Do beliefs have any place in spiritual awakening and growth, or have they become a total impediment to it? In the Parable of the Raft, the Buddha referred to his teachings as a raft one uses to cross a dangerous river, which one discards upon reaching the other shore.
As Siddhartha said to his disciple monks, “I have taught that the Dhamma is like a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto.”
Though I’m not a Buddhist, I understand this metaphor as a subtle insight in the correct approach to what are called “the perennial teachings.” Their intent, since time immemorial, has been to help people crossover from conditioning and suffering to liberation and enlightenment.
These teachings have nothing to do with beliefs, since there is an enormous distinction between beliefs and true spiritual teachings. So what is the difference?
Though perennial teachings, such as those of Siddhartha Gautama in the 5th century BCE in India, or the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu in the 4th century BCE in China, or J. Krishnamurti in the 20th century globally, have given rise to lesser narratives and party line thinking, they generally do not produce belief systems.
Belief systems ineluctably involve formal doctrines, moral codes and sacred texts. Though the perennial teachings can degenerate into these things, and have sometimes done so, they recur as fresh insights aimed at the inner life and liberation of the individual.
The Dhamma (Buddha’s original teachings) does not form a belief system. At worst, as we often see in the west, it has been used to form a self-comforting narrative lens through which devotees distance themselves from the world.
Giving primacy to teachings, no matter how profound, rather than to one’s own understanding, prevents direct perception and insight. And the intent of authentic spiritual teachings is to encourage precisely that in the individual. Beliefs, on the other hand, form systems of faith, of organized religion and control.
Personal beliefs are therefore a contradiction in terms, closer to opinions than to the theological constructions and calcifications of organized religions.
Clearly the Buddha’s metaphor of the raft pertained to his teachings themselves, not to beliefs in general, or beliefs at all. So to interpret the raft metaphor as being synonymous with beliefs distorts its meaning.
And it misses his insight into the provisional utility of the Dharma, twisting the raft’s metaphorical meaning in favor of the western idea of “many paths to truth.”
There are no “paths to truth” through beliefs, methods or traditions; there’s only the understanding that comes with self-knowing, questioning, and rightful doubt. (And doubt is like having a dog on a leash – one has to know when to let it run and when to keep it on the leash.)
It’s therefore a misunderstanding of Buddha’s meaning, and the perennial teachings in general, to insist, “Beliefs are necessary, since without a working blueprint of the world and our place in it, it would be hard to function.”
Belief systems are inherently divisive and therefore destructive to spiritual growth in the individual, and to the human prospect in general. Trying on different belief systems is a superficial pursuit that leads nowhere. Taking a smorgasbord approach to beliefs further conditions one, when the intent behind the Dharma and the perennial teachings is to free us from conditioning.
Beliefs are unnecessary. We don’t need to “have a working blueprint of the world and our place in it” in order to inwardly grow. In fact, a blueprint prevents growth, which paradoxically occurs through negation, not following some blueprint of belief.
Nor do we need blueprints to function, except to literally build a bridge. To grow as human beings, to contribute to the advancement of humanity, and to meet the unprecedented polycrisis of our age, we need to let go of beliefs altogether.
Trying to have things both ways by saying, “I don’t cling to my beliefs,” while insisting that beliefs are good things because “the views we are attached to shape what we notice, overlook and perceive” is disingenuous. Actually, that’s precisely the problem with beliefs, as well as narratives and opinions: by conditioning what we see and feel they delimit what we see and feel.
A belief “held with curiosity” is no longer a belief, but a question. Beliefs are dead things that inevitably calcify the longer they’re held. They’re certainly not creative and alive.
Besides the temporality of Buddha’s teachings implied by the raft metaphor, his teachings are also limited in their utility because their antiquity and myriad traditions have drawn into question what came from the horse’s mouth, versus what comes out of many horses asses that expound Buddhism in the west today.
Given that’s true about the Dharma, how much more doubtful is the New Testament?
After all, as Thomas Jefferson, the author of the American Declaration of Independence, wrote:
“The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute inquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine.
In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.” [Italics mine.]
So much for the lie, America is a nation founded on Christian beliefs.
Ultimately, beliefs break us. When I was young I didn’t understand the adage, “The world breaks everyone.” But as I’ve grown older I do. It’s often attributed to Hemingway, who also said, “Those that will not break, the world kills.”
I don’t know about other lands, but the vast majority of people in America are broken, and so we’re broken as a people. After all, brokenness is the way authoritarianism emerges in even a nominal democracies, because half the people want a strong man to make them whole again, and the other half are too broken to rise up and throw the bums out.
Instead of true religiosity in the people, along the lines of the American Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau, America has become dominated ruled by the hideous evil of Christian nationalism, which was on full display in the National Mall on Sunday.
So if you’re broken, don’t listen to someone who tells you that you aren’t. If the system, society and world have broken you, be broken. Face it, remain with it, and question it. That’s the only way one can heal and resume the arduous climb to wholeness. And realize that no one except the fully illumined is truly whole.
What about the few who are left standing? Let’s use the raft of the perennial teachings to reach the shore of liberation, and then send it back so others may crossover.
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