The Onus Is on You

I received a letter one time and stamped on the back of the envelope was a quote—or a fake Buddha quote. It said, “‘Doubt everything.’—The Buddha.”

The Buddha never said that. Basically, what he said was to test everything. That changes the dynamic. If you hold to the idea that you have to doubt everything, then the onus is put on the teacher. The teacher has to convince you. Whereas “test everything” means that you have to do the test; you have to commit yourself at least to some extent. You have to say that the Dhamma is worth giving a try at least. And then you have to do whatever is needed to be done to test it properly.

That’s where the principle of practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma comes in. You don’t say, “I want a teaching that makes it easy for me. I want a teaching that makes it possible to gain awakening at the same time having a full-time job and taking on lots of other responsibilities.”

There are things you’re going to have to give up if you really want to commit yourself. You’re not only testing the Dhamma, you’re testing yourself. How sincere are you in your desire to put an end to suffering?

Think about the Buddha on his path. He tested lots of different teachings. As he said, he gave himself fully, with conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. And then, if he found out that the path he was testing didn’t work, he knew that the problem was with the path and not with him. If you don’t really give yourself to something, then you never really give it a full test.

So we’re taking on the teaching as a working hypothesis. This is how you arrive at knowledge in any way. You start out realizing you don’t know, but you look for what seems likely and you test that—like the elephant hunter.

He’s looking for a big, bull elephant because he’s got a lot of heavy work to do. He goes into the forest and he sees some large footprints. But because he’s experienced, he realizes that he doesn’t know for sure that these are the footprints of a big, bull elephant because there are dwarf females with large feet. But they do look likely. So he follows them.

He sees scratch marks in the trees. But again, he doesn’t come to the conclusion that he knows he’s following a big, bull elephant, because there are tall females with tusks. They may have left the marks.

Finally, he comes to a clearing. And there it is: the big, bull elephant. That’s when he knows for sure that he’s got the big, bull elephant he wants.

So you follow what seems likely. In that image, the Buddha said the footprints are the levels of concentration. Scratch marks are psychic powers. Even those are not proof that the Buddha knew what he was talking about.

It’s when you arrive at the deathless that you see, “Oh, yes, the Buddha did know what he’s talking about. There really is a deathless dimension that we can touch.” That’s when you know for sure that the Buddha was awakened, and he taught the right path.

But—notice the elephant hunter has to commit himself to following those tracks. He can’t just wait for the elephant to come to him and try to convince him that “Yes, I am an elephant, the one you’re looking for.” The hunter has to go out looking.

So you have to go looking for what seems likely and then you test it. That’s when you can find a truth that you can really trust because you’ve trained yourself to be trustworthy as well.