A Look at the Kalama Sutta
Bhikkhu Bodhi
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.
Revised: Tue 28 January 1997 , Access-to-Insight
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