How to deal with doubts?

I have doubt , doubt about rebirth , doubt about kamma , doubt about the whole existence . I supposed everyone else somehow is the same .
So , maybe we will just have to leave it aside , “until further notice” ?!
Is that a good suggestion ?

I think taking an occasional break from reading and posting online is probably a good idea. Focusing more on meditation, not so much discursive thinking and reasoning (reasoning is fine and necessary, but obviously too many thoughts connected with doubt becomes a hindrance).

I have noticed that getting too involved in these debates about rebirth and kamma tends to bring the quality of my meditation down.

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At some point yes, we all had doubts. But they don’t stay indefinitely, nor should they. And though they’re natural and expected, it doesn’t mean that they are to be ignored. Doubts must be eventually resolved, but only through “experience”, not through “decision”! It won’t work to say: “ok from now on I’ll believe in rebirth!”.

If you are able to recognise and pursue the objective, here and now, psychological benefits of Dhamma practice, then that will gradually and naturally soften and disperse much of that otherwise thick and sticky layer of blindness that surrounds and encompasses the heart. Then gradually, doubts will vanish, and turn into certitude too.

But one has to be patient! It never happens all at once, as in the West where reading a convincing book can render one an optimist, a feminist, an agnostic, a liberal, or a revolutionary, after having been otherwise in the past. In Dhamma everything that happens happens basically through experience, one of meditation, contemplation, and introspection. One cannot force things by hammering ideas home with reason and conceptualisation, which is very unfortunately what Western or Westernised people are well trained to do and to be!

So if I may give advice, don’t put your doubts aside, rather keep them in front of you at all times (are there really other options!)! But try to coexist with them peacefully, even enjoy their presence, how glad I was even to have a chance to understand and interact with something like Dhamma. For I’m always aware that I could have otherwise been a chimp! :gorilla: And even a chimp has doubts, I suppose! So keep practising not with the intention to grasp all Dhamma once and for all, but as if you’ve embarked on a curious journey (the best one can ask for! ), doubts being a very natural part of that journey, actually to not have any doubts, that would be the big deal! Like those following a religion since birth; they haven’t any doubts because they haven’t any Dhamma!

Plus, why do you presume that the Buddha was right about everything?! Maybe he was wrong sometimes, maybe your doubts will deliver you from his mistakes into a higher Dhamma! I mean if you have doubts about Dhamma, why do you have to bend your faith to it? If you’re humble and sincere and diligent in the search after Truth, then your doubts are as much valid as your certitude! Doubts are worthy of respect, too, precisely in so far as they are indispensable for certainty.

Good luck.

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