowing what you believe, and it is made worse by how confident everyone else sounds. The confident are not necessarily lying. Some of them have thought about it far longer than you have. But confidence is not evidence, and the volume of a claim tells you about the speaker.

You are allowed to hold a question open. Not as a pose, and not as a way of avoiding the work — open in the way a door is open, because you intend to keep walking through it.

It helps to separate two things that get bundled together: whether something is true, and whether it is useful to you at four in the morning. These are different questions with different tests, and answering the second one does not commit you to the first.

What you cannot verify, you can still notice the effect of. That is not proof. It was never going to be proof. It is what most people are actually working with, including the confident ones.

Hindu

Am I telling apart what is good from what is merely pleasant?

A tradition spanning the Vedic scriptures, the Upanishads, the epics and a long history of philosophical schools, devotional movements and practice. The texts collected here come from the Upanishads and the Vedanta reading of them, which is concerned with the self, with action and its fruits, and with what remains when the senses are stilled. They are read as revealed scripture by their communities.

About this passageThe Katha Upanishad is a conversation between a boy, Nachiketas, and Yama, the ruler of death, who has offered him any boon he asks and has been refused three times over. These two verses open Yama's teaching. The distinction is between shreyas, what is good, and preyas, what is pleasant — not between right and wrong but between two things that both genuinely attract, and that lead to different places.

Yama said: The good is one thing and the pleasant another. These two, having different ends, bind a man. It is well with him who chooses the good. He who chooses the pleasant misses the true end.

The good and the pleasant approach man; the wise examines both and discriminates between them; the wise prefers the good to the pleasant, but the foolish man chooses the pleasant through love of bodily pleasure.

In plainer words

What is good and what is pleasant are two different things. Both of them take hold of you, and they end up somewhere different. It goes well for the one who picks the good. Whoever picks the pleasant misses what they were actually for. Both come and stand in front of you. Someone with sense looks at the pair and tells them apart, and prefers the good; someone without takes the pleasant, out of liking comfort.

A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.

Buddhist

What do I do while the question is still open?

A tradition originating with the teaching of the Buddha in northern India and preserved in several textual collections. The discourses gathered here come from the Pali canon, recorded as talks given to particular people in particular circumstances.

About this passageThe Kālāmas of Kesamutta describe a specific problem: teacher after teacher arrives, each promoting their own doctrine and disparaging everyone else's, and they cannot tell who is telling the truth. The reply is often quoted as a licence to believe whatever one likes, which the rest of the discourse does not support — the test it goes on to give is whether a thing leads to harm, and it is applied by examination rather than by preference.

"There are, sir, some ascetics and brahmins who come to Kesamutta. They explain and promote only their own doctrine, while they attack, badmouth, disparage, and smear the doctrines of others. Then some other ascetics and brahmins come to Kesamutta. They too explain and promote only their own doctrine, while they attack, badmouth, disparage, and smear the doctrines of others. So, sir, we're doubting and uncertain: 'I wonder who of these respected ascetics and brahmins speaks the truth, and who speaks falsehood?'"

"It is enough, Kālāmas, for you to be doubting and uncertain. Doubt has come up in you about an uncertain matter.

Please, Kālāmas, don't go by oral transmission, don't go by lineage, don't go by testament, don't go by canonical authority, don't rely on logic, don't rely on inference, don't go by reasoned train of thought, don't go by the acceptance of a view after deliberation, don't go by the appearance of competence, and don't think 'The ascetic is our respected teacher.'

But when you know for yourselves: 'These things are unskillful, blameworthy, criticized by sensible people, and when you undertake them, they lead to harm and suffering', then you should give them up."

In plainer words

The villagers said: teachers keep coming through here. Each one says their own teaching is right and everyone else's is rubbish. We cannot tell who is honest. And the Buddha said: it makes sense that you are unsure — this is genuinely an unsettled question. So do not settle it by what you were told, or by tradition, or by scripture, or by clever argument, or by how plausible it sounds, or by the fact that a teacher is impressive. Settle it by finding out for yourself whether the thing does harm. If it does, drop it.

A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.

About this passageMāluṅkyaputta, a monk, has told the Buddha he will leave the training unless he is first given answers to ten questions: whether the cosmos is eternal, whether it is finite, whether the soul and the body are the same, what becomes of an awakened person after death. This simile is the whole of the reply. The discourse goes on to say the questions are left undeclared not because they are forbidden but because settling them does not stop anything hurting.

Suppose a man was struck by an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends and colleagues, relatives and kin would get a surgeon to treat him. But the man would say:

‘I won’t extract this arrow as long as I don’t know whether the man who wounded me was an aristocrat, a brahmin, a peasant, or a menial.’ He’d say: ‘I won’t extract this arrow as long as I don’t know the following things about the man who wounded me: his name and clan; whether he’s tall, short, or medium; whether his skin is black, brown, or dingy; and whether he comes from such-and-such village, town, or city. I won’t extract this arrow as long as I don’t know whether the bow that wounded me was straight or recurved; whether the bow-string is made of swallow-wort fibre, sunn hemp fibre, sinew, sanseveria fibre, or spurge fibre; whether the shaft is made from a bush or a plantation tree; whether the shaft was fitted with feathers from a vulture, a heron, a hawk, a peacock, or a stork; whether the shaft was bound with sinews of a cow, a buffalo, a black lion, or an ape; and whether the arrowhead was spiked, razor-tipped, barbed, made of iron or a calf’s tooth, or lancet-shaped.’

That man would still not have learned these things, and meanwhile they’d die.

In plainer words

A man is shot with a poisoned arrow. His people fetch a surgeon, and he says he will not have the arrow pulled out until he knows who shot him — the man's caste, his name, his height, his complexion, his village — and what the bow was made of, and the string, and the shaft, and the feathers on it, and the arrowhead. He dies without finding out. The Buddha's point is not that the questions are stupid. It is that the arrow is in you now.

A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.

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