http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/lostinquotation.html
Many people who don't know much about old Buddhist texts often
know one passage from the Pali Canon: the part of the Kalama Sutta
(AN 3.65) stating that old texts can't be
trusted.
Quotes from this passage come in many shapes and sizes. Some of
them are short sound bites, like the message that was
rubber-stamped on the envelope of a letter I once received:
— The Buddha
There's also the desktop wallpaper:
— The Buddha
Even scholarly citations of the sutta give the same message.
Here's the entire quote from the sutta in a recent book:
— The Buddha
Taken together, these quotes justify our tendency to pick what
we like from the old texts and throw the rest away. No need to
understand the larger context of the dhamma they teach, the Buddha
seems to be saying. You're better off rolling your own.
But if you look at the entire passage in the Kalama Sutta, you
discover that these quotes give only part of the picture. The
Buddha's skepticism toward reliable authorities extends inside as
well as out:
Notice the words in bold face, the ones that usually get dropped
from the quote or sloughed over when they're included. When the
Buddha says that you can't go by logical deduction, inference, or
analogies, he's saying that you can't always trust your sense of
reason. When he says that you can't go by agreement through
pondering views (i.e., what seems to fit in with what you already
believe) or by probability, he's saying that you can't always trust
your common sense. And of course, you can't always trust teachers,
scriptures, or traditions. So where can you place your
trust? You have to put things to the test in your own thoughts,
words, and deeds, to see what actually leads to suffering and what
leads to its end.
When you know for yourselves that, 'These dhammas are
unskillful; these dhammas are blameworthy; these dhammas are
criticized by the wise; these dhammas, when adopted & carried
out, lead to harm & to suffering' — then you should abandon
them.
When you know for yourselves that, 'These dhammas are
skillful; these dhammas are blameless; these dhammas are praised by
the wise; these dhammas, when adopted & carried out, lead to
welfare & to happiness' — then you should enter & remain in
them.
The word "dhamma" in these passages means three things in one:
teaching, mental quality, and action. Teachings are naturally
related to the mind states and actions they inspire, so they should
be judged by the results they give when put into action. True
dhamma is what works in leading to genuine well-being. False dhamma
is what doesn't.
But even when judging the results of your own actions, you can't
simply take your own ideas of "what works" as a trustworthy
standard. After all, you can easily side with your greed, aversion,
or delusion, setting your standards too low. So to check against
this tendency, the Buddha recommends that you also take into
consideration the views of the wise, for you'll never grow until
you allow your standards to be challenged by theirs.
Now, if you're expecting quick access to a totally reliable
authority, this may sound like a catch: If you're not wise enough
to trust your own judgment, how can you recognize who's really
wise? But it's not a catch. It's simply the way we have to operate
when developing any kind of skill — your appreciation of good
carpentry, for example, grows as you master carpentry yourself —
and the Buddha is making the point that this is how to approach the
dhamma: as a skill to be mastered. As with any skill, your inner
sensitivity and assurance as to who's truly wise in the skill grows
only through your willingness to learn.
In giving advice on how to learn this skill, the Buddha is
speaking, not with the authority of your creator who can tell you
what you have to believe, but with the authority of an expert in
his field, one who knows from experience what does and doesn't
work. If you want to learn from him, you're wise to accept his
observations on how it's best done. The first thing to recognize is
that there are others who have mastered the skill before you and
that they have some important things to teach.
Among the things they'll teach you, of course, is what they've
learned from the wise before them, going back to the Buddha. Some
of this knowledge can be passed on in words, but in a list of the
qualities to look for in the wise — and to learn from them — the
Buddha shows that there's more to wisdom than just words. A person
worthy of respect, he says at AN 7.64, should have a sense of seven things:
the dhamma, its meaning, oneself, enough, the right time and place,
social gatherings, and how to judge individual people.
What's striking about this list is that only the first two
qualities deal with verbal knowledge. Having a sense of the
dhamma means knowing what the Buddha did and didn't say;
having a sense of meaning means knowing how to explain the
dhamma's difficult concepts and ideas: the general principles that
express its values, and the basic techniques for implementing them.
These are things we can pick up from dhamma talks and books.
But the Buddha didn't teach a
one-size-fits-all-in-every-situation technique. Even his seemingly
abstract principles are meant for particular stages in the
training. "Not-self," for example, is useful in some instances, and
harmful in others. This is why the Buddha added the last five
members of the list: the sensitivities that turn the techniques and
principles into genuine skills.
Having a sense of oneself means knowing your strengths
and weaknesses in terms of conviction, virtue, learning,
generosity, discernment, and quick-wittedness. In other words, you
know which qualities are important to focus on, and can assess
objectively where you still have more work to do.
Having a sense of enough applies primarily to your use
of the requisites of life — food, clothing, shelter, and medicine —
but it can also apply to intangibles, such as when you need less
desire, effort, concentration, or thinking in your practice, and
when you need more.
Having a sense of time means knowing when to listen,
when to memorize what you've heard, when to ask questions, and when
to go off into seclusion and practice on your own.
Having a sense of social gatherings means knowing how
to speak and behave with people from different backgrounds and
classes of society.
Having a sense of individuals means knowing how to
judge which people are worthy of emulation in their pursuit of the
dhamma and which ones are not.
Even though we can talk about these last five qualities, we
can't embody them through words. They're habits, and the only way
to pick up good habits is by being around good examples: people
who've already been trained to embody these qualities in the way
they live.
