“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life
is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”
Lingering somewhere between certainty and uncertainty, doubt finds us all depending on life's changing conditions and our own experience. There are two flavors of doubt described in the Satipatthana Sutra - The Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness. There is the kind of doubt that can be useful when it is constructive and when it is a kind of skepticism that is focused on finding and knowing the truth. Or, there is the kind of doubt that can shut us down completely because we've come to believe ourselves to be solely our indecision, powerlessness, and distrust.
As with the other Hindrances, the teachings emphasize that gaining insights about our doubts is the goal of mindfulness and meditation. As a means of investigation, mindfulness can help us realize freedom from doubt as we remember to expand our awareness, broaden our views and challenge the doubtful stories we’ve created and told ourselves. Phillip Moffit, a well known vipassana meditation teacher, says that we know doubt as “the absence of feeling grounded in something greater than your own ego structure. It is for this reason that doubt is both an existential challenge and a spiritual hindrance.”