Basic Teachings of the Buddha by Glenn Wallis

Author:Glenn Wallis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781588366382
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

SUTTA 4

Knowing for Yourself

Kesamutti Sutta: “Discourse in Kesamutta”; Aguttaranikya 3.65

THERE IS A SAFEGUARD AGAINST THIS BEWITCHMENT: KNOWING FOR YOURSELF. (DE-ORIENTATION)

The Kesamutti Sutta, more commonly known as the Klma Sutta, is considered throughout the Buddhist world past and present to be something of a Buddhist Magna Carta, granting religious seekers the liberty of free inquiry. In his typically elegant and austere fashion, the Buddha presents here a strategy for determining whether or not religious propositions are worthy of embrace. The structure that he provides can easily be extended beyond religious issues per se to include any types of dogmatic assertions—for instance, scientific, political, or aesthetic ones. Considering the ubiquity of such social and religious dogma even in a liberal democratic nation like our own—much less in a traditional society like ancient India—and considering, furthermore, the paralyzing effect that such dogma has on our thinking, this sutta certainly does have a liberating and perhaps even revolutionary quality to it.

But the sutta serves another purpose as well. Just consider the Buddha’s inventory of inadequate strategies for determining the value of an idea—don’t we recognize precisely our very practices? “You should not be convinced by unconfirmed reports, by tradition, by hearsay, by scriptures, by logical reasoning, by inferential reasoning, by reflection on superficial appearances, by delighting in opinions and speculation, by the appearance of plausibility, or because you think, This person is our teacher.” What is left? When we no longer accept the proclamations of religious teachings and teachers on the usual bases, how can we deal with the great matters of life and death? When we let go of all of that, the Buddha seems to be suggesting, there is only one terrifying alternative: deciding for yourself on the basis of your own experience. What experience? The most basic, visceral experience, of either trouble or ease. If the teaching—the practice, the doctrine, the idea, the theory—enhances infatuation, hostility, and delusion, then you must surely recognize it as having detrimental effects on your life, you must actually experience it as leading “to harm and trouble,” and as being faulty and thus worthy of rejection. Conversely, if a teaching serves to reduce these “three poisons,” as the Buddha often refers to them, then you certainly know that fact directly. Experiencing increased well-being and ease as a result of that reduction, how can you not determine for yourself that that teaching is beneficial? The Buddha’s strategy thus places determination of value squarely on the shoulders of the individual. The criteria of value have thus become empirical; they are tied to verifiable experience rather than to systems and communities of belief.

A key phrase in the Buddha’s strategy in the Kesamutti Sutta requires that the teachings under examination be “fully taken up” or “fully carried out.” How should we understand this phrase? There seems to be an assumption in the sutta of sustained consideration of a view or teaching. But in most cases, religious teachings are speculative (God hears your prayers; eating meat leads to rebirth as a pig) and are thus incapable of verification.

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