"Do not believe,
in what you have heard,
in tradition,
because it is handed down to you from generations past,
in that which is spoken and rumoured of by many,
or simply because it is found in your religious scripture
or has been told unto you on the authority of your teachers and elders.
only when you yourselves know after watchful thought,
that these things are pure, blameless, agree with reason
and leads to benefit, and happiness of one and all,
enter on and abide in them."
Gauthama Buddha, The Kalama Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya, Vol 1, 188-193
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe
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. Even Buddha's own teachings are not to be accepted at face value.
The Buddha provides ten specific sources which should not be used to accept a certain teaching as true, without further verification:
1.
Oral history2.
Traditional practices
3.
News sources
4.
Scriptures or other official
texts5.
Logical reasoning
6.
Philosophical reasoning
7.
Common sense8. One's own
opinions9.
Authorities or
experts10. One's own
teacherInstead, he says, only when one has personally verified that a certain teaching is
skillful,
blameless,
praiseworthy, and conducive to
happiness, then one should accept it as true and practise it.
However, it should be stressed that the Buddha instructed the Kalamas to pay attention to the teachings of the wise; he did not advocate that individuals can or should decide truth purely by and for themselves. Nevertheless, the emphasis remains on one's personal verification 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).
