I didn’t make this up. This is on the back cover of the August 2024 Harper’s. Go to douglasbalmain.com. There you’ll discover this koan (Okay, I had to look it up to. Merriam-Webster online tells me its “a paradox to be meditated upon that is used to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon ultimate dependence on reason and to force them into gaining sudden intuitive enlightenment.”
So it has nothing to do with my 40-year protest against the Disney bromide “You’ve got to believe in yourself”, which every athlete, movie star, or singer repeats eagerly, earnestly, and often to the delight of psychobabblers everywhere. Their sacred trinity is believe in yourself, forgive yourself, esteem yourself or no one else will.
I framed this even though it’s not really against Disney’s banality. It’s a good thought to reenforce within myself, my kids, and grandkids. “Believe in yourself”, along with the other two, are not platitudes. They are beachheads for the Evil One. He lands on them to call into question The Faith, the reality of forgiveness, and God’s love. Yes, fear the one who believes too much in themselves. But I would add: fear also the person who tells you to believe in yourself to succeed.
Go to that webpage. From what I can tell, this Koan is to give sudden incite to how ‘dangerous’ Donald Trump is. The best construction is to take this thought like my blog advising you to always consider that you could be wrong, and so may be Douglas Balmain. The worst construction is that the only ones who believe too much in themselves are those opposed to my politics.
To me what is happening in the Balmain piece is that he is taking anyone who is sure or confident about anything is believing in himself too much. This relates to this 2015 blog https://www.pastorharris.com/2015/10/12/dont-bother-me-with-the-facts-i-want-fads/ wherein I reference someone else saying, “when we discarded the concept of true and false, all we were left with were conspiracy theories.”
In such a milieu, all theories are valid, none outlandish, all must be accepted. And to be sure of anything, especially your religious faith, is to be if not insane then inane. Yes, by all means do “Fear the person who believes too much in themselves”, but do also fear the one who equates the concept of objective true or false facts with his subjective belief or unbelief in them.
