Scepticism

Bertrand Russell wrote that to be an thoroughgoing sceptic you had to be sceptical about scepticism. I think he also said that after twenty years of being sceptical, he was relieved to believe that the table in front of him was a table after all.

What he was talking about is not the kind of scepticism I'm interested in. When I'm sitting at a table, I have no doubts that there's a table there...I assume what Russell was talking about was the table being a mental projection and nothing else. Maybe he wasn't. My problem with the table is that I don't have full knowledge of the table. I'm convinced enough by the buddhist idea that all you can say about the table is that it is called a table and you can say was it does. Name and function. It's called a tea cup. It's for holding tea.

What anything is actually made of is open to question. So the table is made of wood. What's the wood made of? Molecules of something? What are they made of? Once you've got down to the molecular, atomic and sub atomic levels, you've really lost the table in a mess of quantum paradoxes.

I like the idea that we are dealing with appearances and not reality. This isn't just a buddhist idea. I first came across it while researching the Vatican's attitude to Galileo. It seems they did not mind at first what he was going on about because his hypothesis accounted for the appearances, or the way things appeared to be. What things appear to be and what they really are ... well, that's not the same thing.

We do not have full knowledge of the table. Our senses are telling us something and it might not be true, but it certainly isn't complete. When we look at the table, we cannot tell if it's warm or not, for instance. If we had infra-red perception, like a snake, we would be told that.

If you were a buddha, it is said that you would have full knowledge of the table, but since I am not a buddha, and I'm not liable to bump into one soon, I am left with my fundamental ignorance of the table.

I embrace my ignorance
I don't believe in any things
Especially thoughts.

I do not believe in thoughts because they are not what they appear to be. You don't have full knowledge of the thoughts you are thinking. You cannot see the conditioning, or the conditions and causes, which had led to this thought, or these thoughts, arising. The thoughts are not separate. They seem to be separate thoughts, but they can't be. Nothing is separate and it's only logical to say that things are interconnected, or interdependent.

If you start with your basic ignorance, it is difficult to say that you believe in anything. If you don't have full knowledge of it, if you don't truly know what it is, how can you believe in it? How can you say you have faith in something?

My main point is that I don't want to believe in anything, or things, or something. I want to know. Even although I will never have full knowledge, I want to know more, speculate less, and believe in nothing at all. I believe in disbelieving. I believe in ignorance. To me, so far, there's nothing else you can believe in i.e. I know that I'm ignorant.

This gives you a problem every time anyone tells you something is true. In Tibetan Buddhism you might hear that there are six classes of beings, such as, gods and demi-gods, hungry ghosts, etc. Do I believe in that? Certainly not. This is not to say that I don't believe in it either. Frankly, I don't care if there are hungry ghosts or fairies, or leprechauns.

I'm trying to think if I believe in anything other than ignorance. I think I believe in cause and effect. You do one thing and something else seems to follow. This might be true, but it is rather difficult to observe. It seems to be that way.

The photograph is of the Nagarjuna statue at the Samye Ling.