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15 Truths

Stephen Schettini has spent a life-long journey seeking a purpose for his life. He hasn’t got all the answers but he does realize that that’s not the point. He sheds numerous insights in his inspiring and moving book, The Novice: Why I Became A Buddhist Monk, Why I Quit and What I Learned. Rather than seeing beliefs as a basis for life, he takes the measure of life itself as a basis for his beliefs, which, he insists, should be kept to a minimum. Here are some truths that Stephen has experienced:

Sample pages
  1. Questioning the things you believe in most earnestly leads to peace.
  2. True insight comes from personal experience, not from language, scripture, philosophy or higher authority.
  3. The most worthwhile goal in life is to replace self-cherishing with practical empathy and ruthless insight.
  4. Expand beyond the expectations imposed upon you, or assumed by you, and look beyond the daily norm of your life. Be willing to leave behind convenient truths to eventually find what you’re looking for – even if it’s to discover something unpleasant.
  5. We have an instinct for right and wrong but push it aside when it’s inconvenient.
  6. What’s true today isn’t necessarily so tomorrow.
  7. The more deeply we are motivated by emotion the more stubbornly we pass it off as reason.
  8. Denial is at the root of all self-inflicted suffering, and is our principal obstacle.
  9. Ethical codes are likely to produce as much hypocrisy as goodness.
  10. Belief in anything just for the comfort or security it brings is precarious, especially when it demands certainty.
  11. No religious scientific or academic faithful can be trusted unless it can laugh at itself.
  12. The only way to respect truth is to take it with a pinch of salt.
  13. Life leads nowhere until we consciously take the direction it provides.
  14. The notion that we’re continually bettering ourselves, through either technology or belief, may be the great myth of our time, the bickering of science and religion just another vanity.
  15. The pursuit of truth has more to do with letting go of certainty than finding it.