Talk About Kalama Sutra

This article about Kalama Sutra is a summarized form.

I shall gives the full version in my next post.

The Kalama Sutra
Anthony Flanagan,Your Guide to Buddhism.

Once, the Buddha was traveling through the region of Kosala inhabited by a group of people known as the Kalamas. When he came to the town of Kesaputta he was approached by a number of Kesaputtians who asked him a question which is as relevant today as it was then. The essential question was this: 'When we are presented with an array of different views on the nature of truth, with teachers claiming that theirs is the one and only way, which are we to believe?

The Buddha's response is captured in this key passage:

'do not be satisfied with with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in your scriptures or with conjecture or with logical inference or with weighing evidence or with liking for a view to pondering over it or with someone else's ability or with the thought "The monk is our teacher"'.

But this passage has to be seen in the context of the whole sutra.

The Buddha advises the Kesaputtians not to accept any teaching when they know that it is 'unwholesome, liable to censure, condemned by the wise, being adopted and put into effect they lead to harm and suffering'. The kalama sutra, therefore, is an important one in that it directs us not to follow any teaching blindly but to test it out against clearly defined criteria.

For example, are its ideas wholesome, do they accord with the teachings of the wisest teachers, do they lead to one's own suffering or the suffering of others?

The Kalama Sutra - Printer Friendly