Being Fooled

 I have been reflecting recently on how 'non-attachment' to thinking in Buddhism might be mistakenly read as something like "don't trust anything you think, since it's probably wrong anyway." The extreme of this view might be something like what Descartes experienced before he formulated his philosophy of first principles. Descartes imagined a scary scenario in which there was an evil demon who kept fooling the mind into thinking that what it sees is real--only to present the mind with yet another delusion. I myself have recently been inclined to criticize myself when I thought something could be real, but was 'fooled later'. This happens when we commit to a certain plan of action such a school, only to realize later that it's much more complicated than we thought. And my mind then often goes back to the old childhood taunt of the trickster who reveals they had been fooling you all along! Notice how this deliberate trickster plays a prominent role in the inner mythology of emotions.
   Tricksters often play an equally important role in spiritual traditions, of which Buddhism is only one. People are often 'tricked' in Buddhist stories into doing or believing something as a skillful means. For example, in Lotus Sutra, it's thought that the Buddha tricks the early monastic orders into thinking that the arhat path is the 'final' goal, as a skillful means of bringing them to a more open space and mind to understand the 'ultimate truth'. In that sense, the Buddha is regarded not as an evil trickster, but as a benevolent being who works according to a being's capabilities. But in spite of that benevolence, there seems no doubt judging from the Lotus Sutra itself that the arhats would have been quite shaken up by this skilful means. Many in fact left the assembly where Buddha was teaching apparently because they could not handle what he was telling them. Again, there is an instinctive urge to resent being fooled, because 'being fooled' often represents the subversion of one's whole sense of reality and identity.
    Perhaps it's significant to work with the idea that, because nothing is truly foundational, there really isn't anything that is being taken away when we are 'fooled'. The moment when we feel that sting of 'loss' that accompanies knowing we've been fooled, we have this golden opportunity to let go of what we thought was fundamental to ourselves. However, in order to do this, one must also befriend the trickster and not impute any ill-will to them, since that trickster allowed us to wake up a little bit more. Being 'fooled' is painful because we are face to face with our ego which always wants to be in control of reality, and resents the fact that even the most precious things it cherishes will also be taken away sooner or later. But if we don't see it in this way, we will continue to mistrust people and think they are doing something on purpose to harm us, which is an unfortunate way of getting stuck in life.