❖ Welcoming Uncertainty ❖ ~ By Ajahn Amaro ~
❖ Welcoming Uncertainty ❖
~ By Ajahn Amaro ~
When we meet with a feeling of uncertainty usually what we do is we feel worried, we feel threatened. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future so what we tend to do is to try to fill up that unknown with a plan or a hope or a belief. We fill it with ideas of what might happen.
We often distract ourselves: ‘I don’t want to think about the future. I don’t want to worry about that. So, I’ll just look at my phone and catch up on my Facebook friends or see what communication I have coming through Line, what’s on the news or something.’ We thus deal with that feeling of worry or uncertainty with choosing distraction or, alternatively, we just switch off – we go blank, go numb and shut the world down, disengage all together. We do this because the feeling of not being sure is something that most of us don’t like and we relate to it as a problem, that feeling of anxiety, uncertainty. We automatically think of it as a problem, something that’s unwelcome.
This habit is interesting and useful to consider because life is always uncertain. More importantly, if the feeling of uncertainty was automatically a problem why would the Buddha encourage us to investigate it, that quality of anicca, of change? Why would he have said this is something good to look at? And why is it that it has been spoken of by the great Ajahns, the great elders, as the gateway to wisdom? Most of us are probably familiar with the Buddha’s description of what are called the Three Characteristics of Existence – aniccaṃ, dukkhaṃ, anattā – that everything is in a state of change; everything is not satisfying in and of itself; and that all things are not truly who and what we are. These are the principles of aniccaṃ, dukkhaṃ, anattā...
(From the book 'ไม่แน่! Not Sure!' by Ven. Ajahn Amaro, published in 2019)
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To read/download the full text (pdf), please visit Amaravati monastery's website:
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