“An open mind is a strong mind … our doubting and questioning spur us on and keep us intellectually alert and can help us develop confidence in our innate qualities.”
Senior teacher, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo encourages us to live our lives with a question mark and to not settle for blind faith. Instead, we can experience our faith firsthand and not be content with what other people think or describe.
I hope you enjoy excerpts from the provocative Tricycle article below,
Necessary Doubt
Ani Tenzin Palmo teaches that a questioning mind is essential to the Buddhist path.
By Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo SUMMER 2002
we have a tendency to regard doubt as something shameful, almost as an enemy. We feel that if we have doubts, it means that we are denying the teachings and that we should really have unquestioning faith.
Referring to the dharma, the Buddha said, “come and see,” or “come and investigate,” not “come and believe.”
A famous sutra tells of a group of villagers who came to visit the Buddha. They said to him, “Many teachers come through here. Each has his own doctrine. Each claims that his particular philosophy and practice is the truth, but they all contradict each other. Now we’re totally confused. What do we do?” Doesn’t this story sound modern? Yet this was twenty-five hundred years ago. Same problems.
The Buddha replied, “You have a right to be confused. This is a confusing situation. Do not take anything on trust merely because it has passed down through tradition, or because your teachers say it, or because your elders have taught you, or because it’s written in some famous scripture. When you have seen it and experienced it for yourself to be right and true, then you can accept it.”
We need to be patient. We should not expect to understand the profound expositions of an enlightened mind in our first encounter with them.
Our doubting and questioning spur us on and keep us intellectually alert.
instead of suppressing the questions, I brought up the things I questioned and examined them one by one. When I came out the other end, I realized that it simply didn’t matter. We can be quite happy with a question mark.
We need to know what great teachers in the past have said, because they have been there ahead of us and have laid down maps for us to follow.
Following the path is about experiencing it for ourselves. It’s not taking on what other people have described. It’s not based on blind faith.
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is the current president of the Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women. She is one of the first Westerners to be ordained as a Buddhist nun and the founder of the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in India.
Life Matters 
This is great: “You have to believe that the country exists and that it’s worthwhile to go there. But beyond that, the important thing is just to go.” Only personal experience really teaches, and each of us views “truth” through our own experience, necessarily from the perspective of self. Even the greatest experiences of Oneness are frequently framed in one’s own personal context. As it should be, in my opinion. Part of our difficulty is in trying to define what is true or real too narrowly.
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Thank you for your inspiring comments, Camilla. Your last sentence referencing thinking “too narrowly” brings back memories of a book written many years ago titled, “Your God Is Too Small” by J.B. Phillips. A brief introduction from Amazon states:
“Your God is Too Small is a groundbreaking work of faith, which challenges the constraints of traditional religion. In his discussion of God, author J.B. Phillips encourages Christians to redefine their understanding of a creator without labels or earthly constraints and instead search for a meaningful concept of God. Phillips explains that the trouble facing many of us today is that we have not found a God big enough for our modern needs. In a world where our experience of life has grown in myriad directions and our mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment by world events and scientific discoveries, our ideas of God have remained largely static. This inspirational work tackles tough topics and inspires readers to reevaluate and connect more deeply with a God that is relevant to current experience and big enough to command respect and admiration.”
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