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Working with Doubt

Good evening, welcome. I always want to say it's nice to be here, but I guess even though I'm here by myself, I am imagining that there are people out there that are listening. Whether it's in real time or at a later time, I'm just appreciating that there are other practitioners.

I think it's probably safe to say that at least once in the history of everybody's meditation practice, there's been a time in which there's been difficult experiences or uncomfortable experiences. There might be a time in which the inner critic gets activated, and then there's this little voice saying, "I can't do this. Everybody else can do this, it seems, but I can't do this." Or maybe there's this voice that says, "Why am I even meditating anyway? It probably doesn't work," or something along the lines of, "I'm not sure about this practice. That teacher, they don't understand, their life has been probably easy peasy and they don't understand the difficulties that I have, and these suggestions for practice, that it's for other people, not for me. Or the Buddha, that was so long ago, do we even know that the Buddha existed?"

These kinds of thoughts, these thoughts that really aren't supportive or aren't helpful, have a sense of agitation with them, kind of like a lack of settling down. And there's also a sense of whirling, maybe that they aren't really landing anywhere or going anywhere. They're just kind of, "I can't do this, and I don't know why I think I can do these things, and here's just proof that I can't do it." Of course, we don't have these kinds of thoughts when our meditation is settled or when there's a certain amount of ease. We're not questioning the validity of the practice or our capabilities. It's only when there's some difficulties. And it's perfectly natural, right? When we have some resistance, some difficulties, there might be some thoughts that arise around this.

But a consequence of this type of thinking is that we stop being engaged with what's actually happening. Instead, we're lost in this thought pattern, this thought train that's going, and we're like, "Is this practice going to work for me? And what is the best practice? Maybe I should be doing mettā^[1], have some openheartedness, and then go to mindfulness. But it's hard to do mettā unless I'm settled. Maybe I should do some concentration practice. I don't even really know how to do concentration practice. Okay, so I'll just do mindfulness, but mindfulness is hard." We could spend our whole meditation period doing this kind of thing, and if you find yourself doing this, I assure you, you are not the first one to do this.

So instead of actually being with our experience, we're having a type of debate in our mind, and we're lost in these abstract ideas that don't really have answers. The question about, "Is this practice going to work?", the answer to that of course is, try it and find out, right? That's really the only way to know for oneself.

The Buddha recognized this tendency for humans to get lost in abstract ideas, questioning our capabilities, and having this hesitation or vacillation ("Maybe I should do this, and maybe I shouldn't do that. Is this really right?"). He called it vicikicchā^[2]. It's kind of a nice word. It's often translated as doubt or skeptical doubt, and I would like to say it's more like "swirling doubt". This idea of having reservations, having hesitation, having vacillation, being indecisive, maybe even being suspicious. It's this way in which we kind of go around and round in our thoughts, but we're not really getting anywhere and we're not really landing in the present moment. We're busy with these kinds of thoughts that undermine our capabilities, undermine our capacity to actually land here and be mindful of what's happening.

And this hesitation, this wavering, this vacillation, it gets in the way. It gets in the way of practice, and we end up not really going anywhere. Or it's not so much that the purpose of meditation is to get somewhere in particular, even though we do have this model of development, but instead there's a feeling of spinning one's wheels or just going into circles because we're lost in endless speculation or endlessly trying to decide which way to go.

The Buddha used a simile to describe this as crossing a desert. In my imagination, it's a desert with giant sand dunes. Maybe it's windy, so it's hard to walk through. Because it's windy, when you look behind, there are no footprints, so your footprints are getting washed away. And because it's sand dunes, there aren't any landmarks. So you feel lost, like you don't know which direction to go, it's not clear where you've been, and it's not clear where you're going. It's this uncomfortable experience where everywhere we look is just more sand, which is really uncomfortable.

But if we pay a little bit closer attention, we can see that this doubt, vicikicchā, is simply a loose collection of a certain family of thoughts that aren't onward leading, but are going round and round. When we use this word "doubt," we might think, "Well, of course, does this mean that we have to believe everything? We shouldn't have doubt?" That's not what we're saying. We're talking about the doubt where it's not clear where to go next, maybe even unclear where you are now, and there is no sense of anything that's onward leading or supportive.

Sometimes, to be sure, doubt is healthy. Doubt is helpful, in the same way that we might have this idea, "Hmm, the price of this object seems too good to be true, what's the catch?" That's a healthy type of doubt that we have in our daily life. It's this part, "What's the catch?", that we ask ourselves and then we try to find it. We read the footnotes, we look at it. "Is it this amount of money once, or do I have to pay that monthly? What was the catch? Maybe I can never unsubscribe or I can never return it." This idea of "What's the catch?", we look more closely to see what's happening here. We engage with what seems to not be quite right, we investigate.

In the same way, we don't believe or disbelieve something simply because somebody told us. We often hold things true provisionally, and we do a quick mental check, or maybe it's not even mental, it's somatic as well as mental, like, "Hmm, is this consistent with my experience? What do other wise people, people that I have respect for and that I believe have some wisdom or some knowledge on this topic, what do they say about it?" It's not that we have to believe or disbelieve, but just to investigate a little bit more. And this is very healthy, this is very helpful.

