This I Believe was a feature that ran four years on National Public Radio. It was based on the 1950′s radio program by the same name hosted by Edward R. Morrow. In the feature, selected individuals would read 500-word essays about a core value they believed in. I am both impressed with and envious of these professions of belief. If it’s the eloquence of language I find impressive, it’s a person’s ability to have and express a core belief of which I am envious. But not too much. I don’t spend a lot of time trying to be like everyone else. I don’t spend a lot of time trying to be different, either, but floating along in the mainstream is not something I’m particularly adept at.
I try to avoid using words like “believe” and “belief.” It’s not easy, though, especially in making statements like: “I believe that…” It’s the same as saying “I think that…” or “It’s my opinion that…” or “I have faith that…” They all mean the same thing. Troublesome to me are statements like: “I believe in…”
Not too long before my mother died we were talking about my Buddhist practice. “What about the faith you were raised with?” she asked. By faith she meant Catholicism. I told her it didn’t hold much for me and hadn’t for many years. Then came the kicker: “Do you believe in God?”
I simply could not be as blunt as I am capable. I went off on a tangent about how belief in something does not make it true, nor does disbelief in something make it false. I was evasive.
The Catholic Church contends that the sole purpose of humanity – what the Baltimore Catechism referred to (if my memory of first grade is correct) as the “end of man” – is to “know, love, and serve God.” Human beings are different from other creatures, the nuns explained, because they are endowed (by God) with the capacity to carry out those injunctions. This presupposes there is a god named God who made the demand some 5,000 years ago, give or take. I’ve heard the many arguments for and against the existence of God, and I really don’t want to get into that fray.
What I’m talking about here is belief. Some would argue that God exists whether I believe it or not (and woe be unto me if I don’t!). But as I told my mother, belief is irrelevant to truth.
But it isn’t irrelevant to life. What we believe in defines who we are, influences our behavior, and binds us into groups. However we acquired it, humans have the capacity to think, to wonder, to question. We also have the capacity – and the need – to explain things and find answers to our questions. I don’t know where this need comes from, but I do know it’s strong. Historically (pre-historically, too) answers and explanations came in the form of stories handed down through generations. Stories became truths, and truths are what religions are made of. Religions require that stories-as-truth be believed.
Coming up with explanations of why things are the way they are – whether it’s today or 10,000 years ago – is one thing. But another question lurks in the dank shadows of the human mind. What happens when I die?
Although it sounds simplistic, the purpose of religion is to prepare one for death. Religion regulates our behavior in part by establishing a set of beliefs about how things are now in relationship with how things will be then. The law of cause and effect is as much at the core of Christianity as it is is Buddhism. Make God mad today, burn in hell tomorrow. Make God happy today, come to the banquet tomorrow. So be good for goodness’ sake!
Buddhism is not a theistic religion. It’s not an atheistic religion either. The existence or non-existence of God does not factor into the equation. But cause and effect is at the core of the teaching. Good actions bring good results, bad actions bring bad results. This is demonstrable in the here and now and can be extrapolated into the future. Also at the core is conditionality. Everything that happens in the here and now does so as the result of the causes and conditions that preceded it. And – most important – everything that comes into existence passes out of existence as a result of the causes and conditions that precede it. Everything. This, too, is demonstrable in the here and now and can be extrapolated into the future. I don’t need to believe this for it to be true. Denying it does not make it false, either.
Even though God is not a factor in Buddhism, belief in a life after this one seems to be as much a part of Buddhism as it is in Christianity. It’s not uncommon to hear sentiments such as: “If I can’t become enlightened in this lifetime then I’ll just work hard to make a lot of merit now so I can achieve enlightenment in a future lifetime.” This strategy requires a belief not only in the concept of a constant cycle of rebirths, but that there will be a continuing “I” who can accomplish the goal even eons from now. The bodhisattva vow would not be feasible without this belief. True, doing good works pays off now, but it is not demonstrable that it pays off in one’s own future lifetime (except through stories). One must take it on faith and faith alone. One must believe it to be true.
