On Belief

A member of a web community I participate in posted the following:

Belief stems from fear of not knowing. In lack of sufficient knowledge, beliefs are imposed by the Ego in order to escape the insecurity of not knowing. This results in self limiting, as the beliefs prevent other possibilities from being explored by the mind. Beliefs are soothing to the Ego, and creates a dysfunctional mentality. Instead of accepting that you don't know, beliefs are created to fool you into thinking you DO know. Belief and fear walk hand in hand, being interdependent of each other. Destroy one, destroy the other. To achieve perfect enlightenment, eradicate fear through dispelling of beliefs. It takes guts to realize you basically know nothing.

I wanted to cross post my response to From Ashes:

I feel that some of this is true, or perhaps, I believe some of this to be true, but some of this I don’t believe.

I don’t believe, for instance, that all beliefs stem from a fear of not knowing. I think it is possible, and likely, that some beliefs stem from this sort of fear, but I feel that most of our beliefs do not. Indeed, it seems to me that much of our beliefs arise out of what it is we think we know. For instance, the fact that I believe, as likely do many of you, that ‘2 + 2 = 4’ is true has little to do with fear, but much more of our understanding and acceptance of a system of rules, of a way of speaking about things. Further, beliefs that we hold about facts of the matter also seem to have little to do with fear, and more extend from what we feel we know about these same facts of a given matter. That I believe that there is beer in the fridge, for instance, has to do with several interconnected observations, a primary one includes the observation that the last time I got a beer from the fridge there was still more beer in the fridge, coupled with the knowledge that I had placed several beers in the fridge in the first place! It seems to me that much of the beliefs we use to navigate our lives are based on what we have observed: these observations form the knowledge base from which we create many of our beliefs about the world.

Given this partial disagreement, however, I am compelled to agree that all beliefs—whether formulated from that which we feel we know or from that need “…to escape the insecurity of not knowing”—are indeed limiting factors which “…prevent other possibilities from being explored by the mind.” It doesn’t matter how we have come to form our beliefs—through knowledge or through ignorance—all beliefs serve to define what we feel to be reality, and in this determination some set of possibilities are taken to be actualities at the expense of some other (likely larger) set of possibilities which necessarily go unexamined and unexplored, and thus, undifferentiated and unactualized.

Also, it seems to me that, yes, enlightenment (whatever that may actually be) requires a dispelling of fear—I don’t see how we would experience an enlightened state of being that was also a fearful state of being; although, perhaps there is something to be said for experiencing some state of fear in relation to enlightenment (here with respect to the notion of mysterium tremendum et fascinans). Further, I tend to agree that experiencing enlightenment also requires that we abandon beliefs. With regards to the notion of the nominous mentioned in the previous link, I feel that there is an interdependence between experience of the “wholly other” and the experience of enlightenment. Perhaps this interdependence might be regarded as the absorption of ego into the wholly other and the identification of the Other with the Self, which together preclude some sense of enlightenment. It seems to me that in order to accomplish this we must abandon beliefs as whatever the wholly other may be, it is necessarily not what we believe it to be otherwise it wouldn’t be wholly other, i.e., entirely different from what we know and feel. In this sense, I feel it is less that we are required to “destroy” fear and belief, but perhaps more to merely accept them as transitory and imperfect: perhaps as veils which hide and distort an enlightened state of being.

In the end, I agree that it takes a lot of courage to realize that basically we know nothing—or not much of anything, anyway. There seems to be a feedback/forward loop where beliefs about our world come to form what we take as knowledge, and this same knowledge then constitutes grounds for our beliefs about the world: a self-referencing, self-perpetuating network of illusions which allows us to dwell in the castles we’ve built in the air. Indeed, it “takes guts” to jump into the void with hope of hitting some sort of ground.

Something Elsewhere

I wrote the following for an online community of which I'm a member, but I wanted to post it here too as it has everything to do with what this blog is about. Now, I know it might not make total sense because the context has been removed, but it relates some of the ideas I hold about our reality, the ways in which in interpret it, and how to examine such a mode of interpretation. Without further ado, here is the post:

Hurm...maybe don't give up the goat so quickly? I mean, maybe you didn't get it all right, but sure as shit ya' didn't get it all wrong either, and where some critiques might be valid, I bet dollars to donuts none of the detractors, ultimately, have it all right either.

