There’s been a lively discussion over at The Frame Problem on belief and Buddhism. In one thread, Bryan, a former Christian fundamentalist about whom the original post is, was challenged that he was not really a true believer. He essentially responded that it sure felt to him like he was. In another discussion thread, I am arguing that meditation does not lead to objective insight – as Buddhists claim – but rather to subjective insights, which may or may not be useful.

I realized this morning, that the two threads are actually connected. Bryan’s claim to have “really believed” is true – subjectively for him. There is no objective “true believer” standard. Just like there is no objective standard to measure the accuracy of insights gained during meditation. Both is true for you, at that time. Which brings up another thing: Insights don’t hold up over time, a claim to the contrary should get our skeptical radar ringing. It used to make perfect sense that the earth is flat. In fact, if you look at the horizon at an ocean, you can appreciate how people could think that the earth is flat and ended “way back there.” It sure looks that way. That was an insight they had at that time. Then new evidence emerged. Now we have a new insight: the earth is round. We have evidence for that, although hardly experiential, since that roundness is difficult to experience unless you’re an astronaut looking at the ball we call earth. So, insights are time-bound, grounded in the evidence that is available at the time. Bryan truly believed what he believed then. I truly believed that the four noble truths describe reality as it is. New evidence emerged for both of us and we took the courageous step to dare question our truths (much more courageous for Bryan, imo, than for me). And we came to a different conclusion: our truths are false and need to be replaced with new understanding.
“Did Bryan fool himself into believing?” might be a question that arises from my argument that we are essentially strangers to ourselves (to borrow the title of Timothy Wilson’s book).  No, I don’t think he was fooling himself, I don’t think there was something in him that he wasn’t seeing. He just didn’t have all the evidence that he has now.  Did I fool myself? Now that’s tougher to answer because I know that there was always doubt. Let’s just say I tried to believe because there is comfort in finding The Truth, of having everything explained to you.  There’s the feeling of having the rug pulled out from under you when you realize that what you’ve been looking at doesn’t stand a chance to be The Truth, although it can be incorporated into our subjective truth. I still think that a lot of my suffering is created by my thinking, for example, and I can probably list a lot of the false thoughts that I still see floating around in my mind. Yet, I also see that there is suffering independent of my thoughts. And that is what is moving me beyond Buddhism, just as learning about the Holocaust propelled me into abandoning my belief in a God. New evidence leads to new truths. Note, though, that the evidence is outside of myself, just like the round earth is – that is why I keep arguing that we cannot obtain objective insights through subjective means such as meditation or contemplation.

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