doubt

Doubt everything. Find your own light.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Doubt.

In the spiritual search doubt is beneficial, a closed mind is not. Doubt used wisely assists enlightenment; a closed mind assists ignorance.

                                                                                                                                                from The "Quo Vadis?" File.

Buddhism took what I thought were the truly worthwhile things about the hardcore punk movement to their logical conclusion. The hardcores questioned society’s values, but never really questioned their own. The hardcores knew the straight world was fucked, but didn’t seem to have any idea what to do about that. Buddhism was absolutely free of the kind of bullshit I’d found in every religion I’d looked into. The object of Buddhist worship is this world itself, the reality we are living in right now. No God, no angels, no Heaven or Hell, no Savior except yourself.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

At last
He is healed of his self-doubt.
Now what is happening ?
He is awakening
To his souls ecstasy-sun.

Each human being can at once be a fighter and forgiver. When self-doubt tortures him, he most play the role of a fighter. And when his own ignorance humiliates him, he must play the role of a forgiver.

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.

IT COSTS SO much to be a full human being that there are very few who have
the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price. One has to abandon
altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with
both arms open. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept
pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the
cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to
total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.