This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Tonight I'm going to talk about doubt. And I want to look at doubt in three ways. First, doubt as a hindrance or obstruction. In much of Buddhism, doubt is viewed as a negative mental factor or tendency of mind. Doubt can undermine our engagement.

[01:04]

hold us back from our lives, from practice, from opening, from love. A second approach arises in the Zen tradition, and doubt is still viewed as a hindrance, but it's actively cultivated until it's completely resolved in a kind of dramatic awakening. And then a third approach I want to bring up to doubt is a more positive approach to doubt as actually an expression of awakening, an ongoing function in our practice and our lives. And this doubt might be like the tip of a fresh sprout of grass in our practice, vitalizing our engagement and our compassion. So first, doubt as a hindrance.

[02:09]

Starting in early Buddhism and going forward, doubt is one of the five hindrances. And these are hindrances to concentration or meditative absorption. And in this case, doubt is usually characterized as being intellectual. and is characterized by wavering. It's vacillating doubt, and it arises from delusion. And it functions to hold ourselves back. We hold ourselves back from the practice or from the teachings. And you could say this doubt arises from an inevitable array of disjunctions between what we think, what we believe, our views, and the teachings. or also between our dispositions, our inclinations, and what practice asks us to do. And in the midst of these disjunctions, not being sure about ourselves, not being sure of what we want to do or think.

[03:15]

And in the classical text, there's standard ways of working with doubt. This type of doubt is a hindrance. And one is just to note the presence of doubt. Where there's doubt, just clearly acknowledge there's doubt. Also look at how doubt arises, the causes and conditions of doubt. And just to be aware of doubt is already undermining its function as a hindrance. When doubt arises, just encounter doubt. And don't get involved with judgment or trying to fix it. But just to see doubt as doubt is already an expression of faith. You're practicing with your doubt. Another traditional approach to working with doubt is to work with the teachings and develop wisdom.

[04:30]

So this is kind of a conceptual approach to working with doubt as a conceptual issue. And so there's reading sutras, reading texts, talking to a teacher, talking to friends in the practice, things like this. And doubt is a hindrance to concentration, but in the development of insight and wisdom, it's really important actually to bring forth your doubts. bring forth your questions. It's an important part of actually meeting the teachings, working with them. And so this might be, you know, in Indian Buddhism, generally, there's a cultivation of concentration and there's a cultivation of insight. And initially, they're kind of separate. And it's only at an advanced stage that you bring them together. And another way of looking at this kind of doubt as a hindrance is it's like a phase of practice. Something we need to pass through.

[05:33]

About 24 years ago, I started a Zen practice at San Francisco Zen Center. And about a year later, I went to Stanford to study Buddhism in this kind of academic context. And when I was at Stanford, I was basically practicing on my own. I'd sit in the morning and I had very little support. There was other grad students, but none of them were really into practice the way I was. And the professors, they were kind of supportive, but I think they had to kind of pretend they weren't into practice yet. And one time I read an article for one of my classes. And as far as I can remember, this article talked about how Buddhist practice might attract people with... a narcissistic personality disorder. And the way the argument in the article was, this disorder, one of the characteristics of this disorder, although you're really oriented towards yourself, it's associated with a weak sense of self.

[06:49]

And so then you have this weak sense of self, encountering this Buddhist teaching of no self, and there's a kind of resonance there. And so I was, I was, um, it really made me wonder, you know, was the resonance I felt with practice, was this based on, like, something genuine, like, in terms of, like, you know, something like resonance with true nature? Or was this, you know, basically just, like, was I resonating, like, with a, you know, distorted version of a teaching with my personality disorder? Um... And the article describes some of the other attributes of narcissistic personality disorder. I mean, probably they're just things that everybody has enough of, but there's a little self-diagnosis involved. And then the article went on to say, maybe this is why some people don't make progress in practice.

[07:50]

And so this really shook me up, and I was kind of staggering around Stanford. I was thinking of... My interest in practice was why I was there. And eventually, I bumped into Gil Fransdahl. He teaches here sometimes, and he was working on his PhD at that time at Stanford. And he was asked how I was doing. And I said, well, I have this doubt about making progress in practice. And he looked at me kindly, and he just said, you should never be concerned about making progress in practice. And... I don't know if it was the words or just the regard, the kind regard, but he gave me confidence to keep practicing. And the resolution of doubt is not necessarily like a deep conviction, but just enough faith to keep sitting.

