Do you Believe or Do you KNOW!?

WE BELIEVE or WE KNOW?

The world suffers from belief and is in great need of Gnosis/Insight.

Most people take Belief and Faith as synonymous, and the dictionaries describe them as synonyms.

But Belief and Faith exists where there is no knowledge, no direct, personal experience of the object of Belief, while Gnosis or Insight, on the contrary, arises from knowledge, from direct contact with and experience of the object,whatever it might be.

Thus, the old saying: "Seeing is believing", is not true; seeing is knowing; believing is not knowing!

During the Middle Ages, most people believed that sickness was caused by demons, and Satan—the Devil—was a very real person to them. Nowadays, although many people still believe in Satan as a person, they would hardly answer "Yes" if asked: "Do you believe that your Flu/cancer/diabetes is caused by the Devil?"

In this way, we will recognize the difference between Belief and KNOWING. We now have direct Gnosis of what causes diseases, we do NOT believe anymore, we KNOW!

We believe

when we do not

know.

When we know,

we do not

believe.

................................

From the foreword of the book ‘What Buddhists believe’:

“On one occasion a Christian delegation visited Ven Dhammananda to have a dialogue. A member of the delegation saw the book on his desk and asked,

“Venerable, What do Buddhists believe?”

He replied, “Buddhists do not believe anything!”

Puzzled, the man asked,
“ Then why did you write this book?”

Ven Dhammananda smiled and said,
“Well, read the book and see for yourself whether there is anything in Buddhism simply to believe.”

The man then asked
“Alright then, what do Buddhists do?”

Ven Dhammananda replied,

“Well, first they study, then they practice and finally they experience”

.............................................

Brother Yin Onn,

Faith is blind belief. Hence, when people talk of blind faith, the word "blind" in this context is redundant, because faith is blind belief. Thus Faith is belief without substantiation, whether that of knowing or seeing ... it is blind, and so just put the hand on the heart, and swear by it.

Poh Seng