Kalama Sutta

Do not believe in anything (simply)
because you have heard it.

Do not believe in traditions because they
have been handed down for many generations.

Do not believe in anything because it is
spoken and rumoured by many.

Do not believe in anything (simply) because
it is found written in your religious books.

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority
of your teachers and elders.

But after observation and analysis
when you find that anything agrees with reason
and is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all
then accept it and live up to it.

The Kalama Sutta
Lanka Daily News, 9 February 2004
The teaching of the Kalamans, a sophisticated clan of Brahmins, is perhaps the cleverest discourse of the Buddha to intelligent layman. It is a superb record and evidence of the genius of the Buddha for impromptu logical reasoning and clear speaking. Yet, it is a recondite discourse requiring patient study, analysis and understanding.

When the Kalamans met the Buddha, they threw at him a loaded question, which commonly, another person may have met head on, and got into difficulty. Thus spoke the Kalamans: 'From time to time, monks and Brahmans come to our town and abuse and vilify the teaching of others, expounding only their own to be true.

We are confused, puzzled and in doubt. [Now you have come here.] Sir, how are we to know who speaks what is true?' As some normally would have reacted, if the Buddha responded to the question frontally to firstly evaluate and criticize others in order to suggest that he alone speaks of what is true, the effect would have been more confounding to the Kalamans. So how did the Buddha answer the loaded question?

Thus spoke the Buddha: "You may well be puzzled, Kalamans. You may well be in doubt. For doubt has arisen precisely about what ought to be doubted. Come, Kalamans, do not be satisfied

(1) with hearsay or

(2) with tradition or

(3) with legendary lore or

(4) with what has come down in your scriptures or

(5) with conjecture or

(6) with logical inference or

(7) with weighing evidence or

(8) or with liking for a view after pondering over it or

(9) with some one's ability or

(10) with the thought "The monk is our teacher".

When you know in yourselves: 'These ideas are evil, liable to censure, condemned by the wise, being adopted and put into effect they lead to harm and dukkha, then you should abandon them'.

After this comprehensive analysis, and getting the objective attitudinal attention of the Kalamans to accept or reject a view or teaching whatever, the Buddha engaged them in a meticulous question and answer dialogue on the rationale to abandon thinking about evil and doing evil.

He got agreement of the Kalamans that to be obsessed with lust, hate, delusion is harmful; to refrain from killing living beings, not take what is not given, to avoid adultery and falsehood is blameless, wholesome. That abstaining from evil shall not be censured by the wise, and being adopted and put into effect will lead to happiness and welfare.

He spoke on only sectarian things. On every matter of evil and not evil, he asked, 'Kalamans, how does it appear to you in this case?" and drove home the point that they should accept things only when they know for themselves that these are wholesome or unwholesome.

Thereafter, he seized the opportunity and attention given him, to teach Dhamma in a way that the Kalamans would be willing to ponder over and understand.

He outlined the four brahmavihara, metta, karuna, mudita and upekkha [loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity] practiced by his noble disciples.

The Kalamans could see for themselves that the brahmavihara are not things to doubt and dispute about. They are independent of who speaks about them. They are general and wholesome.

It was a clever teaching, avoiding criticizing others, avoiding confrontation. In describing the practice of his noble disciples, he tacitly invited the Kalamans to practice them.

The Buddha then led the Kalamans to a further relevant application of logic and reasoning. Is there another world? Or is there no other world?

Is there ripening of good and evil? Or is there no ripening of evil?

These ideas were well known and debated even before the time of the Buddha. There was popular understanding of the results of kamma in this

life and may be, in lives to come. The idea of re-becoming was extant in the doctrines of the Brahmins from ancient time. There was also a view that intrinsically there was no such thing as good or evil.

The Buddha now made use of all these concepts to frame and construct on the spot, a brilliant exposition of a rationale for choice.

1. A noble disciple of the Buddha, he said, thinks: 'If there is another world and there is fruit and ripening of actions well done and ill done, then it is possible that on the dissolution of the body, after death, I might be reborn in a heavenly world'. This would be his first comfort.

2. 'But if there was no other world and there is no fruit and ripening of actions well done and ill done, yet here and now in this life I shall be free from hostility, affliction and anxiety, and I shall live happily'. This is the second comfort.

3. Supposing however evil befalls one who does evil, then since I have no evil thought of anyone, how can evil deeds bring dukkha to me, as I am not doing evil?' This is his third comfort.

4. But supposing no evil befalls one who does evil, yet I know for myself that I am pure in this life on both these counts [because in either case, whether evil befalls or not, I do not do evil]. This is the fourth comfort acquired by a noble disciple [who does no evil]. With these ideas for rational choice, he concluded the teaching.

The four 'comforts' are conditions that give confidence to choose to abstain from thinking about and doing evil. They dispel doubt. They do not yield a mere view. The feeling of the 'comforts' is private experience and illustrate elegantly the thrust and method of the Dhamma - to accept things when in oneself one knows they are true.

How one comes to know is from practice of Dhamma, not from a view 'only this is true and everything else is false'. When there is diligence, the Dhamma leads onwards to insight, to attain the path, to understand and be able to plumb its depth.

That is how one comes to abandon doubt and know for oneself 'this is true'. That is how it is necessarily experienced privately by the wise

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Last Update Vesak 2545 (2001)