This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Sources of Truth - Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
I have one announcement as well. In two weeks, on the 24th of August, we’ll have a community meeting here. It’s a nice time to get together after the usual Sunday morning. We’ll meet in the outer hall around 11:15 or so. The idea is to talk a little bit about IMC—the growth of IMC, the challenges of IMC, the opportunities of IMC—just to kind of check in with folks. I’ll be there. Next week I won’t be here; I’ll be up teaching a retreat, which is kind of nice.
One of the reasons why we do it on that day is that it works for us to have community meetings when there are five Sundays in the month. The other four Sundays we always have something, like today we have the potluck and tea. It doesn’t happen that often that we have five Sundays, but when we do, we kind of slip this in on the fourth one.
I’d like to share something that’s been on my mind, which has all kinds of wonderful implications in all kinds of areas of our life. It begins with a story from the time of the Buddha, where the Buddha visited a town. The people in the town heard the Buddha was there, so they came to see him and said, “A lot of spiritual teachers come through town, and they’ll disparage the other teachers. They’ll claim that only they teach the truth. So we ask you, Buddha, who is teaching the truth?”
It’s a reasonable question, I guess. “We want to know from you. Do you have some idea who’s teaching the truth?”
Well, the Buddha doesn’t answer the question directly. He kind of avoids the question as it was asked, probably because the question of truth is complicated. It’s a quagmire. You get pulled into that world of different religious truths, and to make a claim that you have the truth over everybody else’s truth is a kind of a headache. Maybe it’s not necessary.
So, instead, the Buddha begins by telling this group of people that there are sources of truth which are not reliable. He says not to rely on these ten sources of truth. These are common sources for which spiritual teachers, religious teachers, politicians, and all kinds of people will make claims.
That’s a phenomenal list. It doesn’t take a lot of analysis to appreciate that a lot of religions, a lot of spirituality, a lot of politics, a lot of families, and a lot of cultures are based on some of these sources of belief—what’s true, what’s right, what goes. Sometimes people absorb this at a very young age, and it just seems like this is the truth because it came along with how they learned a language. But in fact, they learned it from a tradition, they learned it from others, they learned it because it’s common.
To begin getting underneath where we get our truth from, there’s a wonderful teaching by the Buddha. Now, you shouldn’t take this as truth either, but he made this very interesting suggestion: if you want to claim something is true, do people the favor and tell them upon what source, what basis you’re claiming the truth. If you’re taking it as true because it’s your faith, tell them that it’s your faith. If you think it’s true because you’ve reasoned it out, say that. If it’s part of your religious tradition, say that’s the basis. It’s a tremendous respect for other people if you qualify where you get this idea from. You might say, “Well, it’s my own experience.” Okay, I guess I’ve had a different experience. The authority of experience is somewhat important for oneself but maybe not for others. It turns out that half of what an experience is, I guess, is an interpretation, but we often don’t see it that way.
So we do people a favor by saying, “Oh, I got it in the news today,” or “I got it down at the pub.” Where did you get that from? “Oh, it just felt right.” That creates a more open discussion and allows people to know where it comes from, and you can decide whether or not to participate or to offer where your sources are. I think it’s very respectful because then people can go check it and follow up on it and find out for themselves.
In a sense, the Buddha sweeps away these ten common sources for religious authority. But then he shifts the conversation, and this I think is really wonderful to watch. They asked an abstract question—”what is the truth?”—and he replies in an abstract way, but he doesn’t answer their question. He says, “Be careful.” And now he shifts the conversation to their own experience, to their own life experience, to what’s happened to them. He turns the attention not from ideas, but back to themselves. This is a wonderful way to turn it around.
He offers five pairs of criteria by which we can personally assess for ourselves what to do and what not to do. They want to know about the truth; the Buddha is interested in how you live, what you do in your life, and what you avoid doing. He’s pointing to what’s really practical. Now, believing in something as being true is a doing. Not believing something is not doing. So even belief fits into this category of the Buddhist concern with conduct, activity, what we do and don’t do in our speech, with our bodies, and also with our minds—mental action.
He uses five criteria. At least three of them are really key to what the Buddha is all about, and two of them you don’t see emphasized that much, perhaps because he’s talking to people who aren’t Buddhists. They’re just people in this town who came to ask him a question. These are things that are worth writing down and memorizing.
