Don’t Go By Majority and Tradition

There’s a question regarding the Kalama Sutta. The famous Sutta that’s often been quoted, where Buddha encourages people of Kalama that came to talk to him to learn how to think for oneself. It lists various things to be avoided when it comes to one’s own reasoning, things that would be contradictory, or would constitute what are known as logical fallacies. Obviously I’m not going to read the whole Sutta here, but the point is, the Kalamas were in doubt because there were many different teachings, many different teachers propagating many different teachings coming around. They were wondering, how can they know for themselves which one of those teachers is right, and which isn’t. The Buddha then tells them that it is quite proper that they are doubtful, because when you’re hearing contradictory instructions, you can’t say they’re all right. So you have to then find some sort of criteria that can help you discern which ones are right, which ones are wrong. Or, which ones are less likely to be wrong, which ones are more likely to be right, and so on. The first one is not to go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing from different people, i.e. the majority. So, not to go simply upon tradition, not to go upon hearsay, not to go upon what’s in the scriptures, not upon surmise, not upon an axiom, not upon faulty reasoning, not upon bias, not upon another’s apparent competence (confidence of another). And not upon mere reasoning, the consideration that ‘this monk is our teacher, and thus we just go upon what he says’.

So the first one is not to go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing. That’s often used as an argument on its own. The point of all of these things is not to use these criteria as sole criteria for deciding what’s right, what’s wrong. In other words, you have to take responsibility for choosing what criteria you want to use, and therefore you can’t say ‘this is right because the majority said so’, or ‘this is right because our teacher said so’. No, this is right because I chose to regard it as right on the basis of what I heard from my teacher, or on the basis of what the majority says. In other words, the majority can not provide the basis for validity of the argument. You are the one choosing to use the majority as an excuse for the validity of the argument. So in this case, don’t do that, don’t go upon that which has been acquired by repeated hearing. You’ve been hearing the same thing here, and same thing there, and same thing somewhere else, on and on and on and on, through many different sources, but you’ve been hearing the same thing. And for some people, that will be enough to take that thing to be the truth.

The point here that’s useful to add is that sometimes when people come across conflicting instructions, they will choose to side with the instruction that came from the majority, simply because it’s the majority of people saying it, and thus, all these people are more likely to be right than this one person who says that. But that, in itself, it’s a plain logical fallacy. Because it’s not about how many people are saying something, it’s about whether that thing has the universal truth in it, the universal truth that we’re going to discuss further on in this talk. Because if such reasoning were followed, then nobody would have ever listened to the Buddha. The Buddha was literally the only one, in the entire cosmos, saying certain things, teaching the Dhamma. Nobody else can teach the Dhamma except the Buddha. So if people were to go by the criteria of ‘the majority is always right’, Dhamma would have not arisen, ever. And that’s kind of a contradictory standpoint for somebody who wants to practise the Dhamma today, yet dismisses the instructions because they’re not part of the established majority, or, you know, ‘I just heard it once’ and so on. No, it doesn’t matter if you just hear it briefly from one person then never ever again from anybody else. It still deserves an equal amount of consideration, and sort of… contrasting against the principle of greed, aversion, delusion, non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion. And then on the basis of that, you can decide if it’s right or wrong, not on the basis of how many people agree with it or not.

Even if that thing is the truth, it’s a mistake to take it simply on the basis of repeated hearing. ‘Oh, the majority said so, that’s it. Who am I to disagree?’ Well that’s what the Buddha says here, you should be the one who will then question that, despite vast majority saying that is so. So you question it by the principles he outlines in the same Sutta. Which is, these things are good, and these things are bad. Things that are good are things that are lust-free, greed-free, ill-will-free, distraction-free, basically things that are not avoiding responsibility, but taking up responsibility. Things that are bad are things that are rooted in greed, aversion, delusion, desire, sensuality, everything else that revolves around them. So majority might be saying something, and whether that’s right or wrong, you can reflect on the basis of the principle of greed, non-greed, aversion, non-aversion, delusion, non-delusion. So if, for example, the majority says ‘no no no, household life is good and practise of Dhamma is not so good’ or ‘it’s not necessary to become a monk’ and so on. You ask yourself, ‘OK, so the whole world might be agreeing upon this. But, which one of those two ways, one claimed as right, the other one claimed as wrong, leads to dispassion or passion? Leads to greed, aversion, delusion, or freedom from greed, aversion, delusion? Which one leads to liberation from acquisitions, from ownership, from burden, and which one leads to the accumulation of those?’ So you use that now as a criteria to see whether the whole majority is right or wrong. Not simply ‘well everybody said so, thus it must be right.’

The one that follows is then ‘don’t go simply upon tradition’. It’s very similar, it’s just a more specific type of majority, the majority of ‘my tradition’. And you often encounter that in the monastic settings, whereby the monks that themselves would be quoting the Kalama Sutta, at the same time refuse to simply put tradition in question, or the traditional ways. It’s not for the sake of dismantling tradition or fighting against it, it’s simply for the sake of not using that as a sole criteria, because that’s not where greed, aversion, delusion are. So if your goal is to practise the Dhamma for the liberation of your mind, none of these external criteria can be taken as trustworthy because greed, aversion, delusion are on the level of your own intention, your own mind, your own choices. And that can only be visible to you if you have stopped resorting to these external criteria of self-justification. ‘Oh, well, I don’t think about it much because that’s just how we do it in this tradition.’ And to make things worse, today, having been so long since the Buddha passed away, often you find Buddhist traditions that are completely the opposite of what the Buddha said you should do. And people would know that, so in full awareness of the fact that the Buddha said one thing, and tradition says another thing, but ‘I go with the tradition because you know, it’s been done for so long’. Or because the majority of the people that I align myself with agree with this.

