Why Our Deepest Certainties Can Be Completely Wrong

The feeling of certainty has fooled the greatest minds in history. Can meditative insight do better? It's a question we have to ask even of the Buddha's enlightenment. What's left isn't skepticism: it's the discovery that knowledge and wisdom are things we can only build together. 🧡 If you find this material useful, check out my Patreon page and get fun benefits like exclusive videos, audio-only versions, and extensive show notes: https://www.patreon.com/dougsseculardharma 🧡 You can also make donations through: https://paypal.me/dougsdharma 📙 Check out my book, A Handbook of Early Buddhist Wisdom, with a Foreword by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi: https://books2read.com/buddhisthandbook 📖 Index of all my videos: https://dougs-dharma.github.io/dougs-dharma-index/ ✅ Videos: Do All Religions Lead to the Same Goal? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moGPUNfO8no How Deep Should Buddhist Meditation Get? The Question of Jhana https://youtu.be/2DotdUIO8iM When Things Don't Go Right: The Story of Kāḷī and Vedehikā https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6dt_I_n_UE Humility and Skepticism in Buddhist Practice: Problems with the Cankī Sutta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z80ARDHHrkk Spiritual Humility in Early Buddhism: Lessons from the Cankī Sutta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe2-Wg7T3Hs ✅ Suttas: MN 21, the simile of the saw (Kāḷī and Vedehikā): https://suttacentral.net/mn21/en/sujato MN 44, latent tendencies: https://suttacentral.net/mn44/en/sujato AN 10.27, rival paths: https://suttacentral.net/an10.27/en/sujato MN 13, the residue of craving on other paths: https://suttacentral.net/mn13/en/sujato MN 36, the three knowledges: https://suttacentral.net/mn36/en/sujato MN 47, investigating even the Buddha: https://suttacentral.net/mn47/en/sujato Ud 6.4, the blind men and the elephant: https://suttacentral.net/ud6.4/en/sujato ✅ Sources: Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/ Kant on geometry and the synthetic a