See here’s some of the thing—and fer sure this is simply from how I got it reckoned, and maybe some of it’s right, but I’d be struck dead by whatever force you (reader) happen to believe in if it should contain no error. So yeah, well there is undeniably a distinction drawn in QBL between RHP and LHP, this is, as has at least been hinted by some of the folks above, not exclusive to QBL by any means, nor is it merely a strictly Western way of creating categories of our experiences.

In fact, I’d hazard that in almost any tradition there is something within the interpretive structure that defines distinction between ‘right’ and ‘left’. ‘Cause really, right and left are a basic tool we use to orient ourselves in the physical world, and this, being based on the interpretation of physical space, is fairly entrenched in the psyche of an experiencing being. Humans, being so damn complicated, are bound to create meaning out of such fundamental distinction, and so, make connections with all sorts of other meaningful structures within both their personal and social “reality tunnel(s).” Again, this is at least a means to orient oneself not only physically, but mentally/spiritually what-have-you—it creates a space within which we can attempt to know ourselves in virtue of our interpretation of the information that occupies this space.

To put it all a little differently, without a sense of left and right, well, we’d be cut off from a whole dimension of experiencing. So yeah, the basic dichotomy of ‘right’ and ‘left’ seem very real, and to some people who believe in some particular interpretive structure, the meaningful associations made with these orientations are also real—they are used to create categories which aid in identification, a means to understand.

But that all said, it’s not only important to recognize and acknowledge the reality of dichotomies, it’s also equally important to understand their deconstruction and unity. Thus, your attempt in the original post to weave a synthesis of polarities, and relate your understanding of the unity and/or “falsehood” of the particular dichotomy you define seems to me a means to deeper understanding and wisdom—it doesn’t matter so much here that perhaps the facts may or may not be right, it’s more the understanding of the need to undertake such a venture.

Something To Believe In

I want to write something that makes me believe that I believe in something. I want to write something that examines the belief that I believe in something. I want to write something that makes me believe there’s something to believe in. I want to write something that I believe.

That was a bit of a riff on Love & Rockets song. Maybe I’d put a link in there if it wasn’t such a hassle, but then, I didn’t start this blog to complain about my current technological limitations.

No.

I started this blog to express and examine my beliefs about reality. About what is.

While I was out having a smoke, I got to thinking about Kant. I got to thinking about his neo-platonistic views of an ideal—the essence of something that lies beyond the appearance of something. I can’t quite recall what his name for it was, but it was hidden behind or beyond the manifestation; similar, I guess, to how there are Platonic ideals of things, the instances of which are pale shadows of the perfection. I guess I could look this shit up, but I’m going free flow here.

And somehow this got me dredging up Anslem and his perfect being (being God). It’s not necessarily immediately related, but my mind’s made a connection there—probably something to do with this ideal form that must exist because part of its perfection would be existence. But wait, wasn’t it Kant who established that existence isn’t a predicate or quality of a thing?

Wow, I’d have to look that up.

Anyway, then next it was old Uncle Nietzsche’s, “if you stare into the void, the void stares back” (at least I think this (likely paraphrase) was his). And what happened here in my head was that this perfection, this ideal, this thing that is but is not possibly experienced by us, became that void. And earlier tonight this notion of perfection crossed my mind and I thought about how practice never makes perfect, but it can and often does make better.

Perfection is absence. Ideal is absence. In absence it is the imperfect things, the things of this world, which manifest to fill the void. It is, my mind turns again, pratityasamupada: the void stares into itself, and its absolute absence creates inter-dependent-co-arising manifestation. I can not stare into myself and see nothing; the world cannot stare into itself and see nothing. If there is something to stare, then there must be something to be stared at, and these things are manifestations of nothing and all.

And while maybe that was the nugget I was mining for, the mind then turned to Existentialism, and of course, the notions of despair and longing it carries; although, perhaps transformed, through alchemical process, into satisfaction and relief—turning (or burning) the dross into dreams.