To be sure, Buddhist practice is not about just adopting a certain set of beliefs and there you go, that's all it is. Certainly, there's an emphasis in this tradition of Buddhism on practice, practice, practice. Some meditation practice, this being mindful, some concentration practice, getting settled, loving-kindness practice, softening the heart. And then with practice things unfold and we start to learn and understand things differently. And this healthy doubt asks the question, "Does this teaching and does this practice help lessen dukkha^[3]? Does it help free the mind?" With this recognition that really the answer, how we can really know it for ourself, is to actually do the practice, run the experiment, and actually do it.

We can also read what other people have to say about it. There is no shortage of Dharma books these days. We can talk to a teacher, we can listen to a Dharma talk, we can have what we call kalyāṇa-mitta^[4], spiritual friends, other people that have a practice that we can talk with.

But sometimes this doubt is unhealthy and unhelpful, and that's what I'd like to talk a little bit more about. When we're lost and stuck just going around and around, asking questions, and it's less asking specific questions and more just wondering, "Are these teachings from so long ago really relevant thousands of years ago?" We can get stuck in this kind of endless conjecture or endless speculation, and it takes us away from the experience before it teaches us anything. In some way, having this kind of speculation also supports indecision, which can support a habit of undermining ourselves. It's also just exhausting to always be wondering and not to actually settle down and try the practice, instead of trying to figure it out and wondering things.

Okay, so how can we practice with this when we see that it's arising? First, I'll say that doubt is rarely recognized as doubt initially. Often we can recognize some of the instructions for other hindrances or for other experiences, but doubt is a little bit difficult to recognize. So instead we might recognize the hesitation, recognize the vacillation, recognize the indecision, recognize the confusion, and recognize the way in which we might be in a debate with ourselves about this practice, or which practice we should do, or which Dharma talk we should listen to. Just notice the vacillation, the hesitation, maybe some confusion.

As best we can, can we just allow that experience to be there without making it go away, or without allowing all our aversion to rise up? Can we allow it to be there? If we have this sense of confusion, like, "I'm confused," just to even say "I'm confused" is to recognize that you're confused, and then you're no longer confused. You know that confusion is present, and then that can shift the experience, just being with what's obvious.

And maybe we might recognize that with this vacillation, hesitation, confusion, speculation, there's also some restlessness, right? It's the opposite of being settled, it doesn't support being settled. So maybe we just recognize that, "Oh, the body feels like it wants to run up or jump up and run away, and the mind is running all around." We can feel the uncomfortableness, the uneasiness. "I'm wiggling in my seat." Maybe that's that kind of feeling. Or maybe there's this heaviness. We could feel it in the body: heaviness, wanting to get up and run away. Or maybe there's a buzziness in the head, this kind of electric feeling.

Maybe that'll just remind us that that's the first foundation of mindfulness, right? Just to be with the sensations in the body. In this way, recognizing, turning towards what's obvious. If it's helpful, using some labels: buzziness, tingling, heaviness, whatever it might be. And there we are, we're back into practice. It doesn't mean that the thoughts won't arise again, and maybe we'll get lost, but then we can just notice what it is again and be with that experience.

Sometimes it can be helpful, if that isn't sufficient, to remember thoughts are just thoughts. They're just thoughts. And then we might actually have a gentle inquiry: "What's the difference between a thought and a memory of a thought? Are they the same? Is remembering the thought still a mental event?" The reason why I'm asking this is just to take some of the substantiality that we might attribute to thoughts away, to see, wait, if a memory of a thought is not different than a thought, then they somehow take some of their authority away. Just to recognize, okay, we're having a lot of thoughts, and maybe to remind ourselves they're just thoughts, they arise and pass away just like everything else.

And maybe we can also recognize that this is a mind when that's happening. The mind is experiencing vacillation, restlessness, hesitation. Just recognize, "Oh yeah, the mind is spinning in some kind of way." That could be the third foundation of mindfulness, recognizing the mind. You might recognize, "Oh, this is doubt," that would be the fourth foundation of mindfulness, recognizing a hindrance. In all these ways, recognizing and being with the experience—whether it's the bodily experience, whether it's the quality of the mind, or it's just recognizing specifically that thoughts arise—can help bring us back to the practice and disrupt some of the momentum that we might have with all this thinking.

But it might be that there is tremendous momentum. Maybe this doubt is showing up in our daily lives with indecision and not being able to make decisions. For me, I'll say that this kind of doubt kind of shows up when I'm driving. "Should I go this way? Well, no, maybe I should go that way. Oh, but then the traffic, but it might be shorter. Okay, well, at this time, okay, maybe I'll go there." Somehow I feel like I can't decide whether I should go this way or that way, this route or another route. There can be a more figurative interpretation, "Should I go this way or this other way?"

And if just recognizing what's happening and being with what's happening isn't enough to interrupt the momentum, then we can apply some antidotes. We can be a little bit more active about that. One is we could do this gentle inquiry: "Was there an uncomfortable experience that started this whole cascade of thinking? Or is there a view that I'm holding that things should be a certain way, that they have to be just right?"

