When doubt is very strong, we actually don't recommend a meditation. We recommend going to see your good, kind, wise spiritual friend, in Pali we call them Kalyanamittas. If you have a close relationship with teachers, use them. Every one of you can use me and Rosemary, if you want. Send us an email if you are stuck in doubt. Doubt is incredibly difficult to work with.
In the last evening talk, when I talk about the teachers, I talk about doubt of a teacher. How, when a person sits in the doubt too much their doubt changes into aversions, they start hating the teachers and such. Doubt can cripple a person. When you are stuck in doubt, you don't know the right way, you don't know the right answers, you don't even know the right questions. If you don't know the right questions, how on earth are you going to solve your doubts? This is how powerful doubt can be. Go and talk to somebody, they can help you to look at it from a different angle.
There is a story of 12 blind men, we can say 12 blind people today, to be politically correct. From the Buddhist scriptures, it is a story of 12 blind men. They all go up to an elephant, and stand at a certain side of the elephant and they grab part of the elephant and they describe it. Now imagine you grab that big husk and you are describing it, that it has two holes in it, soft and so on. Someone else describes the tail, elephants have short tails, somebody else grabs that big leg that feels fatter than my stomach or other big things, and they describe it. The minute they describe it, the other people say, "no, it is not! It is not that way at all!" The other people are saying it their way and the first says, "no, it is like this!" Then they start fighting and carrying on, and it is simply because they can't see all the aspects of the elephant, they get stuck in one area. When people get stuck in doubt like this, they can't see clearly. That is where a good wise friend often can see around the elephant and can see different perspectives.
Sometimes the good wise friend is not going to be able to give you the perfect answer. How many times people come into the interviews or write us a note, wanting a quick fix. "Come on, Steve, give me an easy one." No, we can't do that, you know this is hard work. And sometimes all we can do is point at something you are not looking at. We often ask questions. Bring stuff out of you. This is the benefit of good kind wise friends, especially when it comes to doubt. Use them as much as possible to solve your doubt.
Someone might say, what if I can't get in contact with my good, kind, wise spiritual friend? What kind of meditation would you recommend as first aid? Try any of them. It depends on what kind of doubt you actually have, what your doubt is centred upon. So try any of them and see what can work for you. But don't give up the practice because you have doubt. That is a problem that some people have. "Oh, the practice", they start doubting the practice, but all of you have already seen benefits from this practice. You all have confidence right here today in this stuff. So, if you have doubts later, just remind yourself where you have been, remind yourself of the joy that you have seen in the practice, of the benefits you have seen in the practice. Remind yourself that if you are stuck later in some doubt, it is just a wrong thought, that is all it is, it is wrong thought. Work on letting go of that wrong thought, bringing up right thought and then your doubt will go away.