It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth — penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images,

I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science... This loosening of thinking seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world.

Belief creates the actual fact.

Whether we admit it or not, there comes for everyone the moment when personal existence must be anchored to a truth recognized as final, a truth which confers a certitude no longer open to doubt.

The question of belief is a curious one, partaking of the wonders of childhood and the blind hopefulness of the very old; in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something. It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred.

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth — penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.

Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other, — what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives.

The belief in a thing makes it happen.

To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard once of an American who so defined faith, `that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.' For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of the big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.

To believe is to know that one believes, and to know that one believes is no longer to believe.

Belief means not wanting to know what is true.

"In the Jōdō Shin School, they use the expression "determined faith." I think there is a time when one settles down in faith and never doubts anymore. What does this mean? According to our common sense, we firmly believe that our own thought is absolutely correct and the only measure of all things. But instead we settle ourselves in this faith, and never doubt that our thoughts are nothing more than secretions from our brain, which cannot be a yardstick. Instead of thinking that our thoughts are true, we can actually let go of our thoughts. In that world we see everything as the reality of life, which is reforming the self. This is determined faith. When we see reality after reforming the self, the world that is seen through our thoughts is an illusory world."

Therefore understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest.

You must believe in what you're doing, that what you're doing is the proper thing, the right thing. And you must have faith that things will end up as they should, which doesn't mean as you want them to, but things will work out as they should.