Tao Te Ching
Shoshin: "Beginner's Mind"
Belief
Opinions and beliefs can be helpful... as long as we don't believe them!
Do integrity and virtue form the basis of our beliefs or do our beliefs create our definitions of integrity and virtue? Did slavery in the world end because of people’s belief in a sense of injustice or only because it stopped being economically profitable? The conflicts between belief and reason color the whole of human history. Times of stronger belief tend to exhibit more stability but less creativity. Times of widespread belief like the Middle Ages almost always create periods with very little progress while times like the Renaissance tend to overflow with creative inspiration. An inner psychological/spiritual parallel to this defines progress on the path of realization and—from this point of view—belief is a prison enslaving consciousness. Healthy religions discourage belief. The gap between thinking about something and experiencing it is often so great that it’s impossible to see any connection. And yet, we believe so much in what we think. Why and how we believe something is much more important than what we believe. What’s important isn’t which opinions and beliefs someone has but how they hold them: as a rigid dogma or tentatively, realizing that new evidence at any moment could change the conclusions.
Quotes (128)
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
“For men who have no faith, it is impossible to have pure dharma, like planting a burned seed in a field and expecting a green shoot to come.”
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
“Learn the unshaken heart of persuasive truth. Don’t believe status quo opinions in which there is no truth at all.”
“Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, nor of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.”
“Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.”
“Water is for fish and air for men. Natures differ, and needs with them. Hence the wise men of old did not lay down one measure for all.”
“Clarity is the enemy of self-deception and of the larger deception known as ideology.”
“Any belief in a God who takes an interest in punishing or rewarding humans can’t rise above a virulent form of superstition.”
“They who believe not shall have garments of fire fitted unto them; boiling water shall be poured on their heads; their bowels shall be dissolved thereby, and also their skins, and they shall be beaten with maces of iron”
“When questioned with disbelief in his realization by a Zen master, Touzi said 'What point would there be in waiting until you believed it?'”
“Nothing can be believed unless it is first understood; and that for any one to preach to others that which either he has not understood nor they have understood is absurd.”
“Only in the mathematical sciences are things known to us identified with those known absolutely.”
“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
“In a discussion, when someone cites an authority, they are using memory, not reason.”
“Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
“Superstition discounts reason and builds an absolute monarchy in our minds making wise men follow fools.”
“When you hear something positive about yourself, keep a tight rein on your belief. When you hear something negative, give your belief the spur.”
“I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.”
“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”
“I want my lawyer, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God, because it means that I shall be cheated and robbed and cuckolded less often. ... If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
“In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by Faith,but by the lack of it.”
“Getting out of danger requires that one believe it is dangerous – belief rules the mind… If there is truthfulness, then the mind develops.”
“With most people, disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.”
“Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?”
“As men's prayers are a disease of the intellect, so are their creeds a disease of the will.”
“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.”
“Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.”
“Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity. Prophecies of all sorts are rife on such occasions, and are readily believed.”
“How rarely I meet with a man who an be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bed-ridden; all world-ridden.”
“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?”
“It is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Erewhonians that when they profess themselves to be quite certain about any matter, and avow it as a base on which they are to build a system of practice, they seldom quite believe in it.”
“A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.”
“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
“If I were to start as a God or a prophet I think I should take the line: 'Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for a God. Thou shalt worship any damned thing thou likest except me.”
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does… Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
“Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.”
“All good men are Anarchists… all just men are Anarchists. Jesus was an Anarchist.”
“The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs.”
“He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle, is the beginning of all unwisdom.”
“The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.”
“Most people think that faith means believing something; oftener it means trying something, giving it a chance to prove itself.”
“All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.”
“There is no creed, no way of living left in the world at all, that really meets the needs of the time.”
“Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.”
“When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.”
“I have no preconceived impressions or beliefs or opinions... Is it not the prime struggle of life to keep the mind plastic? To see and feel and hear things newly? To accept nothing as settled; to defend the eternal right of the questioner? To reject every conclusion of yesterday before the surer observations of today?—is not that the best life we know?”
“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground for supporting it to be true.”
“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.”
“James’ doctrine is an attempt to build a superstructure of belief upon a foundation of skepticism, and like all such attempts, it is dependent on fallacies… a form of the subjectivistic madness which is characteristic of most modern philosophy.”
“This system teaches people to believe in absolutely nothing. You must verify everything that you see, hear and feel. Only in that way can you come to something.”
“Man does not realize that throughout his entire life he does things he believes. Precisely what to believe and how to believe comprises the solution of the problems of being. Man's free will or free choice molds his destiny.”
“It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.”
