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.
4 Comments
Thanks, Paul…John
You’re welcome, John. And thank you for stopping by.
Thanks for a very thought-provoking piece. Raised a Lutheran, I have had similar issues resolving my current beliefs with the cultural system I was raised with. When asked if I believe in God, I’m caught up a little short, since what I believe doesn’t really resemble what a Christian thinks of as God. Neither do I really see myself as atheistic.
I certainly don’t believe in a Christian-type deity god, but even 40 years of practicing Buddhist ways hasn’t eliminated an intuitive sense of a “buddha nature” with which I can have a meaningful relationship. This inner truth speaks to me, answers questions, has its own sense of humor. It’s not God, but it’s certainly a presence that is not-me. And this leads me to wonder if, in the final measure, there’s really all that much difference in belief structures. I’ve come to see Buddha-nature in very much the same way as Martin Buber described the I-thou relationship to his God, and so I wonder if it’s perhaps simply not so that “Buddhist truth contradicts Christian truth, which contradicts Jewish truth, which contradicts Muslim truth”. These days, I see much more similarity between religious systems than I see differences. If you read “The Cloud of Unknowing,” for example, a seminal work of Christian mysticism, you’d likely think you were listening to a Buddhist mystic. Meister Echhart centuries ago, and Thomas Merton, a few years ago, sound awfully Buddhist in their teachings, yet they are as wholeheartedly Christian as can be.
Maybe, beneath the superficial costuming, we’re more alike than we know.
Welcome, Bryan. Yes, I think we are more alike than we know. And yet our belief systems – especially when we are very staunchly set in them – divide us into groups. We are more apt to trust those who believe as we do and distrust those who who don’t.
Contemplatives, on the other hand, go beyond the rigidness of blind faith. They see beyond the edges of the world. Wisdom is wisdom no matter how it is come by.
Thanks for commenting.