A
Look at the Kalama Sutta
The
discourse 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.
Bhikkhu Bodhi
