Buddha says if there is no doubt then there is no question of belief. Then one simply believes. There is no need for any Krishna to say, “Surrender, believe” – there is no point. If Arjuna has faith, he has; if he has not, then there is no way to bring it. Then at the most Arjuna can play a game of showing, pretending that he believes. But belief cannot be enforced.

For those whose faith is natural, spontaneous, there is no question of faith – they simply believe. They don’t know even what belief is. Small children, they simply believe. But once doubt enters, belief becomes impossible. And doubt has to enter; it is part of growth. Doubt makes one mature.

You remain childish unless doubt has penetrated your soul. Unless the fire of doubt starts burning you, you remain immature, you don’t know what life is. You start knowing life only by doubting, by being skeptical, by raising questions.

Buddha says faith comes, but not against doubt, not as belief. Faith comes by destroying doubt by argument, by destroying doubt by more doubt, by eliminating doubt by doubt itself. A poison can be destroyed only by a poison – that is Buddha’s method. He does not say believe. He says go deep into your doubt, go to the very end, unafraid: Don’t repress. Travel the whole path of doubt to the very end.

And that very journey will take you beyond it. Because a moment comes when doubt starts doubting itself. That’s the ultimate doubt – when doubt doubts doubt itself. That has to come if you go to the very end. You first doubt belief, you doubt this and that. One day when everything has been doubted, suddenly a new, the ultimate doubt arises – you start doubting doubt.

This is tremendously new in the world of religion. And then doubt kills doubt, doubt destroys doubt, and faith is gained. This faith is not against doubt, this faith is beyond doubt. This faith is not opposite to doubt, this faith is absence of doubt.

Buddha says you will have to become children again, but the path has to go through the world, through many jungles of doubts, arguments, reasonings. And when a person comes back home, attains back to his original faith, it is totally different. He is not just a child, he is an old man…mature, experienced, and yet childlike.

This sutra, The Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters, has never existed in India. It never existed in Sanskrit or in Pali. This sutra exists only in Chinese.

A certain Emperor Ming of the Han dynasty, AD 67, invited a few Buddhist masters to China to bring the message of Buddha there. Nobody knows the names of those Buddhist masters, but a group went to China. And the emperor wanted a small anthology of Buddhist sayings as a first introduction to the Chinese people.

Buddhist scriptures are very big, the Buddhist literature is in itself a world – thousands of scriptures exist and they go into very great detail, because Buddha believes in logical analysis. He goes to the very root of everything. His analysis is profound and perfect, so he goes into very deep details.