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Source for Quote
RenGalskap
Veteran
I can't think of a better quote than one from Buddha himself:
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
Buddha
The above was posted in another thread. Does anybody know who actually said this, and how it came to be attributed to the Buddha? I've been trying to find out for years.
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Comments
That might be a corrupted version of the Kalama Sutta. The actual passage is something like this:
It has to be taken in context. The Buddha often used what could be called skillful means: the adequate speech for each of his audiences. Actually, the Kalamas, at the start of the discourse, were not the Buddha's disciples.
It just so happens that The Kalamas had been visited by teachers of divergent views calling each other wrong. This left the Kalamas confused, so they approached the Buddha in the hope that he might be able to proposee a solution to their predicament. The Kalamas weren't even Buddhist. :T
Yeah, I'm familiar with the Kalama Sutta. The message in the sutta is rather different from the message in the quote. If the quote is actually derived from the Kalama Sutta, then the question is who did it, and what was the purpose. I'm really trying to find out how the quote originated, not which texts might have been corrupted in order to derive it. As I said, I've been trying for years, and I realize that it's possible that no one here has the answer. The quote reminded me of my past efforts, and I haven't asked here before, so I thought I would give it a shot.
It's not terribly important, but the quote keeps popping up over and over, and that's made me curious about its origin.
You and Nameless have set me to speculating. :-)
In the Kalama Sutta, the opinion of the wise is one of the criteria for evaluating a quality, but the Buddha doesn't specify who the wise are. In the Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta, the wise appear the be the bhikkhus. Furthermore, these bhikkhus have seen the truth of 12 step origination, so it appears that they are arahants. They don't rely on the words of a teacher or the logic of debates because they have seen the truth for themselves.
A theme that runs throughout the suttas is the importance of observing and experiencing the truth for yourself. This is not the same as arriving at truth through logic. If the goal is liberation, then one must confirm the truth in the way that gives the most confidence. Common sense can lead me astray, and perfectly valid logic may give incorrect results if my premises are false, and I know these things through observation and experience, which gives me confidence in them.
You hint at the possibility that the quote in the first post is a summary rather than a corruption. That's a reasonable theory, but I think it's a summary informed by the European Enlightenment, rather than Buddhist enlightenment. It emphasizes reason and common sense, so it emphasizes a procedure that is useful in debate, or useful in speculation.
I recall reading a sutta in which the Buddha said something along the lines of "Consider yourself as someone who knows nothing, and consider me as someone who knows everything." I can't remember where I read that, but I believe the Buddha was addressing bhikkhus who were not arahants. That would seem to rule out ignoring something the Buddha said just because it didn't agree with my reason and common sense. Furthermore, in the Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta, S'ati the son of a fisherman arrives at a conclusion using his reason and common sense, and the Buddha clearly doesn't want him to continue believing it.
Reason and logic are important in the suttas, but they seem to be tools for avoiding wrong views, rather than means for gaining confidence in right views. So a better summary of the message of the suttas might be "Rely on nothing that reason or common sense shows contradicts my teaching. Work on your own liberation until your own experience gives you confidence in the truth of dukkha and release from dukkha."
Getting back on topic, the quote in the first post may not be a corruption of a specific text, but a summary that expresses someone's understanding of the Buddha's teaching.
The abridged first version, seems to suggest using a person's own understanding (and I used that quote in another thread) but the second quote which was given to the Kalamas appears to be much more open to counsel. Approaches that have been "praised by the wise" and known to be good, enter on and abide in them.
Does that not mean question, observe and be discerning when choosing our path?
Specifically, it states that only reason and common sense are valid criteria for evaluating a belief. "Understanding" is a broader term and includes other forms of evaluation.
Exactly! :-)
Note that observation is not the same as reason or common sense.
This is something that would be in someone's sig perhaps, no? Sigs are not famed for having very well sourced content.