In this
issue of the newsletter we have combined the feature essay
with the "Sutta Study" column as we take a fresh look at an
often quoted discourse of the Buddha, the
Kalama
Sutta. The discourse -- found in translation in Wheel
No. 8 -- has been described as "the Buddha's Charter of Free
Inquiry," and though the discourse certainly does counter
the decrees of dogmatism and blind faith with a vigorous
call for free investigation, it is problematic whether the
sutta can support all the positions that have been ascribed
to it. On the basis of a single passage, quoted out of
context, the Buddha has been made out to be a pragmatic
empiricist who dismisses all doctrine and faith, and whose
Dhamma is simply a freethinker's kit to truth which invites
each one to accept and reject whatever he likes.
But does the
Kalama Sutta really justify such views? Or do we meet in
these claims just another set of variations on that
egregious old tendency to interpret the Dhamma according to
whatever notions are congenial to oneself -- or to those to
whom one is preaching? Let us take as careful a look at the
Kalama Sutta as the limited space allotted to this essay
will allow, remembering that in order to understand the
Buddha's utterances correctly it is essential to take
account of his own intentions in making them.
The passage
that has been cited so often runs as follows: "Come, Kalamas.
Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing,
nor upon tradition, nor upon rumor, nor upon scripture, nor
upon surmise, nor upon axiom, nor upon specious reasoning,
nor upon bias towards a notion pondered over, nor upon
another's seeming ability, nor upon the consideration 'The
monk is our teacher.' When you yourselves know: 'These
things are bad, blamable, censured by the wise; undertaken
and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon
them... When you yourselves know: 'These things are good,
blameless, praised by the wise; undertaken and observed,
these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and
abide in them."
Now this
passage, like everything else spoken by the Buddha, has been
stated in a specific context -- with a particular audience
and situation in view -- and thus must be understood in
relation to that context. The Kalamas, citizens of the town
of Kesaputta, had been visited by religious teachers of
divergent views, each of whom would propound his own
doctrines and tear down the doctrines of his predecessors.
This left the Kalamas perplexed, and thus when "the recluse
Gotama," reputed to be an Awakened One, arrived in their
township, they approached him in the hope that he might be
able to dispel their confusion. From the subsequent
development of the sutta, it is clear that the issues that
perplexed them were the reality of rebirth and kammic
retribution for good and evil deeds.
The Buddha
begins by assuring the Kalamas that under such circumstances
it is proper for them to doubt, an assurance which
encourages free inquiry. He next speaks the passage quoted
above, advising the Kalamas to abandon those things they
know for themselves to be bad and to undertake those things
they know for themselves to be good. This advice can be
dangerous if given to those whose ethical sense is
undeveloped, and we can thus assume that the Buddha regarded
the Kalamas as people of refined moral sensitivity. In any
case he did not leave them wholly to their own resources,
but by questioning them led them to see that greed, hate and
delusion, being conducive to harm and suffering for oneself
and others, are to be abandoned, and their opposites, being
beneficial to all, are to be developed.
The Buddha
next explains that a "noble disciple, devoid of covetousness
and ill will, undeluded" dwells pervading the world with
boundless loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and
equanimity. Thus purified of hate and malice, he enjoys here
and now four "solaces": If there is an afterlife and kammic
result, then he will undergo a pleasant rebirth, while if
there is none he still lives happily here and now; if evil
results befall an evil-doer, then no evil will befall him,
and if evil results do not befall an evil-doer, then he is
purified anyway. With this the Kalamas express their
appreciation of the Buddha's discourse and go for refuge to
the Triple Gem.
Now does the
Kalama Sutta suggest, as is often held, that a follower of
the Buddhist path can dispense with all faith and doctrine,
that he should make his own personal experience the
criterion for judging the Buddha's utterances and for
rejecting what cannot be squared with it? It is true the
Buddha does not ask the Kalamas to accept anything he says
out of confidence in himself, but let us note one important
point: the Kalamas, at the start of the discourse, were not
the Buddha's disciples. They approached him merely as a
counselor who might help dispel their doubts, but they did
not come to him as the Tathagata, the Truth-finder, who
might show them the way to spiritual progress and to final
liberation.