[08:54]

And I think some of us might need to pass through a period of doubt with various ups and downs as a natural process of questioning, of working with the teachings and working with different perspectives on what we're doing here. And we need to have an authentic encounter with our doubt. So a lot more could be said about this. Doubt is a hindrance, but there's these other approaches to doubt. So I'm just going to go on. So in the Zen tradition in the 12th century in China, an approach to the active cultivation of doubt arose. This is particularly associated with the Rinzai tradition of Zen. And this approach became very important in China, Korea, and Japan in the Zen tradition. And just to say, here at Tassajara, we're in a Soto lineage.

[09:57]

We're in a different lineage than Rinzai Zen. And sometimes Soto Zen is very critical of this approach to practice. I'll come back to that in a few minutes. So in this approach, doubt is still a hindrance, but it's not viewed as just a hindrance to concentration, but in a way it's viewed as the basic hindrance to awakening. And then the approach to doubt here is, rather than try to get rid of doubt, is to actively develop doubt, to deepen it and expand it until it completely consumes your being, and then eventually turns over into a great release, into awakening. And so doubt is this force propelling the practitioner to awakening. And this approach is usually done with a koan. You use a koan to generate the doubt and focus the doubt.

[10:58]

And the most common koan used is Zhao Zhou's Mu. So this is a monk asked Zhao Zhou, Chinese Zen master, does a dog have Buddha nature or not? Zhao Zhou said Mu, which is literally a no. But as a koan, it's not a straightforward negation. And that's why it's a koan. If it just meant no as in no, you know what that means. We're pretty certain what that is. It's not used that way. And so part of the context for this Chinese Buddhism is a fundamental tenet at this time was all beings possess Buddha nature. So this no here was kind of surprising. And in a way, I think part of the reason this koan is used is it's meant to connect with our own doubts about our true nature.

[12:01]

Is our true nature actually awakening? Can we just accept that our nature is awakening? Can we live from that? Without changing anything about what we are, are we worthy of... awakening right now. And so a koan is used in this practice as like a spur to get doubt started and to develop a practice of deep questioning. And the koan is also part of the reason I think they used the koan was you want to generate a question, a yearning to know wanting to know, and no resolution. No conceptual, experiential resolution short of awakening. And so a koan was a way to do that in a kind of tangible way.

[13:09]

Because if you thought you got the koan, you could go to the teacher and say, like, well, I resolved the koan. And they could just tell you, well, no, you did. And so there's no way to think your way through this. And there's nothing you can do. It's actually just to grow the doubt, grow the question. And this practice, this cultivation of doubt, is meant to coalesce all of your doubts into this great mass. And then, again, eventually... or break open into a realization, which then is an awakening that resolves all of your doubts definitively. So they say, great doubt, great awakening, little doubt, little awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

[14:20]

And this practice is growing in obstruction. And it's actually fostering a certain amount of stress or existential quandary. You're actually cultivating perplexity. Or you could say emotional anxiety. It's a painful form of practice. And this is really different, basically, from Buddhist meditation up to this point. From very early in Buddhism going forward, concentration is viewed as a pleasant abiding. And this is a type of meditation that it's characterized by a type of concentration, but because there's no object, it's unsettling. Or there is an object, but the object is that you're not letting yourself get an object. And it's also, you know, to do this practice, you have to have faith in Zen and in Buddhism.

[15:31]

You actually have to have quite a bit just to get started in this, because this is going to involve great vigor in everything you have. So if you have doubts about whether this is something worth your while, you're not going to get very far. So actually, you know, certain doubts have been resolved before you can really engage this. So I mentioned this Rinzai approach is often criticized in Soto Zen, or sometimes criticized. Partially it's viewed as an approach to practice based on delusion. Part of the yearning is like a yearning for awakening. You're intentionally cultivating a delusion in the context of a... awakening being your nature, of awakening being something you need to get.

[16:34]

Also, in Soto Zen, there's sometimes a kind of suspiciousness about dramatic breakthroughs as being pivotal to the life of awakening in the world. You can have a dramatic breakthrough and still be kind of a lousy person, You can be a great person with no dramatic breakthrough. So for the rest of the talk, I want to focus on a third approach to doubt, which is a positive expression of awakening in and through our practice. In a way, this is inspired by this Rinzai approach to doubt. recasting it in a kind of Soto context, in Soto light. And I feel inspired by Dogen, and I feel inspired by our practice here, to try and talk about doubt in this way.

[17:47]

This is not a traditional approach to doubt. This isn't a way that Soto Zen talks about doubt, until now. so doubt in this approach vitalizes our practice and it's a practice which isn't pushing to attain awakening or get awakening it's a practice based on awakening it proceeds from awakening it unfolds it enacts awakening so this is a cultivation of doubt that resolves into awakening but awakening that keeps unfolding with doubt, or doubt as a dimension of how awakening gives life to our practice. So one place I see this is in Genjo Koan, a text by Dogen. And Dogen says, when Dharma does not fill your body and mind, you think it's already sufficient.