“In a society where government, law, and morality are bound up with a religious creed, any attack upon that creed is viewed as menacing the foundation of social order itself.”
“the majestic monotheism of the founder [Zarathustra] became - as in the case of Christianity - the polytheism of the people”
“This is the tragedy of almost every civilization—that its soul is in its faith, and seldom survives philosophy.”
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them, finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons.”
“Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.”
“Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief—that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended”
“While theistic religions are based on authority and dogma, non-theistic religions like Taoism and Buddhism are based on self-responsibility and universality. The highest good is found n the lowest places; therefore it is compared to water.”
“People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.”
“We have to believe in something that has no form and no color – something that exists before all forms and colors appear… By enlightenment I mean believing in nothing.”
14. Finding and Following the Formless Form
11. Appreciating Emptiness
“We create the world that we perceive, not because there is no reality outside our heads, but because we select and edit the reality we see to conform to our beliefs about what sort of world we live in.”
“Because emptiness has no limit and no beginning, we can believe in it… If you really understand this, tears will flow.”
“The idea of the supernatural as being something over and above the natural is a killing idea. In the Middle Ages this was the idea that finally turned that world into something like a wasteland, a land where people were living inauthentic lives, never doing a thing they truly wanted to because the supernatural laws required them to live as directed by their clergy.”
“a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
“To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.”
“Some say it’s no coincidence that the question mark is an inverted plow, breaking up the hard soil of old beliefs and preparing for the new growth.”
“A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.”
“Jesus… invited people to see differently instead of telling them what to do or believe… he located the authority of his teaching in his hearer’s hearts, not in himself or God-as-removed.”
“One reason education undoes belief is its teaching of evolution… more loss of religious faith can be traced to the theory of evolution than to anything else.”
“Where faith is weak, there is an abundance of beliefs.”
“People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore.”
“We believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement.”
“As a young man I was scornful about the supernatural but as I have got older, the sharp line that divided the credible from the incredible has tended to blur; I am aware that the whole world is slightly incredible”
“If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. ”
“Who listens to his myth cannot rise above history to utter timeless truths about it.”
“Opinions and beliefs can be helpful... as long as we don't believe them”
“What’s important isn’t which opinions and beliefs someone has but how they hold them: as a rigid dogma or tentatively, realizing that new evidence at any moment could change them.”
“Did slavery in the world end because of people’s sense of injustice or only because it stopped being economically profitable? As technology evolves, unskilled labor becomes both less necessary and less valuable. As physical slavery organically ended in the world, mental slavery, true-believership, and wage slavery are rapidly ending now.”
“Fake news isn’t the problem. There has always been and probably always will be fake news. The problem is only people believing it which seems to be an increasing trend in our digital age.”
“The gap between thinking about something and experiencing it is often so great that it’s impossible to see any connection. And yet, we believe so much in what we think.”
“We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.”
“Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”
“Look into every situation and examine it, so that you won’t be fooling yourself by relying on belief alone. Instead, you want to make a personal discovery of reality through your own intelligence and ability.”
“There are enormous problems with thinking that we can only trust in what we were told rather than in how we feel… we are trying to become perfect actors rather than real people.”
“Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
“The message of the Koran is an uncompromising one of absolute monotheism, focused on the ideal of God as truth, mercy, and power; demanding complete submission and ethical conduct; and rewarding the faithful and punishing those who reject his revelation.”
“Religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.”
“My point of view is that of a secular human being. I do not believe in supernatural entities, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu.”
“I have no need to challenge my life in such a troublesome or unnatural way because I am endowed with the capacity to ‘believe.’ I believe in all honesty that something will appear to guide me through the darkest and narrowest tunnel, or across the most desolate plain.”
“Fights over ideas are the most vicious of all. If it were merely food, or water, or shelter, we would work something out But in the realm of ideas, one can become idealistic.”
“The future course for Islamic societies [is] in a synthesis between adherence to the faith and adjustment to the modern age.”
“Our ancestors replaced dogma, tradition and authority with reason, debate and institutions of truth-seeking. They replaced superstition and magic with science.”
“Natural selection didn’t design your mind to see the world clearly; it designed your mind to have perceptions and beliefs that would help take care of your genes.”
“People believe… It's what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration”
“Belief grows ever ‘truer.’ The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming… The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies.”
“The goal of business should not be to simply sell to anyone who wants what you have—the majority—but rather to find people who believe what you believe... people don't buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it”
“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy, or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. You always insist that the order sustaining society is an objective reality created by the great gods or by the laws of nature.”
“We all believe in some kind of imagined order. Not because it’s objectively true—nuh-uh! It’s just that believing in it helps us cooperate and keep society in better shape.”
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