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             BPS Newsletter Cover Essay #9 (Spring 1988)


                    A LOOK AT THE KALAMA SUTTA

                         by 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.

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