Three of those are very experiential for oneself. Wholesome and unwholesome is something we can feel for ourselves; we can feel if they’re healthy, nourishing, and bring a wonderful feeling of clean vitality, or they don’t. Leading to harm and welfare—we can have a sense, “I’m harmed by this. I’m harming other people by this,” or it produces welfare and benefit. If you’re not sure if it’s harmful or beneficial, maybe it’s just as well not to do it. Hold off if you can. And then leading to suffering or to happiness—to some kind of emotional pain that you did this, or it leads to emotional happiness and inspiration because you did this.
He’s offering these paired criteria that I imagine are like a fork in a road. You can choose to take one path or the other. Maybe one step doesn’t make much difference, but many steps later put you far, far away from where you were. It’s like the analogy of two parallel lines that never meet until you nudge one slightly. It might be a long time before you see any difference, but over years they become immensely far apart. The choices we make can have a huge impact. Some people make choices over and over again that are harmful to themselves, and they know it, but perhaps they can’t help themselves.
What’s wonderful about the Buddhist teachings is that at any step, you can take the other step. It doesn’t really matter how many steps you took down a harmful way; what matters is the next step. You don’t have to be weighed down or feel trapped by the weight of what’s happened in the past. What matters is the next step. And that’s where mindfulness puts us. Mindfulness puts us at the next step. So, what’s the next step? Is it wholesome or unwholesome? Does it lead to harm or welfare? This is where it’s delicate because sometimes we choose something that is uncomfortable but is actually good for us and beneficial in the long term. We have to have some sense of delayed gratification, what is beneficial over time.
Then there are the second and third criteria: blameworthy and blameless, and criticized by the wise or praised by the wise. These are not popular in Buddhist circles in the West. There’s a feeling that we’re supposed to not listen to other people and not criticize ourselves at all. Self-criticism is an illness in much of our culture, and this idea of blame seems puritanical. But here’s one way to understand these five criteria:
Imagine you’re going to make a decision, and you think about the person you most respect in your life. Then you decide to, I don’t know, take all your grandmother’s money out of her bank account and go to Las Vegas and lose it all gambling. Then you go find that wise person and say, “Hey, by the way, guess what I did?” That doesn’t feel good. There’s a kind of self-respect that values not feeling that way. The wise people are helpful to keep us being careful about what we do.
All of these are things we can know for ourselves directly. The Buddha presents these criteria and then shifts the attention to the townspeople, asking them direct questions about what they know for themselves. “When you have greed, is that wholesome or unwholesome?” And they say, “Oh, greed is unwholesome. It doesn’t feel good when you’re caught in the grip of greed.” He goes through all five criteria for greed, and then for non-greed (which in Pali1 implies its positive corollary, generosity). For non-greed, they agree it is wholesome, blameless, praised by the wise, and conducive to welfare and happiness.
He’s asking them to reflect and think for themselves, to think ethically. He’s asking them to be their own ethical thinkers about what to do and what not to do, and not to rely on external sources of authority.
Then he says, “When you know for yourself these actions are unwholesome, these actions are blameworthy, these actions are criticized by the wise, these actions if undertaken and practiced lead to harm and suffering, then you should abandon them.”
This teaching is based on what’s called the Kalama Sutta.2 It’s fairly famous in the West, but sometimes people only quote one phrase from the whole text, which is, “Only rely on what you can know for yourself,” and they don’t say anything more about the context. That’s a dangerous teaching because just knowing something by yourself in a very open, expansive way with no guardrails is a little bit dangerous. Here, it’s very specific what he says. I’ll read the positive corollary:
“But when you know for yourself these actions are wholesome, these actions are blameless, these actions are praised by the wise, these actions if accepted and undertaken lead to welfare and happiness, then you should live in accordance to them.”
The criteria for knowing for yourself has to do with these wonderful, ethical qualities. For the Buddha, this is about how to live your life in all aspects. These are very useful criteria, even in deep meditation.
The Buddha shifts the focus away from the Kalamas’ concern around abstract truth to what they can know for themselves, but he offers them criteria of what he thinks is important. Is it important to be concerned with what’s wholesome? Is it important to avoid what’s blameworthy? Is it important to have the praise of the wise? Is it important to focus on what brings welfare and benefit? Is it important to focus on having happiness? That’s for you to decide.
Is it more important to focus on things that make you miserable? Is it more important to do things that bring stress or make you unhappy? That’s for you to choose. I say this because I see plenty of people who choose the unhealthy, stressful direction. A lot of people are willing to sacrifice their own welfare because they think something else is more important. Sometimes it’s out of fear. “I have to be greedy because otherwise, who’s going to take care of me?” “I have to discipline my children harshly and critically because that’s how you get the world to behave better.” “I have to have a war because that’s how we make ourselves safe.” It goes on and on.