Thus,
because the Kalamas had not yet come to accept the Buddha in
terms of his unique mission, as the discloser of the
liberating truth, it would not have been in place for him to
expound to them the Dhamma unique to his own Dispensation:
such teachings as the Four Noble Truths, the three
characteristics, and the methods of contemplation based upon
them. These teachings are specifically intended for those
who have accepted the Buddha as their guide to deliverance,
and in the suttas he expounds them only to those who "have
gained faith in the Tathagata" and who possess the
perspective necessary to grasp them and apply them. The
Kalamas, however, at the start of the discourse are not yet
fertile soil for him to sow the seeds of his liberating
message. Still confused by the conflicting claims to which
they have been exposed, they are not yet clear even about
the groundwork of morality.
Nevertheless, after advising the Kalamas not to rely upon
established tradition, abstract reasoning, and charismatic
gurus, the Buddha proposes to them a teaching that is
immediately verifiable and capable of laying a firm
foundation for a life of moral discipline and mental
purification . He shows that whether or not there be another
life after death, a life of moral restraint and of love and
compassion for all beings brings its own intrinsic rewards
here and now, a happiness and sense of inward security far
superior to the fragile pleasures that can be won by
violating moral principles and indulging the mind's desires.
For those who are not concerned to look further, who are not
prepared to adopt any convictions about a future life and
worlds beyond the present one, such a teaching will ensure
their present welfare and their safe passage to a pleasant
rebirth -- provided they do not fall into the wrong view of
denying an afterlife and kammic causation.
However, for
those whose vision is capable of widening to encompass the
broader horizons of our existence. this teaching given to
the Kalamas points beyond its immediate implications to the
very core of the Dhamma. For the three states brought forth
for examination by the Buddha -- greed, hate and delusion --
are not merely grounds of wrong conduct or moral stains upon
the mind. Within his teaching's own framework they are the
root defilements -- the primary causes of all bondage and
suffering -- and the entire practice of the Dhamma can be
viewed as the task of eradicating these evil roots by
developing to perfection their antidotes -- dispassion,
kindness and wisdom.
Thus the
discourse to the Kalamas offers an acid test for gaining
confidence in the Dhamma as a viable doctrine of
deliverance. We begin with an immediately verifiable
teaching whose validity can be attested by anyone with the
moral integrity to follow it through to its conclusions,
namely, that the defilements cause harm and suffering both
personal and social, that their removal brings peace and
happiness, and that the practices taught by the Buddha are
effective means for achieving their removal. By putting this
teaching to a personal test, with only a provisional trust
in the Buddha as one's collateral, one eventually arrives at
a firmer, experientially grounded confidence in the
liberating and purifying power of the Dhamma. This increased
confidence in the teaching brings along a deepened faith in
the Buddha as teacher, and thus disposes one to accept on
trust those principles he enunciates that are relevant to
the quest for awakening, even when they lie beyond one's own
capacity for verification. This, in fact, marks the
acquisition of right view, in its preliminary role as the
forerunner of the entire Noble Eightfold Path.
Partly in
reaction to dogmatic religion, partly in subservience to the
reigning paradigm of objective scientific knowledge, it has
become fashionable to hold, by appeal to the Kalama Sutta,
that the Buddha's teaching dispenses with faith and
formulated doctrine and asks us to accept only what we can
personally verify. This interpretation of the sutta,
however, forgets that the advice the Buddha gave the Kalamas
was contingent upon the understanding that they were not yet
prepared to place faith in him and his doctrine; it also
forgets that the sutta omits, for that very reason, all
mention of right view and of the entire perspective that
opens up when right view is acquired. It offers instead the
most reasonable counsel on wholesome living possible when
the issue of ultimate beliefs has been put into brackets.
What can be
justly maintained is that those aspects of the Buddha's
teaching that come within the purview of our ordinary
experience can be personally confirmed within experience,
and that this confirmation provides a sound basis for
placing faith in those aspects of the teaching that
necessarily transcend ordinary experience. Faith in the
Buddha's teaching is never regarded as an end in itself nor
as a sufficient guarantee of liberation, but only as the
starting point for an evolving process of inner
transformation that comes to fulfillment in personal
insight. But in order for this insight to exercise a truly
liberative function, it must unfold in the context of an
accurate grasp of the essential truths concerning our
situation in the world and the domain where deliverance is
to be sought. These truths have been imparted to us by the
Buddha out of his own profound comprehension of the human
condition. To accept them in trust after careful
consideration is to set foot on a journey which transforms
faith into wisdom, confidence into certainty, and culminates
in liberation from suffering.