- the Easter Bunny?
- Santa?
- God?
- Yourself?
What kind of question is that? Do you believe in…? Do you believe in apples? Or in the sky?
And why? Why do you believe or not believe in anything? Most of us stop believing in the poor Easter Bunny at some point, because it doesn’t exist. I would like to argue that you should continue from there and stop believing in all the things. Every, single, thing.
We can’t see the pattern through the things. Stop seeing the things and start seeing the pattern again.
Do you believe in aap or noot or mies or wim or zus or jet? Of course you do. Why? Because it was pumped into you at the earliest possible age.
Buddha talked about the unconditioned. That’s what he meant, try to go back to a mind that isn’t conditioned to see the world in any specific way. How? Don’t believe. In anything.
At first it seems pretty difficult. Of course that’s an aap and that is a noot! You’ve been conditioned. And conditioned well. But just go back to the Easter Bunny and try not to believe in him (her?). Success? Excellent, keep going from there. Pick whatever works for you. Do you believe in countries, economies, money, gods, apples?
The Buddha was onto something when he advertised keeping a wondering mind. That’s a not knowing mind, a questioning mind, an unconditioned mind. Just keep a big old question mark in your head. You don’t need to label everything, you definitely don’t need to judge everything. In fact you don’t need to label anything or judge anything.
Everything is as it is and it ticks along quite nicely without you telling it what it is and how you feel about it.
Don’t believe in anything.
Do this for a bit and hopefully you’ll see that reality is one big pattern, only divided by our made up stories about stuff. And everyone has different stories. And we keep yelling at each other that their stories are wrong and ours are right. No one is right. We’re all wrong. Stop yelling. Please. It is tedious and annoying.