This is why the Buddha — in trying to establish the dhamma for
future generations — didn't just leave a body of teachings. He also
set up the monastic sangha and organized it to carry on the
tradition of all seven of these qualities: his habits as well as
his words. To ensure that the standard of the dhamma would last
over time, he first made it clear that he didn't want anyone
tampering with his teachings.
Monks, these two slander the Tathagata. Which two? One who
explains what was not said or spoken by the Tathagata as said or
spoken by the Tathagata. And one who explains what was said or
spoken by the Tathagata as not said or spoken by the Tathagata.
These are the two who slander the Tathagata.
— AN 2.23
It's easy to understand why the Buddha phrased this so strongly.
He had chosen his words with great care, and wanted the same level
of care in those who quoted him. Fidelity, in his eyes, was an act
of compassion. He intended his words to be taken as a standard for
what was and wasn't dhamma — anything consistent with his words was
to be accepted as dhamma; anything inconsistent, to be rejected as
not — so it's only natural that he'd warn his followers not to
muddy the standard. Otherwise, later generations would have no
trustworthy guide in their search to end suffering.
So in addition to establishing principles for determining what
he did and didn't teach, he also set up protocols for how the
sangha should settle disagreements on this issue when they
arose.
To ensure that the meaning of the dhamma would be passed on, he
established the principle that teachers should be open to
questioning. He didn't want them to engage in what he called
bombast: empty words "the work of poets, the work of outsiders,
artful in sound, artful in expression." He encouraged his students
to focus on teaching the end of suffering, and to encourage their
students to dissect those teachings to make their meaning clear.
Understanding occurs best when there's an opportunity for an open
dialogue in good faith.
To transmit the habits of the dhamma, the Buddha designed the
ideal teacher-student relationship on the model of an
apprenticeship. You live with the teacher for a minimum of five
years, attending to the teacher's needs, as a way of observing —
and being observed by — the teacher in all sorts of situations.
To allow for the fact that your sense of judgment develops over
time, the Buddha didn't force you to commit to a teacher for life.
You look for someone who, as far as you can see, has integrity, but
if you sense with time that integrity is lacking, you're free to
look for a new teacher.
At the same time, the Buddha realized that not everyone would
have the time or inclination to undergo this apprenticeship, so he
arranged a division of labor. The monks and nuns who had passed
through apprenticeship were to live, not in cloisters, but in
places where lay people would be free to come and learn from the
fruits of their training.
So it's obvious that the Buddha didn't have a casual or cavalier
attitude toward the preservation of his words and habits. Knowing
the difficulties he'd encountered in discovering the dhamma, he
didn't trust us — with our greed, aversion, and delusion — to
discover it on our own. He knew we'd need help. Although he foresaw
that his teachings would someday disappear, he didn't simply resign
himself to change or trust that it would always work out for the
best. He established a wide range of safeguards to ensure that
reliable words and models of behavior would survive as long as
possible.
But in the cut-and-paste Buddhism developing around us in the
West, many of these safeguards have been dropped. In particular,
the idea of apprenticeship — so central in mastering the habits of
the dhamma as a skill — is almost totally lacking. Dhamma
principles are reduced to vague generalities, and the techniques
for testing them are stripped to a bare, assembly-line minimum.
We reassure ourselves that the changes we've made in Buddhism
are all for the best — that Buddhism has always adapted itself to
every culture it enters, and we can trust it to adapt wisely to the
West. But this treats Buddhism as if it were a conscious agent — a
wise amoebic force that knows how to adapt to its environment in
order to survive. Actually, Buddhism isn't an agent, and it doesn't
adapt. It gets adapted — sometimes by people who know what they're
doing, sometimes by people who don't. Just because a particular
adaptation survives and prevails doesn't mean that it's genuine
dhamma. It may simply appeal to the desires and fears of its target
audience.
Certainly we in the West are easy targets for the idea that the
Buddha wants us to cut and paste his dhamma as we like. Many of us
have been burned by religious authorities and we don't want to risk
getting burned again. There's also our cultural pride: We like to
think that we can see more clearly than Asian Buddhist what's of
genuine value in their traditions and what's simply cultural
baggage — as if we didn't have cultural baggage of our own. And how
do we know what's "just baggage"? A beat-up old suitcase might
contain your jewelry and keys.
So is a designer dhamma what we really want? As the Buddha
noted, one of the natural reactions to suffering is to search for
someone who can give good advice on how to put an end to it. When
offered the choice, wouldn't you prefer reliable guidance on how to
end your suffering rather than a do-it-yourself kit with vague
instructions and no guarantees?
Or are there those who would benefit if you bought the kit?
People sometimes argue that in our diverse, postmodern world we
need a postmodern Buddhism in which no one's interpretation can be
criticized as wrong. But that's trading the possibility of total
freedom from suffering for something much less: freedom from
criticism. And it ignores the other side of the postmodernist
equation: that our perceived wants can be overwhelmingly shaped by
the interests of institutions who want something out of us. One of
the common ruses of privatization is to offer us less, dress it up
as more, so that we'll pay more for it. Is that what's happening
here?
The Buddha wasn't so naïve as to think that we can always know
what's in our own best interest. He saw long before the postmoderns
that there's plenty to mistrust both in old texts and in our own
preconceptions about what seems reasonable. Yet he did the
postmoderns one better by offering a solution to this dilemma. It
would be a shame if, sold on the idea of designing our own dhamma,
we let his solution die.