Great Doubt

My last blog entry mentioned the three tenets of a “successful” Buddhist practice: great faith, great doubt and great perseverance of effort. I wrote about great faith, and how it applies to the everyday lives of those working with children with autism. Both faith and perseverance are relatively self-evident ingredients. Great doubt is perhaps the least self-evident and yet equally important.
In the Buddhist tradition doubt is required in order to challenge and eventually overcome the tendency to “understand” something superficially. So many concepts can be grasped at so many different levels, and the more superficial our understanding the less likely we are to succeed.
In autism, parents are exceptionally vulnerable to the unproven, snake oil treatments that are marketed their way endlessly. Whether it is the promise of secretin infusions, chelating heavy metals, megavitamin treatments, or the more subtle hopes of sensory integration, play therapy, or other unproven methods, parents are lured to do things for their children that range from the directly harmful to the indirectly dangerous misappropriation of valuable time, money and energy that could be spent on things that actually do help. In these situations, it is great doubt that steers parents towards making the right decisions.
As therapists and supervisors, we too can be lured in by so-called treatment advances that have little or no research evidence, but that can tempt us to divert our valuable time and energy from proven, effective methods. Great doubt is the gift of skepticism that leads us to greater prudence in choosing our treatment methodologies and skillfully adapting them to the needs of the individual child.
Great doubt as our companion makes professionals better students. It leads us to always question authority, to refuse to take someone’s word that one action is better than another, to refrain from sycophantism, and to let intellectual honesty and scientific rigor underpin our efforts to help.
Some see faith as the absence of doubt and doubt as the absence of faith. In the Buddhist tradition the two co-exist; they do not negate each other but can occupy the same space. Sensei Sevan Ross, director of the Chicago Zen Center has described faith and doubt as “two ends of a spiritual walking stick.” We grip the ‘faith’ end and poke ahead with the ‘doubt’ end. It is our determination (Great Perseverence, which I will discuss in my next blog entry) that allows us to pick up the stick and to continue on our journey.
It is the acknowledgement of doubt that makes faith in Buddhism mean something different than faith as religion. It is more a ‘practice’ than a religion or ideology. Likewise, dealing with autism should be a practice that we engage in on a day to day basis, not a religion where we become sure that we have found a certain method that becomes the one right path. We need faith to deal with our fear. But healthy doubt can accompany faith. In our mindful daily practice, we as professionals should work together with parents and children in such a way that neither rote approaches nor the belief in the certainty of our methods should limit us.

Great Faith

I am and have always have been fear-based. Among the long list of my weaknesses, this is perhaps at the top. I lose sleep as a result of fear, it drives my anxiety, and it is the sweetest nectar for the demons that get between me and that elusive state of inner calm. It is my constant, unrelenting companion, and it gnaws at my soul.

Traditional psychological wisdom holds that the antidote to fear is courage. Courage is holding the fear as your guidepost while you take action toward resolving the thing that is feared. While courage is certainly the most direct medicine, it is often difficult for me to find it on the shelf. There is another antidote that I have been trying to ingest that some suggest might work just as well. That antidote is faith.

In the Zen Buddhist tradition it is often held that there are three elements needed to make spiritual progress: great faith, great doubt and great perseverance. In the world of autism treatment, we face the deep need for all of these. We need faith to overcome the fears that surround us: the fear that our children won’t learn to speak or have friends, that our interventions won’t work, that we won’t be as good as we can be, that we won’t be able to get that report done on time, that our supervisors or the parents with whom we work won’t like us, that the economy will threaten our jobs, and on and on.

Many religious folks will tell you that the problem with the word “faith” is that it is a noun. As such, it is something you either have or don’t have; it is something you can somehow possess. This is problematic because faith is really something you do, not something you have. (Arguably it should be a verb; harden the “th” sound as in “tithe” and pronounce it as though it were spelled “fathe.”) One does not “have faith” but instead one actively “fathes”. To fathe is to actively believe that one can do or accomplish or have or be or overcome the thing that is feared. Whatever obstacles fear engenders “faithing” can overcome.

Faith often teases truth to the point where those who are strongly wedded to truth and its kissing cousin reality become dismissive. When I feel most troubled, I cannot bring myself to believe things that I wished were true but that I have no evidence to believe are in fact true. I can, however, make “soft plans” coupled with the belief that somehow, either operating within or outside of the box, I can get to the other side of whatever I fear.

Parents of children with autism “fathe” their way into seeing their children as gifts, celebrating each small victory of learning along the way. PCFA staff “fathe” their way into finishing their reports, confronting their supervisors, trying new interventions, facing crowded freeways, and instilling confidence in their supervisees.

Faith, I believe, must become as natural as the breath. If absent, it requires intention to revive it, but it should become our constant companion in order to combat the fears that plague us. So when the fear rises up within us, we “breathe” the belief that we can do the thing that is feared, and this faith transforms the energy used by fear to the energy required to take action.

It is always this brief suspension of “realistic” thinking that allows us to take the leap to become just a little more than we are. It allows us to have the courage to love better, to confront those who hurt us, to receive love and the other gifts those in our lives try to give us, and to see the world as filled with potential and awe. Faith is a true antidote to fear; it can still the demons inside us and guide us toward a sense of peace.