Kalama Sutta
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The Kalama Sutta (Sanskrit: Kalama Sutra) is a Buddhist sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya of the Tipitaka. In this sutta, Gautama Buddha instructs the people of Kesaputta — the Kalamas — on which basis one should decide which religious teaching to accept as true. The Buddha tells the Kalamas to not just believe religious teachings because they are claimed to be true by various sources or through the application of various methods and techniques. He urges that direct knowledge from one's own experience should be called upon. He notably does not, however, say (contrary to popular misconception) that his own teachings should not be accepted or not accorded trust: rather, he counsels that the words of the wise should be heeded and taken into account when deciding upon the value of a teaching.
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The Buddha provides ten specific sources which should not be used to accept a certain teaching as true, without further verification:
- Oral history
- Traditional
- News sources
- Scriptures or other official texts
- Logical reasoning
- Philosophical reasoning
- Common sense
- One's own opinions
- Authorities or experts
- One's own teacher
Instead, he says, only when one personally knows that a certain teaching is skillful, blameless, praiseworthy, and conducive to happiness, and that it is praised by the wise, should one then accept it as true and practise it.
In view of many misrepresentations of this statement of the Buddha's (to the effect that one can just "follow one's own feelings and views or reason things out for oneself", independently of Dharmic advice), it needs to be stressed again that the Buddha instructed the Kalamas to pay attention to the teachings of the wise; nowhere in the Pali suttas does the Buddha encourage people NOT to trust in his word. He did not advocate that individuals can or should decide truth purely by and for themselves. Nevertheless, the emphasis remains on one's personal knowledge of the validity of any teaching, and in particular whether a particular teaching reduces or eliminates the mental defilements of greed, hate and ignorance, or vice versa (in which case it should be rejected).
However, Buddha allows monks who have the power to read minds to examine him for his inner purity and also allows other monks to question that mind-reading monk on what he has noted about the Buddha and then to question the Buddha; this is permitted in the Majjhima Nikaya 47 Vimamsaka Sutta, since thus testing, it will make the faith of the student strong and firm. The "wise" are encouraged to prove themselves to be so. However, one notes that there is still required trust in the truthfulness of the words of such mind-reading monks and in the Buddha himself.
In line with this, faith and trust in the Buddha as a supreme teacher is frequently encouraged within Buddhism (see Faith in Buddhism). For example, in the "Chapter of the Fours" of the Anguttara Nikaya, the Buddha states: "Those who have faith in the Buddha have faith in the best." (Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, tr. by Nyanaponika Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi, Altamira, Kandy, 1999, pp. 86-87). The Buddha further makes this clear in the Patika Sutta, where he urges the ascetic wanderer, Bhaggava (who is not a Buddhist but wishes to experience a mental state of liberative freedom termed "Beauty"), to have trust in the Buddha (he does not say to him, "don't believe in me and what I teach without testing it out first"). In terms, he says to Bhaggava:
"It is hard for you, Bhaggava, holding different views, being of different inclinations and subject to different influences, following a different discipline and having had a different teacher, to attain and remain in the deliverance called 'the Beautiful'. You must strive hard, putting your trust in me, Bhagggava." (Thus Have I Heard, tr. by Maurice Walshe, Wisdom, 1987, p. 383).
Furthermore, the very fact that the Buddha has himself stated something to be spiritual fact carries great authority, as is evidenced by the Buddha's reply to Sariputta in the Sampasadaniya Sutta. Here Sariputta is wondering if he would be right to base himself on the authority of the Buddha when asked whether other Buddhas of equal Awakening have existed or will exist. The exchange is as follows, starting with Sariputta and with an unequivocal reply coming from the Buddha:
"I should say, 'I have heard and received it [i.e. this teaching about past and future Buddhas] from the Blessed Lord's own lips ... I have also heard and received it from the Blessed Lord's own lips that ...' Lord, if I were to reply thus to such questions ... would I be explaining Dhamma correctly, so that no fellow-follower of the Dhamma could contest it or find occasion for censure?"
"Certainly, Sariputta, if you answered like this you would not misrepresent me, you would be explaining Dhamma correctly and not laying yourself open to censure." (Walshe, op. cit., p. 425).
Again, we note that there is no encouragement here of doubting the veracity of the Buddha's word: that word carries the ultimate spiritual weight and authority. The fact that a teaching has come from the Buddha's own mouth is implicitly presented here as the most powerful determinant of its veracity.
[edit] The Sutta and Pascal's Wager
The Kalama Sutta may also be interpreted as presaging an approach to Pascal's Wager for assessing beliefs in specific doctrines. In the sutta, the Buddha explicitly argues that there are direct and immediate benefits - the "Four Solaces" - to be gained from acting as if the difficult concepts of rebirth and kamma are valid, regardless of whether they are valid. A decision-theoretic analysis seems to show that this argument renders belief in these concepts rational for all non-zero levels of belief. An alternate reading of the sutta would say that the Buddha does not in fact advocate here an "as if" approach to karma and rebirth at all, and thus a comparison with Pascal's Wager is not especially apt.