I’m not even close to being well versed on the Pali Canon, but I know there are passages where the Buddha says that worrying over metaphysical events is a futile path that leads only to more suffering. Instead, he said, focus on the physical and palpable events occurring within the body right now. There is nothing magical or mystical about it. Do this with diligence and you’ll see for yourself the truth of life for what it is: a stream of events.
If I must believe something to be true in order to make it true, then I am just taking a placebo. The placebo effect is demonstrably real. So too is its opposite, the nocebo effect. I’m not knocking it, but a placebo is not the real thing. The Buddha compared himself to a doctor. And his four noble truths are at once the diagnosis and prognosis of disease and the prescription for the cure. Did the Buddha teach placebo? I don’t think (believe?) so. He taught conditionality and mindfulness. He taught suffering and end of suffering.
Buddhist beliefs come from the same place Christian beliefs do – from the stories we tell, stories that eventually become truths to be accepted on faith. But Buddhist truth contradicts Christian truth, which contradicts Jewish truth, which contradicts Muslim truth, which… So what is true? What am I supposed to believe? It all depends on what group I belong to.
And yet, I am not supposed to believe anything. If a am supposed to believe one thing or another, it would mean there is some entity that would demand I do so (e.g., God or the Buddha). Buddhism – as far as I know – doesn’t have such and entity. Nor does it have something akin to the Apostles’ Creed, which lays out a specific set of Christian beliefs. I am free to believe anything I want without recrimination from a supernatural being.
To believe is to perform an act of intention. It is kamma. And every action of intention has a result. We all live in this huge river of causes and conditions. And each one of us is a stream unto itself of causes and conditions. Some of them we have no control over. But many of them we do, because they begin deep within the mind with the stories we tell. Be can believe them or not.
This I believe.
George Sidline is the younger of two sons born to East European Jews. His story, though, has nothing to do with what one may think when European Jew and WW II are mentioned together. George was born in Kobe, Japan, where his father owned a small store. He was seven years old when Japanese Navy planes bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. In 1945 George’s own house was firebombed by allied forces – with him and his family inside. He’s alive to tell about it because the incendiary bomb that crashed through his roof didn’t detonate. He tells the whole story in his book 
Still suffering after all these years
Last week Ajahn Sudanto paid his monthly visit to Portland Friends of the Dhamma, along with Venerables Caganando and Thitabho. The routine on those Friday evenings begins with the customary tea time followed by meditation and a Dhamma talk. Tea is an informal event where people can converse with the monks. Sometimes people ask questions out of curiosity about, say, the monks’ routine at Pacific Hermitage. Other questions may be about particular points of practice.
At such times I’m content to sit and listen. And this is what I was doing last week when Ajahn Sudanto looked right at me and asked, “How’s your practice going, Paul? Do you have any questions?”
I replied that even though I may have questions that arise during the week, they never come to mind when I have an opportunity to ask.
Then he said, “I have a question for you. Why are you still suffering?”
Instantly the thought arose: Who let you in my head? But I realized it was question he could have asked of anyone in the room, so I didn’t take it personally. Yet he did ask the question. I did not dare speak the answer forming in my mind. Instead I rambled on about my practice, how last week it seemed as though I’d reached some new level of understanding, but this week I’d had a big setback. It seemed, I’d said, that I go through these cycles of progress and setbacks. Only in retrospect did I realize how evasive I’d been, trying to be philosophical rather than truthful. I’m good at that. Or so I think.
The simple answer to the question “Why are you still suffering?” is this: It’s because of all those other people out there! Those people who don’t understand me, who are inconsiderate, who are irresponsible, who think my ways of doing things are inferior to theirs, who don’t appreciate me, who expect more of me than I’m able to provide, who cannot see the obvious truth about things, who send text messages while driving, who think Sarah Palin is a great American, who think Barak Obama is a Muslim, who… stop. That’s enough. You wouldn’t understand, anyway.