Doubt Cannot Be Solved By More Thinking

It’s the tendency to doubt, to waver. Of course, when you doubt, waver, or are uncertain, then the focus will be on the teachings, but you’ll tend to doubt everything else as well.

So it’s good to get a handle on doubt, uncertainty, wavering: how it plays itself out in day-to-day life. It’s really interesting to watch on a day-to-day basis. How does it play out? “Should I have two of those fruits or should I just have one?” It can turn into a moment where everything stops: should I do this or should I do that; go forward or go back? We start to doubt everything, doubt can creep into everything and then it manifests in the teachings as well: doubting the teachings, doubting the practice, doubting oneself. “Can I do it? Can I not do it? Is there any point even to doing this? I’m not sure that I can do this.” All of it is doubt. So, being able to recognize that it’s doubt, and that’s all it is, one can then go forward.

This is also a situation where mindfulness of the body is really helpful, in the sense that you’re never going to talk yourself into a resolution of doubt through the mind. You’ll never get everything figured out enough not to doubt, if doubt is the underlying, fallback position.

Recognize how doubt manifests as a feeling of uncertainty, a feeling of hesitation, a feeling of discomfort around a particular decision or action. Then, by employing mindfulness of the body, you can cut through that and move forward.

Sometimes it’s helpful to make a wrong decision and do something, at least not get caught in wavering and uncertainty, just as a part of training. That sense of wanting to be absolutely sure that one is doing something right before doing it paralyzes you and ties you up in knots.