[18:54]

When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. And then Dogen illustrates this with an image. For example, when you sail out in a boat in the midst of an ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. So I propose that doubt is this understanding that something is missing. And it goes with this condition of dharma filling your whole body and mind. So realizing that our experiences, our understandings, our views of ourselves, of the world, of what is happening, are circles of water. And doubt is living with the truth of the ocean all around.

[20:01]

We don't get that, but it's living with it. And this isn't a doubt that holds us back from being wholehearted. It arises in wholehearted engagement when dharma fills our body and mind. And so doubt's happening through our whole body and mind. And you could say it's a question, or it could be a sense of not being sure, or a sense of questioning. But it's not in a way that makes us vacillate, but it's dynamic and vitalizing. And so then on the other hand, Dogen says, you know, when Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. That's when we think our experience is complete, or our view is complete. We know what's going on. in ourselves and the people around us. And this might give us a certain feeling of security or clarity or certainty or safety.

[21:10]

But it can also be a kind of prison. And one of the circles of water that we sometimes hear about in Buddhism is that we have an independent self. the self separate from everything else. And that this is a kind of ubiquitous, unconscious frame that's with us almost every moment of our lives. And so, in that sense, our whole lives are in a kind of prison. One way... maybe talk about doubt that's kind of more traditional Zen term is not knowing and actually part of the reason I wanted to bring up doubt is that not knowing I think can kind of sound flat or static and doubt has this kind of active energy or kind of more dynamic kind of points to the dynamic life of not knowing which is it's not an absence of knowing it's working with what we know working with our knowing in the moment of knowing and

[22:24]

and our nests of knowing. And so doubt is not trying to erase the edges of our circle of water. It's not trying to blur or dissolve what we know or try to radically expand the limits of knowing. It's to understand that something's missing. And this understanding that something's missing, it's not like another thing we know. It's actually more like something we are. And when we hear these words, something is missing, it might sound like something is just one thing, but actually this something is something we can't get at. You could say it might be almost everything, or it could be a wondrous nothing, or it could be the truth of how things are.

[23:27]

Seeing ourselves as separate, it's this frame of things always appear through our conceptual consciousness in a certain way, and the proposal in Buddhism is that's not the way they are. And I want to bring up this doubt as a function of awakening, or a practice of awakening. A function of awakening that ongoingly questions our practice, our beliefs, our feelings, and our awakening. So even awakening itself, their quality of awakening is questioning the realization of awakening. And that, you know, when that doubt is present with awakening, it's actually a deeper awakening. And this doubt involves a capacity. to tolerate or live fully with uncertainty or contradiction or ambiguity.

[24:36]

It's comfortable with ungraspability. It's patient with something is missing. We only get a circle of water. And this can feel like we're giving up some safety. or some security, but from this perspective, it's not real security, it's not real safety, it's a dream of safety. And this constantly being present with what we don't know also puts us in touch with our vulnerability. But it's alive. our suffering is actually much more workable. Our problems are much more workable in this practice of questioning and doubt. And so, you know, as we come to realize that we're working with a circle of water, we become more careful.

[25:43]

We can appreciate that actually the way we're living our lives and interacting with others, we're really feeling our way along in the dark. And so we can start to be more gentle and careful and kind with ourselves and with others. Another way of talking about this doubt is cultivating a sustained questioning in our practice. And this questioning is just... ongoingly open or opening. There might be answers, there might be resolutions, but these are not resolutions that are fixed or that carry over into the next moment. If anything, the answers should just open up a deeper question. And the most important questions in our lives, they don't have answers.

[26:46]

They're endlessly deep. And as an expression of awakening or a function of awakening, this drives our practice forward. It's a source of ongoing vigor or engagement. You know, in our sitting, in being upright, we're trying to find our center. And our center is not a static, fixed thing. So we're ongoingly engaged with being upright because our center actually is changing and it's dynamic. And doubt also allows for an endlessly creative dimension to our practice. It's an ongoing commitment to creatively re-engage the ultimate matter of practice.

[27:48]

moment by moment. Sometimes we may feel there's a deep question in the middle of our lives, and this practice of doubt is encouraging us to find this question or a sense of questioning and connect deeply with it. Sometimes we can use a teaching or a koan, to touch a question in our hearts or spark a question. Sometimes there might be an inarticulate question in our hearts that eventually finds its way to a teaching, finds its way to a koan. Sometimes a question in words is like an impetus for our doubt. Sometimes these words just completely dissolve and are our life becomes a question.