This is a type of investigation, and investigation is the antidote to doubt. Some religious traditions have faith as the antidote; in this tradition, investigation is the antidote. If you feel unsure, do what you can to see what helps you feel more sure. Talk to people, read, or just investigate your experience. So when we're on the cushion, we could just do this gentle inquiry, maybe unpack the experience. "Okay, I can see that I have this underlying view that things need to be just right," or, "I can see that this whole thing started because, yeah, I'm feeling a little restless. All day I've been a little bit restless," or, "All day I've been really tired and have this sloth and torpor, and now this uncomfortable experience met the inner critic. They got together and came up with these sayings like, 'Oh, I can't do it,' or 'I'm not sure this practice works.'" To do a little bit of investigation to unpack, "How did you get here?" That could be being a little bit more actively involved with the experience.

We might also gently inquire, "Is there fear underneath this?" Sometimes there's fear that's really fueling our doubt. Without this turning into yet another big giant project, but a gentle inquiry, dropping in the question, opening up to the question, and then feeling into the answer. Not so much thinking our way to the answer. Of course, thinking is involved, but feeling our way to the answer. We don't want to just create the conditions in which we're just thinking, thinking, thinking, wondering, wondering, wondering, trying to figure it out. Can we do an inquiry in which we can feel our way? We can drop in a question and then open up and listen for an answer. So that's one antidote, to investigate.

Another antidote is to openly inquire, to ask ourselves, "What do I have confidence in? What do I know about this practice? What do I know about what I'm capable of doing? I have sat here during a meditation period before. This practice has brought some subtleness, some ease, some insights. I have heard things from a teacher that really resonated with me and made a difference. I do know people who are Buddhist practitioners who seem to be moving in the world without causing harm to others, or not very much harm." We might just spend a little time reflecting, "What do I have confidence in?" kind of to interrupt this vacillation. "What do we know from our experience? What is uplifting? What can support us?" Maybe we know that meditation sessions don't end necessarily the way they begin, so if we find ourselves caught in this vacillation or hesitation, it doesn't mean that we're going to have it for the whole rest of the meditation session.

Another way to work with doubt is to apply what's called wise attention, yoniso manasikāra^[5]. Manasikāra is the Pali^[6] for this. I say those words because I just like the way that they sound. And the Buddha talks about this; this is what the Buddha says is an antidote for doubt. There's an excerpt from a sutta^[7], and the Buddha says, "There are things that are the basis for doubt. Frequently giving careless attention is the nutriment for the arising of unarisen doubt and for the increase and expansion of doubt that has arisen." So careless attention gives rise to doubt, and if doubt's already there, careless attention makes there be more doubt.

And then continues, "And what is the denourishment...?" It's kind of a clunky translation. If we're going to say "what is the nourishment of doubt," in Pali it's just the opposite of nourishment. So this translator is doing "denourishment". If we were to say the word "starvation," that to my ear sounds cruel or something, so we'll use this word "denourishment". So the Buddha continues in the sutta: "And what is the denourishment that prevents doubt from arising, and when doubt has already arisen, prevents it from increasing and expanding? There are wholesome and unwholesome states^[8]. There are blamable and blameless states. There are inferior and superior states. There are dark and bright states. Frequently giving careful attention to these is the denourishment that prevents doubt from arising, and if doubt has already arisen, to prevent doubt from increasing and expanding."

Recognizing wholesome and unwholesome, kusala and akusala, helpful and unhelpful, blamable and blameless, inferior and superior, dark and bright. Wise attention is to bring in what we know from our practice, from our lives. "Oh yeah, this is helpful, this isn't helpful." To use some discernment, to pay attention to those things that are a support for practice. If we are feeling greedy, or a lot of desire, or something that's getting in the way of our practice and our life, we don't spend all our time looking at photos of those things that we want. We don't spend imagining all those things that we want. We don't fuel the desire by always bringing the objects of desire to mind, or into the visual field, or hearing them, or whatever. So wise attention is to pay attention to what's supportive for us, and to bring to mind what we know from the teachings that we have confidence in about what's wise and what's not wise, what's helpful and what's not helpful.

And then if we have paid attention to the experience of this vacillation and hesitation, we've brought in antidotes, and we still find ourselves completely caught up and filled with doubt, one thing that we might do is to do something for somebody else. Be generous with words, actions, effort. Help somebody else, do something for somebody else. In this way, it can help really soften and interrupt this kind of vacillation that we find ourselves in, and it just creates the conditions for something else to unfold, if we were to do something for somebody else.

So doubt can be really pernicious. It can undermine our entire practice, but there's a way in which we can be with it, and we can turn it instead of being an obstacle into the object of practice, right? Instead of being a roadblock, it can be a stepping stone to further practice. It doesn't have to be a problem. We can practice with it. In this way, as we learn to practice with whatever is arising, can we practice in such a way that it's a benefit for ourselves and a benefit for others?

Thank you.