Just A Little Dust

My last post was on the wisdom offered to the confused Kalamas in sorting out the thicket of views they were exposed to. Because their village was on a crossroads, they got full benefit of hearing the media of their day — talks and debates by folks walking from one place to another. Our modern crossroads are even more confusing, and the points that the Buddha made in answer to their questions, including starting from our own direct experience, still applies. The focus last time was on, first, paying attention to the sources of information that we take in and, second, on becoming aware of how our minds work with that information.

When it comes to the news and what underlies current events, there are some fairly objective facts we can check into if we are willing to spend the time (and as I point out in “What Do You Know?” if we are not willing to spend the time investigating, we shouldn’t be broadcasting opinions based on hearsay and a lack of knowledge). The deeper investigation comes in looking into our own mental processes to see how we know what we know and how other factors play into our perceptions. Learning meditation techniques and mindfulness — keeping awareness on what’s going on with us in any given moment — are critical skills for sorting out “truth from fiction” — sorting distortion from accurate information. But keen awareness of what we see arising in the mind is not an answer by itself because our minds are capable of creating their own realities and convincing us completely that they are true.

We find that even Buddhist masters — historically and in the present — get deluded enough to end up in some dicey moral situations. If they were capable of complete accuracy through just their own insight that might not happen, but it can be very difficult to sort out what’s “real” from what’s “imagined” in the spacious confines, in the twisty little mazes all alike, of one’s own mind. This is why the second piece of advice in the Kalama Sutta is to seek the counsel of the wise.

When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.

In just that tiny little section there are three pieces of advice:

1. Use your own moral sense to recognize those qualities you can develop that produce good effect (are skillful) and that do not cause harm (are blameless)
2. Listen to the advice of the wise when it comes to what is worthwhile (praised by the wise)
3. Look for direct evidence from your own experience to see that what you believe (point 1) and others believe (point 2) has support in visible change in the world.

This third point represents the basis for all of the Buddha’s teachings; it’s the ground we walk on and what every other concept is built on: “causation” — that every thing, every phenomena, every thought, every idea, every action arises as the result of something else, and that we are able to be effective (skillful) by using a sort of scientific method on everything in life: if we see something happen we can look for the causes. It is only through having such good evidence that we can actually make wise choices; the rest is just guesswork, also known as “faith”.

The point about direct evidence combines with the first point in a way that encourages us to recognize that we have within ourselves the tools needed to recognize morality and develop it in ourselves: we have moral sense and the ability to see cause and effect and use that as the basis for good choices. If that was all the Kalama Sutta said, the (possibly apocryphal) folks who cite this sutta as a “Free-Thinker’s Toolkit”* would be right in assessing this teaching as the Buddha saying, “An it harm none, do what ye will” — but that is not all it says: there is point number two in which we are directed to pay attention to what is praised by the wise.

In other suttas, how to determine who is wise is defined, so we’ll not go into the specifics here. The main point is that “an it harm none” is a concept that can easily become skewed in one’s own mind if we do not have outside opinion on what harm consists of. We need a reality check. I’d say we need a variety of reality checks — I’m sure when the Buddha said “the wise” he wasn’t referring to one person; hopefully not even one group endorsing one view, but listening to those whom we have evidence are skillful in their lives.

The times we live in — with every famous person reflected off the screens of so many filtered views — there is no one who is well respected by everyone: Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama alike have their detractors, no doubt for good reasons. We have to choose our role models, the wise whose opinions we will respect, and since it’s a little hard to ask the Big Names for their opinions on the paths we are following, the skills we wish to develop, the choices we might make, we will need to nurture relationships with the wise a little closer to home. We should be careful not to limit our choices to only those who already believe what we believe because in a sense that’s not an outside reality check at all. We need to also look for those whose results in the world do the least harm and the most good, but who come from different systems than our own.

For myself, living in an isolated city, an outspokenly Christian community, I have no problem finding “the wise” with views different from my own. The majority of my local friends are either Christian or atheist or eclectic or prefer not to think about religion at all. It was finding fellow Buddhists in “the wise” category that was the problem, with the answer being “Second Life” for which I am extremely grateful.

But whatever one’s circumstances, an effort needs to be made to keep oneself open to a wider point of view because the balance is so necessary with minds that cling to their own views so strongly that they seek other minds to support those views (developing a sort of group mind). It’s very easy to build a world in which we see things only from one perspective and this is what gets us into trouble, from spiritual leaders who keep only followers who support their directions, however off the center of common morality they go, to corporations insulated against the human-level harm they do until the only good they aim for is greater monetary gain and power.

This is common sense: that we need balancing perspective, but I still find it marvelous that more than two thousand years ago someone lived who saw the nature of human minds so clearly that he recognized then what we still see now: how easy it is for a mind to go astray, and the more closed and insulated it is, the easier it is.

* I will take up those who debate the possibly apocryphal folks who endorse this sutta as a “Charter of Free Inquiry” in the next post.