In a beautiful post on Tearing Thoughts, Om Swami quotes a story about clinging too much to a falsehood. It ends with a deep learning: “The Buddha said, “Sometime, somewhere you take something to be the truth. But if you cling to it too strongly, then even when the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you will not open it.”
Many people cling to beliefs that are false, or outdated. It gives them a sense of security. If they face a situation that clearly demonstrates how their belief is wrong, they can sometimes refuse to accept it. Or the change can be so tearing that it destroys the person.
Keeping one’s mind open requires quite a different mindset. It requires to remain open to the fact that one’s beliefs are just a working assumption that appears to prove right in the majority of cases encountered so far in on’s life . It is the core of the scientific approach (a theory is right until it is proven wrong), even if even in that remit, it can take a change of generation to get new theories mainstream. This position is more difficult to adopt but then provides a lot of value as it diminishes pain greatly.
Remain open to the fact that your beliefs are just working assumptions.
