Principle: Seeking Over Certainty

What this means in practice

This is a community for exploration. Your own understanding comes first. Questions are welcome. Doubt is welcome. The community keeps an open hand.

In practice, this means the invitation is to keep seeking. A conclusion can come in its own time, or stay open. Ask the Commons brings sources to your questions and leaves the understanding to you. Conversations are a place to explore together.

It also means you hold your own certainties lightly. What you understand today may deepen tomorrow. A passage that meant one thing last year may mean something different now. That is seeking.

A passage

Those who know (the Tao) are not extensively learned; the extensively learned do not know it.

Source: The Tao Te Ching, ch. 81, James Legge (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 39), 1891

A question to sit with

What is one thing I was certain of a year ago that I see differently now? What changed?

A practice to try

Sit with one open question of yours. Hold it, and let it stay open. Notice what it feels like to let a question simply be a question.