[28:49]

Questioning becomes what we are. Dogen had a question that drove his practice. We hear, if all beings are awakened by nature, if all beings have Buddha nature, what is the need for engaging in practice and realizing awakening? So what is the deepest question of our lives? And does it drive our practice? Does it enliven our sitting? And how do we bring this deepest question into our whole lives? Sometimes in Zen we hear a question, what is it? I was like, well, you didn't say what it is. A longer version of this question is, it's not mind, it's not a thing, it is not Buddha.

[29:52]

What is it? Suzuki Roshi sometimes asked, what is the most important thing? What is our inmost request? What is our ultimate concern? How do we respond to the problems of the world? How do we respond to the suffering right in front of us? What is liberation? What is love? What is life? What is death? What is the self? What are we? What is our true nature? If there's no separate self, what are we? Are we just a dream of ourselves? During the ceremony in the Zendo where we have question and answer, I remember someone shouting at the head monk, What are you doing here?

[31:04]

So what awakens our own doubt? her own inner question, her own deepest question. What surface is the inner current in our life to bring us to wonder about or engage in this practice? What is our deepest desire? What do we really want? And how does our practice and our lives meet, encounter, and bring to life our inmost request? I also want to say a few words about faith. Sometimes in Zen we talk about faith as being a trust or confidence in our true nature. And this faith works hand in hand with doubt. Faith involves confidence in our true nature, our awakened nature, and this is one of the things that doubt often takes up.

[32:07]

What is our true nature? Does a dog have Buddha nature or not? And there might be out there some complementary and also some dynamic opposition, like faith can embody a function of our practice settling, non-seeking. And doubt embodies a kind of unsettling function, restless, non-grasping. Faith brings us to this moment, utterly complete, and doubt is how we... Do not get caught by a limited version of this completeness. We could say faith is a faith that we're Buddha, that our nature is awakening. We are such. And doubt is that this Buddha is not satisfied with this Buddha. Or it's a Buddha that keeps questioning.

[33:09]

It's a Buddha that's seeking to be Buddha. Or a Buddha that's aspiring to be Buddha, and questioning what awakening is and how it actually lives in the world. So it's not really a doubt in Buddha, but a doubt of a Buddha, a doubt of awakening, and a doubt that proceeds from faith and it deepens faith. We can also look at this doubt as a positive cultivation or expression or function of the bodhisattva vow. So this is a vow of being dedicated to the happiness, the welfare, and the awakening of all beings. Zen teachings emphasizing the inherent perfection and completeness of this moment have sometimes been criticized for basically implicitly supporting an unjust social order.

[34:13]

So any impulse to want things to be different can be kind of disregarded or kind of just put into like, oh, that's delusion. Just drop it. You don't need to worry about that. And this criticism has been coupled with historical examples, you know, illustrating when the Zen tradition in Japan sometimes played an active role in perpetuating structures of social injustice. And so a teaching that leaning strongly toward absolute valorization of life as it is may tend to function as a kind of spirituality of the privileged or as a tradition that tends to maintain unfair structures of privilege. And we can look at these tendencies as leaning too much towards faith. And so doubt opens this critical dimension, and this should be directed at ourselves, at injustice, at any manifestation of suffering.

[35:22]

So doubt is an eye of criticism that's always open and questioning. So the bodhisattva is dedicated to the well-being, happiness and freedom of all beings? How do we open to the suffering of ourselves and others? How do we respond? And the way in which these questions open endlessly can be seen as a practice of doubt. Doubt could be how love keeps turning awakening or freedom back to the world of suffering. The bodhisattva vow can be seen as a kind of love or a kind of question or a doubt that keeps working in us as long as there is suffering in the world. And in this way doubt can keep our peace from becoming an escape or becoming a kind of passive peace.

[36:28]

Doubt in our peace makes our peace a living peace. And this doubt is always vitalizing and never complacent. And opening to allowing ourselves to be challenged by our lives in new ways. And resist resolution to the deepest questions of our practice and awakening and the problems of the world. And the suffering right in front of us. So this is how I like to offer doubt. There's this blade of grass sprouting in each moment. It's alive. It has an edge. It serves love. And you could also say it's fresh life moving through the deepest truths. So that's my circle of water.

[37:36]

Something's missing. Almost everything's missing. It's 9.20, so I think we don't have time for questions. But feel free to ask me questions if you see me, or comments. So may we go on, fulfilled in each moment, and never satisfied with our practice. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

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