I Know Nothing

Our small Sangha continues to talk about how our perception is coloured by our previous experiences and the problems this causes. This remains interesting for me because it brings together psychotherapy and the Dharma - which of course is my ‘thing’. How the patterns of our earliest hurts are a big part of what Buddhism calls our obscurations - things that make us unaware of how things really are when we are not distorting them. And I realise that this is a big one - who really wants to go around doubting what they habitually feel and think?

This came up again last week when one of our group members offered a quote from Richard P. Feynman who was a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist - so a very clever person. He essentially says that he’s happy with his not knowing as he wanders around a mysterious universe. Reading this quote later it occurred to me that there are two things going on when we make a statement of belief - even if it’s a ‘not knowing’ one like this. First there is the belief itself and second the feeling that it gives us when holding it. The belief may be anything, we human beings are very inventive and our beliefs are legion, but our concern here is how does having a belief, a position, an opinion, effect us? Does it set us free or further solidify our sense of self? In this case, when Feynman said he didn’t know, did his happiness with this position come from a feeling of, ‘So, that’s who I am’?

Here we’re back in the territory of Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s notion of a ‘mere I’. The idea that as we begin to get a real sense of being in an interdependent and utterly transitory universe, which includes ourselves, that our solid sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ begins to loosen and relax a little. We don’t need to keep asserting and confirming who we are to ourselves to feel secure. (Or, if we do, we are more aware of it.) This is interesting when it comes to holding beliefs because having a belief doesn’t necessarily equate with - another Buddhist idea we have looked at - having a ‘self-cherishing I’. A sense of self that is motivated by protecting its identity. So think here of the Dalai Lama who is a convinced Buddhist but who plainly feels very little need to reaffirm his personality. But on the other hand, holding what appears to be a very open or amorphous belief - like Feynman’s, ‘I don’t know’ - does not automatically mean that the person comes from a place of a ‘mere I’. It is entirely possible that this position has been colonised by a very strong sense of self and is being used in a clever way to maintain its sense of security, a sense of an invulnerable self. Something I describe myself doing in a previous blog - Mr. Smarty Pants.

I think this was what I was trying to get at in the last blog when I asked the question why do I believe what I believe? This could be answered by just explaining something logically - ‘I believe this because the evidence supports it’. Or historically - ‘This is what happened to me and this is what I took from that experience’. But this type of answer does not get down into the emotional investment that I suspect - certainly in my case - reveals the sort of core wound we have been trying to get insight into. Remember that core wounds are sneaky things - like water for fish, they are usually quite invisible because we live with them all the time. They are our reality. They are our personality - at least in large part. And that they only become visible when something particularly activates them and we quite suddenly feel disturbed or distressed in ways that may be traced back to our childhood.

Because of this, it’s useful to really understand how our core wound presents itself. Do I habitually find myself avoiding emotions while finding intellectualising a more comfortable place? Do I find myself feeling empty, helpless and worthless for very little reason. Must I always anxiously care for others distress? Do I feel guilty if I do something for myself, yet resentful when having to look after the needs of someone else? Am I afraid of vulnerability and must I always make myself special and on top in some way? Do I self-sabotage and harbour resentments? Must I always be in control or demand that others hear and see me? These are the sorts of behaviours and feelings that reveal the presence of a core wound. And then the afflicted emotions that arise around these wounds. Craving, inappropriate aggression and hatred, overweening pride, envy and general delusion. If a belief has this as its background tone then that belief - even while it may be a good thing in itself - is at least in part a consequence of a past hurt.

So what to do? It’s really important to remember that having core wounds does not make us a bad person or implies we have done something wrong. Such beliefs are actually the product of our wounds - not something objectively true about them. However, a wound is a limiting obscuration, as are the ways we devise not to feel them. One thing we can try - and having tried this myself I can say it’s not that easy - is identifying a belief we have and then asking ourselves what is the felt sense of having this belief. Not the felt sense of the belief itself but of identifying with it - it being my belief. The trick here is to keep it very personal and not get seduced back into thinking about the belief. This is what I talked about at the beginning - there is the belief and then secondly what having the belief feels like. It’s the second bit.  In my experience identification with a belief has the felt sense of closure. A contraction or holding in or back. It’s certainly not expansive or spacious. No standing on the edge of a precipice in the centre of a storm. No awe. So see what you find.

NW. 10 May 2026

For Mr. Smarty Pants: https://www.beginnermind.co.uk/post/mr-smarty-pants