Belief is strange. When you believe you make it real. What was not originally true, becomes true to you, simply because you believed in it. When you don’t believe, it is also a belief, and hence you can never escape from it. And what do you believe? Views and ideas.
You believe you are thin or fat, or skinny, or stupid, or clever, whatsoever. Do they really exist? No, except in ignorance – when you ignore the obvious, that it is simply a meaning you give to things which has no meaning. Like a label, it was done for convenience, for identification and yet the identification becomes real, as real as you become that.
Instead of identification of “woman”,’ for convenience of differentiation, you become woman. Identification makes what is not, is. The whole existence is a joke, of mere identification, and yet identification breeds, creating separations and meanings and hence individuals, objects and meanings are born.
“I”, was merely to identify, an expression of convenience and not as a means to make it real, and yet, and yet, when belief sets in, identification becomes real. From “I”, “I am” exists and “I am” with all its ideas becomes who you are. “Fat” is just an idea, an identification. So when “I am” is placed together with “fat”, with a little belief, hey presto! “I am fat” comes alive!
Belief is merely an act of ignorance, just as realization is an act of wisdom. Realization makes certainty and hence cannot believe. Believe is merely a temporary hold to what doubt is calling to do. Where there is doubt, there can be no certainty. Any act of uncertainty looms ignorance, or ego.
When realization takes on more and more space in the mind, belief and doubt naturally diminishes, weakening the “I” further and what is left a bit is the final frontier – the “I” – the one that makes everything unreal as real. It is belief versus realization, and the more awareness is applied, the more observation is given to this “I” which in due time, through much investigation and understanding, the whole entire “I” is exposed – the veil of illusion lifted by wisdom, showing the true face of “I”, except but an idea.
What a comedy! What a joke! There was nothing in existence since the beginning of time, and hence existence was not even real! Indeed strange how this came to be, from unreal, reality comes to be. It never happened at all, and yet the whole episode of unreal reality took on a dimension of such realness that the world is formed and with it, heaven and hell created, past and future came to be, birth and death existed, together will all its rebirth and suffering. How wonderful this whole setup of illusion is – deluding no one and yet because of “someone” delusion exists.
What to hold on,
what to resist,
as all are merely unreal?
For not seeing this reality
you held
you resisted
and the dream persists.
Indeed a difficult task
to realize
and yet realization
is possible.
Phew!
what a nightmare.
Tuck Loon, I like this a lot. Krishnamurti would have liked it too! Belief is such a powerful force…You say:
“Belief is merely an act of ignorance, just as realization is an act of wisdom. Realization makes certainty and hence cannot believe. Believe is merely a temporary hold to what doubt is calling to do. Where there is doubt, there can be no certainty. Any act of uncertainty looms ignorance, or ego.”
I agree that doubt is not always a good thing, and uncertainty if it’s persistent confusion, also not so good. But I wonder about equating certitude with realization. Hakuin said: “At the bottom of the great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully you will awaken fully.” In many ways it’s the illusion of certainty that is at the heart of the problem with belief. Faith, as opposed to belief, can be considered confidence in what one directly sees, experiences, feels, perceives, etc. and that is akin to realization. But it seems to me that uncertainty, in terms of not knowing, questioning, at the very least as a starting point (and if we are meeting every experience as new, then…there’s always room for doubt!), is essential on this path of self-inquiry. How else do we come to see that they are only beliefs? Illusory concepts?
I suppose this is just a matter of semantics ;) What do you think?
Hi Katherine, rather strange that the comment i posted yesterday disappeared from my blog! It is an important realization for me to know that both wisdom and ignorance seemingly have similar qualities but on deeper insights, they are vast difference in term of reality and concepts. Wisdom is certain, so does ignorance. Wisdom knows, and so does ignorance. Wisdom doubt, and obviously does ignorance! So what’s the difference? In term of certainty, it is seeing and understanding the causal relationship (cause&effect) that makes wisdom sure, whereas ignorance is certain through its delusional observation of effect without understanding or recognizing its causes – in other words, its certainty is in judgment rather than understanding. In knowing, wisdom knows through realization whereas ignorance knows through past perception.
Yes, indeed wisdom doubt too but the exact word will be more of “inquiry” rather than uncertainty. It has an open question rather than a close question as what ignorance does. Where there is open question there is possibilities. close question kills possibilities, making potentials impossible. The Buddha himself too doubt, through his own intuitive wisdom that there is something more than what the great sage of that time taught of which he himself realized. But his doubt has certainty in it – certain that there is something deeper that those sages have yet to realize. So for me it is not a matter of certainty, doubt, or uncertainty but rather whether there is accompanying of wisdom in it.