Inquiry · “You Are Not Your Thoughts”
The Self-Catechism
Use Olcott’s own device — a short, honest list of questions you put to yourself and answer plainly — to examine what you actually understand and how you actually behave, on the principle that no one can do this for you: you must make the effort and emancipate yourself.
The self-catechism: Put yourself a few honest questions and answer each plainly — What do I really believe here? How do I know it? Where does my conduct contradict it? What’s the next effort that’s mine alone? Mark the gap without self-attack, name one step, take it. Olcott’s principle: no one emancipates you — “we ourselves must make the effort.”
What it is
Henry Steel Olcott’s great teaching instrument was the catechism — a chain of short questions, each met with a short, definite answer.
He chose the form deliberately for The Buddhist Catechism (1881) because it forces clarity: you cannot hide a vague feeling behind a plain “Q. … A. …”. This practice takes that same device and turns it on yourself. Instead of being quizzed by a teacher, you put a small set of honest questions to your own mind and answer them plainly, on paper or aloud — about what you actually understand, and about how you actually behave.
What makes this Olcott’s, and not generic journaling, is the engine he puts under it. His catechism is emphatic that no one can do the work for you: “Man must emancipate himself” (Q.168), and of the awakened ones he says they “only point out the way: we ourselves must make the effort” (Q.197).
The self-catechism is that principle made operational — a refusal to outsource your understanding or your conduct to authority, scripture, or a saviour. You interrogate yourself precisely because the effort has to be yours.
The Method
Built faithfully from Olcott’s catechetical method and its self-effort principle:
- Sit with pen and paper (or quietly, answering aloud). A few minutes, undisturbed.
- Put yourself a short, fixed set of questions — and answer each plainly. Keep the catechism’s discipline: a real question, a definite answer, no hedging. A simple standing set: - What do I actually claim to believe here — and can I state it in one plain sentence? - How do I know it? Is it understood, or merely repeated? - Where does my conduct today contradict what I say I believe? - What is the next effort that is mine to make — that no one can make for me?
- Answer as if to a clear-eyed examiner. The point of the Q&A form is that a vague answer is visibly inadequate. If an answer comes out woolly, ask the follow-up: and specifically?
- Mark the gap, don’t moralise it. Where belief and behaviour part company, name it neutrally — that gap is the finding.
- Name one effort and own it. End on Q.197’s note: pick the single next step that is yours to take, and take it. The teacher only points; you walk.
- Repeat periodically. Like Olcott’s schoolroom catechism, the value is in re-asking the same core questions over time and watching the answers sharpen. (Sourcing note: the question-set is constructed in Olcott’s catechetical style; the self-effort lines are attributed quotation/paraphrase from Q.168 and Q.197, not full reproduction.)
Source & Lineage
Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) wrote The Buddhist Catechism in 1881 to make the Buddha’s teaching teachable and self-checkable; its Q&A form and its insistence on self-reliance (“Man must emancipate himself”) are its signature.
The self-effort principle is canonical Buddhism (the famous “be a lamp unto yourselves”); Olcott’s distinctive move was packaging it in a crisp interrogative form a layperson could carry and use. This sits alongside the broader Theosophical emphasis on purifying one’s own motive and sorting one’s own nature.
The Traditions' versions
The move — interrogate yourself with honest questions to surface the gap between what you believe and how you live, then act on what’s yours to do — is widespread; Olcott’s is unusually crisp and anti-authority: - De Mello’s self-observation / awareness — watching yourself honestly without judgment.
- Kornfield’s reflection on what matters — periodic honest stocktaking of one’s life and values.
- Nanak’s three pillars as daily discipline — a daily checking of conduct against principle.
- Theosophical purifying of the motive — interrogating why you act, not just what you do.
- Beck’s catching cognitive distortions — Socratic questioning of one’s own automatic thoughts.
Common refinements
Letting answers stay vague. The whole power is the definite answer; if it’s woolly, ask “and specifically?” until it isn’t.
- Turning findings into self-attack. The belief–behaviour gap is data, not a verdict. Name it neutrally.
- Outsourcing the conclusion. The point of Q.168/Q.197 is that no authority answers for you; resist reaching for a teacher’s or book’s line in place of your own honest answer.
- All insight, no effort. End every session by naming and taking one step that is yours — otherwise it’s just rumination.
- Asking too many questions. A short fixed set, re-asked over time, beats a sprawling interrogation.