Oh sweet doubt.

Doubt recently is a huge thing with me. It seems to have a negative ring for most people, but I've caught myself saying it a lot, because my life is filled up to the brim with doubt in the present. I opened up my book again just to pick another chapter that looked interesting and that I could use for good, all about doubt. Once again, this is extremely interesting to me. The more I read of Zen teachings, the more I feel I belong here. It is the only thing to date I've ever read or learned or heard about that resonates with the way I believe and think and makes (so far) 100% sense to me, it just 'fits'. It gives me a warmth and peace to read about it, and makes me feel like I am already home, everything is already fine, no matter what. There is no getting saved, there is no repenting, none of the nonsense that will never make sense to me. Everything I need, I already have. It is an all encompassing feeling of acceptance and simplicity. What more could I want? Anyone that knows me, know I am never satisfied with someone's word, I question everything and I research and research myself and sometimes still, never satisfied with a 'truth' in whatever situation. .... Sharing a bit more through my depression experience- a good thing right? right.
=)


"Many people come to religion, including Zen and Buddhism, looking for that certainty. They hope that through religion they can have their doubts relieved. Some religions and teachers do offer assurances. They promise a certain and safe place in an uncertain and sometimes dangerous world.
But in depression all the reassuring and comfortable touchstones we had (or thought we had) are gone. We feel adrift, with nothing to believe in. The doubt within us sits heavily in the pits of our stomachs. We can't seem to get rid of it no matter how hard we try. When our doubt grows big enough, we want to expel it, to get rid of it forever. We want certainty in its place. Failing that, we at least want to find something we can believe in.
Unpleasant as this place may feel at first, it is actually a very good place to be."

"Typically, we may look to religion or philosophy for some belief or explanation that can be a safe harbor in the storm. But in our life the storm rages on. There are no such safe harbors. There never have been."

"...Instead, we are told to examine everything. We are encouraged to doubt. We are urged not to believe anything until it has been proven to us through our own direct experience." "Often, doubt is what brings us to Zen teachings and mediation in the first place- doubt over who we are, why life is so painful, and why we should live knowing we will die. We must then take this doubt, meditate with it, and digest it, until it fills our whole being."

"We must become willing to reside in the midst of this enormous doubt and let it be all right. In fact, we must accept that it may never be resolved and that this will still be all right.
This means we continually question; we never simply accept the answers given us. It means that we do not hold on to the answers even when we have discovered them for ourselves.
If we can live with this doubt, we can then be continually ready to be surprised- by life, by ourselves, by our answers, by our experience."

" To live in doubt is to live in mystery, to let it be large and vital in our lives. Human life is bigger than anything we can ever believe or understand about it.
This is why the doubt we are given in depression, is a gift and a great teaching."