What Do You Know For Sure?

I'm listening to a program on public radio that reminds me of the project that I wanted to start. The program is an interview with author Jennifer Michael Hecht about the history of doubt and my project was to start an ongoing conversation with some of my Dharma friends about what we know for sure.

Here is a link to the program's page:
Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/doubt/

Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht says that as a scholar she always noticed the "shadow history" of doubt out of the corner of her eye. She shows how non-belief, skepticism, and doubt have paralleled and at times shaped the world's great religious and secular belief systems. She suggests that only in modern time has doubt been narrowly equated with a complete rejection of faith, or a broader sense of mystery.

January 8, 2009
SOF OnDemand: » Download (mp3, 53:09)
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Instead of creating a whole new mechanism for my dreamed-up dialogue, I'll just invite some of you to share your comments with me here. Or email them to me and I will post them here.

So, here's the question:

What do you know for sure?

Putting aside whatever you have painstakingly learned and memorized, particularly from your Buddhist training....

... is there anything that you know from your own experience, particularly among those things that we are trying to realize in our Dharma practice?

I find it very hard to say anything for sure. And it actually gets harder the more I learn.

What about you?

__________________________

Here's the first response:

[Sunday, January 11, 2009 10:21 PM]

I am certain that I exist.
Also that you exist in some way.
Also the other things in my world exist, although only possibly in my imagination.
_________________________

More responses: [Thank you.]

[Tuesday, February 3, 2009 2:50 PM]

- It takes time to cultivate a deep meditational state. (as in length of time on the cushion in a single session, rather than years of meditational experience)

- My "I" cannot be found

- While the experience of "selflessness" puts a doubt into the belief that things exist "independently, out there", the habit of seeing things in that way makes them appear so again

- Meditations on impermanence…how everything changes … are helpful to seeing how we do not exist

- Prostrations are beneficial for changing the mind