Excerpt from
Buddhism and the Nature of Certainty
Although this book is written from a Buddhist perspective, it's not an argument for Buddhism. It's an invitation to explore one of the most ordinary yet influential features of human experience: the feeling of certainty.
Buddhist thought approaches certainty by asking how it came about in the first place. Our certainties arise through conditions: perception, memory, experience, language, habit, emotion and the influence of others. This book begins by looking at that process in ordinary life.
The following excerpt is taken from the opening chapter.
1. WHERE CERTAINTY BEGINS
Our certainty begins with something we experience or observe.
That may seem almost too obvious to mention. But, before we can become certain about something, we must encounter it in some way. We see something happen, experience it ourselves, hear or read about it, remember it, or think about it.
But experience or observation alone is rarely enough. Almost immediately, the mind begins drawing inferences. Wet streets suggest rain. Smoke suggests fire. A smile suggests friendliness.
Most of the time these inferences serve us remarkably well. They allow us to move through the world without having to investigate every detail for ourselves.
Yet observation has a quiet limitation that we seldom notice.
We Can’t Observe Everything
Our eyes see only a narrow band of light. Our ears hear only a small range of sound. Our sense of smell detects some chemicals but not others. Memory fades. Attention wanders.
None of this is a flaw. Our minds and senses can only take in and retain so much.
If we needed every piece of data and complete understanding of the laws of physics, we’d still be standing at the curb, calculating the speed of approaching cars, wondering about the coefficient of friction between our shoes and the pavement, and trying to decide whether it was safe to cross.
Instead of all that, the mind does something remarkable. It gathers whatever information it can, makes sense of it in light of previous experience, and arrives at an understanding that we believe is sufficient for the situation at hand. Not perfect. Not complete. Just sufficient.
This happens so quickly that we rarely notice it.
Certainty is the natural result of this useful cognitive process. But useful and accurate are not always the same thing. An explanation may help us act, settle a question, or anticipate what happens next, even if it is not entirely correct.
Imagine hearing a sudden crash outside your house.
For a brief instant, there is only a sound. Then, almost immediately, possibilities begin to appear. A car door? Thunder? A fallen branch? A garbage bin blown over by the wind?
Nothing about the sound itself has changed. What changes is the mind's attempt to explain it.
At this stage, the explanation is still tentative. We might not think of it that way, but somewhere in the background remains the possibility that we could be wrong. The crash might be thunder. It might be a branch. It might be something else entirely.
Then something subtle happens.
The mind reaches a point where the remaining uncertainty no longer matters for the decision at hand. We have an explanation that's “good enough.” We stop searching – not because every question has been answered, but because enough have been answered to carry on with whatever we were doing.
One evening, not long ago, my wife and I heard a thump somewhere in the basement. We both heard it and looked at each other. Was there anything in the laundry? No. I went downstairs and had a look around. I checked the furnace, the washer and dryer, the sump pump, and the water supply pump. Nothing seemed amiss. No leaks. Nothing obviously out of place.
I came back upstairs and reported that my investigation was “inconclusive.”
We wondered if the sound might have come from the back porch, so we checked there too. Still nothing.
And that was enough. We never did find out what made the noise. We simply went back to watching television and reading.
The important point wasn’t that we had discovered the truth. It was that the remaining uncertainty no longer seemed important enough to pursue.
That may be one of the mind's greatest strengths.
Without it, we could never function. Every decision would require complete knowledge, and complete knowledge is something none of us has ever possessed.
Every explanation we make, every memory we trust, every opinion we hold, and every certainty we eventually reach begins this way – not with perfect information, but with information we believe is sufficient for the moment.