Humans are creatures of doubt

Buddhists talk about Doubt as one of the “five hindrances”. It’s important to distinguish between two different ways we use the English word doubt.

The first is helpful: it’s about inquiry, investigation, and examination. We shouldn’t automatically believe or disbelieve things we hear, we should be curious - that kind of doubt is helpful. That’s what the robin in today’s photo is doing: he is just thinking “is there anything I can eat here? Let me check it out.”

The second is unhelpful - it’s self doubt. I don’t think animals doubt themselves. This is a human thing. We wonder if we’re doing it right, if things are going to work out ok this afternoon, if we look like an idiot in this new coat, if we should have said that thing the other day to our sister…. and so on.

This kind is the Hindrance: uncertainty, indecision, flipping back and forth between doing or not doing. You perhaps know the story of the donkey stuck between two identical bales of hay, unable to decide which to eat first, starving to death. Animals would never actually do this - they’d just go to a pile and start tucking in to it. It takes a special kind of human stupid to be like that - at work, we used to call that “analysis paralysis”.

The suggestion, once again, is to be mindful. Notice that you are doubting in this way. Step back from it, observe it thrashing about. Think how this decision will look in ten minutes, or ten hours, or in ten days (or ten years, if it’s really big!). Imagine you know now what you will know then. Then choose.