Buddhism is Beyond Belief.

When I was at college as a 'mature student' (mature in years, but nothing else!) I used to walk by the college chaplaincy door and notice a poster on it that said - "WHATEVER YOU BELIEVE, BELIEVE SOMETHING!"

I suppose, like many otherwise non-religious people, I had my basic underlying beliefs about how the world was and how to be in it, but was never really an active believer in religion or a God or gods. I used to imagine that it might be pleasent and comforting to believe in that way, but I could never bring myself to really commit to it.

Some time later I began practicing Zen Buddhism. My teacher said that Buddhism was unusual as a religion (to the western mind) because it was more characterised by doubt than belief - 'doubt' has quite a negative association in western discourse maybe, but what he was indicating might be more positively phrased as 'questioning' - Buddhism requires us to question deeply the nature of things and self.

Nishijima Roshi made the distinction between idealistic religions (religions based on our having to believe something) and Buddhism as 'a philosophy of action' as he called it - it's all about our own direct practice in Zen Buddhism, of seeing directly.

And that practice in Soto Zen is chiefly zazen, 'dropping off body and mind', where we leave off all ideation, imagining, believing, and directly see for ourselves what we are before all that is brought into play.

We're quite free to draw our own religious or philosophical conclusions after this direct experience of course, but the important point is that we see clearly the nature of belief itself, where it comes from and where it goes back to.

In Zen, in 'adult practice' as Kodo Sawaki Roshi called it, we really can't be fooled by anyone else.