So, not a few people are going to say, “Well, that’s fine for the Buddha, but he doesn’t know my life. He doesn’t know the stresses I’m under. And I have to do this.” And that’s the question: do we have to? How important are these criteria? Can they be a reliable guide for living a wise, beneficial, useful life, where we can take care of ourselves and maybe even take care of the world?
Here’s one area where I find it very interesting and maybe crucial. At the time of the Buddha, he lived a really long time ago, and most human communication was direct. Most things that affected your life happened in your village, within eyesight of where you were. In our global, interconnected world, a tremendous amount of things affect us that we don’t see. With technology, institutions, governments, and economic systems connected in so many complicated ways, we don’t see what’s going on. Most people don’t understand what’s going on.
So, do we understand what brings welfare and what brings harm? Do we understand what’s wholesome and unwholesome in terms of taxes or economic systems? People with different political views might share all these same criteria, but they interpret them in different ways. “Yes, having more taxes is wholesome and beneficial for the world.” “No, we believe having fewer taxes does the same thing.” We have the same concern, but how do we decide who’s right? Because we adhere to a political position? A lot of politicians come to town. “Oh Buddha, which one of them is saying the truth?” He might give the same teaching: “When you know for yourself.”
This is not going to provide answers to political questions. But here is where it will provide answers, and this is where I think it is very profound: if you pick up a political view, for example, is the way you pick it up wholesome or unwholesome for you? Is the way you pick it up blameworthy or blameless? Is it praised by the wise? Does it lead to harm in yourself or to benefit? Does it lead in yourself to happiness or to suffering?
What political views you have is distinct from how you hold them. I’ve seen wonderful debates between people with radically different positions, for example, on abortion, where it was really impressive how people on opposite sides of the spectrum could come together, respectfully debate their positions, and start as friends and end as friends. We don’t see those examples very often. There’s a lot of strife around right and wrong.
I think what the Buddha is pointing to is that how we act in the world is phenomenally important for ourselves and for other people. So, use these criteria to look at yourself, the choices you make, what you pick up, and what you do. Even if it has to do with politics or opinions about economic systems, ask: “Am I holding this view in a good way, in a beneficial way, in a wholesome way? And do I know the basis upon which I have this view?” Is it just because a politician said it, so it must be true? Or have I studied it?
There’s a very sophisticated study on different ways to hold elections in a democracy, with fascinating, well-thought-out ways that increase the voice of everyone. In different places in the world, they’re experimenting with different electoral systems. If someone asks for your opinion, where is it from? “Well, I spent a year studying it, and let me offer you this wonderful book written by two people on different sides of the issue. Why don’t you read that and see what happens to you?” That’s very different than just reacting. So many of us think we’re experts, that it’s obvious what should happen.
How we hold these things is what the Buddha is pointing to. There are not just different spiritual teachers that come to town; there are different politicians, different talk show hosts, and all kinds of people on the web, on TV, and on social media making claims. What do we do with those claims? What are the claims we want to make? I think this is an important topic for our society and for our world.
It’s in this context today that I wanted to offer you the Buddha’s criteria. So I’ll offer them to you one more time, and then I’ll stop.
When you know for yourselves these actions are wholesome, these actions are blameless, these actions are praised by the wise, these actions lead to welfare, these actions lead to happiness, then you should live in accordance to them.
I think it’s a remarkable teaching. And if you don’t want to live by those, Buddhism has no requirement. But I would like to know why.
So, those are my thoughts today. Because we have tea in a little bit and a chance to meet each other, and we still have some minutes before the end of the Dharma talk time, wouldn’t it be nice if you said hello to the people near you and maybe shared a little bit about the pros and cons of what you heard me teach? You’re welcome not to, and just sit and be quiet, but if you could, turn to a couple of people next to you, introduce yourself, and just look around to make sure that no one is left alone.
Pali: An ancient Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Pāli Canon, or Tipiṭaka, and is the sacred language of Theravāda Buddhism. ↩
Kalama Sutta: A discourse of the Buddha contained in the Aṅguttara Nikāya of the Tipiṭaka. It is often cited by those who see Buddhism as rational and non-dogmatic, as it encourages questioning and personal inquiry over blind faith in scriptures, teachers, or traditions. ↩