Or, on a more personal level, out of fear. Out of a fear to stand out. So although I know what the Buddha said, the tradition requires me to do something else, I’ll just do something else so nobody will criticise me or blame me. But then you should really re-evaluate why do you want to practise Dhamma in the first place. To soothe the majority, or to free yourself from saṃsāra once and for all?

All of that results in avoidance of personal responsibility, and if there is no taking up of personal responsibility, there is no practise of Dhamma. So that’s why, even if the tradition is right, you mustn’t take it on the level of tradition. You must take it on the level of personal responsibility for greed, aversion, delusion or freedom from those. So the point of not going by mere tradition, it’s not, you know, anarchy and rebellion against it. The point is, if you are going by it, you are avoiding responsibility. So you have to take it up. If you choose to follow tradition, you choose to because you made a choice to do so. It’s on you. So if you choose to do something that tradition says you should do, you do it because you choose to do it. Not because tradition said so, and I’m absolved from responsibility for doing so. So it always comes back on you, and the sooner you step away from that group belonging of the tradition or majority or ‘we’re in this together’, the sooner your practise will start.

So then the third one, don’t go upon hearsay. So itikira, the Pāli word, and the whole point is hearsay. Just, you heard something, seems right, and that’s it. That’s enough on its own to kind of accept that argument. That’s even more careless than the previous two examples. Also, anecdotal evidence would come under this as well, rumour, and so on. So it’s like, ‘oh such and such ajahn said so, or something happened to him, thus that’s the truth that applies to all of us’. Or ‘such and such person interprets certain rules or practices in this way, I heard that from somebody else, but that’s good enough for me to follow it’.

Don’t go upon what’s in the scripture. And that’s an interesting one. So basically, the authority of the texts. And you find that even in the early Buddhist Suttas, not in them, but in people’s attitude towards them. Like, doesn’t matter how authoritative text might be, the point is the entirety of it, it’s still on the level of what the Buddha called ‘phrasing’. So there is phrasing of something, and then there is meaning of what you just put in phrases. And scriptures are the phrasing, which means every single individual that chooses to read the scriptures is responsible for the meaning they infer from those phrases. And that also applies even to the individual terms and designations, individual words. Even when you’re just doing a mere translation, you’re already coming with certain preconceived notions of the meaning behind those terms. Then when you compile some broader meaning on the basis of a broader collection of phrases, all of those individual little meanings that you have inferred do influence that general understanding that you got from it. So that’s why that taking up responsibility, from the smallest level, it’s really important.

That’s why, even if it’s the Buddha’s words written down accurately in the Suttas, and we all agree this is what he said, that’s still not an objective truth. Objective truth is the assembly of those phrases, the arrangement. That’s the objectivity of it. The meaning from it can never be placed on the scripture itself. And that’s what we said in the other talks, the whole point of practise, of studying and trying to understand the Buddha’s phrases, instructions, designations, and so on, is to be free from greed, aversion, delusion. To be free from passion. So, study of phrases, if it’s not resulting in freedom from greed, aversion, delusion, you’re not understanding its meaning. Doesn’t matter how skilled, and well informed, and scholastically trained, and understanding of every single etymology and permutation and declension of the word you are. If you are not at least a sotāpanna, free from greed, aversion, delusion, practising towards that, none of these phrases apply to you. Because that’s what the phrases say themselves. If somebody were to understand the Buddha’s instruction, they would have at least the right view. So this particular example of ‘don’t go upon what’s in the scripture’, it’s quite relevant for most of us, because you do have to start somewhere, you do have to start from some sort of faith in some sort of authority that can tell you how to practise. But it’s easy then to fall into a view that that’s the truth in itself, and that you are not responsible for how you are already approaching it, with your attitudes, and preconceived notions, and implied meanings, and so on.

So yes, you need the right phrasing, but as the other requisite for the right view is, you also need to know how to attend things properly. And that’s pretty much what this comes down to. If you attend things properly, you will know that correct understanding of the meaning of the phrasing has to result in dispassion. If there is no dispassion, there is no disenchantment, there is no relinquishment, there is no right view. You are not understanding the meaning of the phrasing. Doesn’t matter how satisfied and how much clarity you might have on account of your informational collection of all the phrases that you have memorised and know by heart and so on. So don’t put the responsibility for the meaning of what you’re trying to understand on the level of scholastic studies of the phrases. Because that’s not where the meaning is, and by putting it there, you’re pretty much avoiding responsibility for your own interpretation of the meaning, that again, is not optional. Even if you’re approaching just a brand new text that you’ve never seen before, you’re already approaching it with preconceived notions, preconceived meanings of the terms that appear through those phrases, and so on. So that’s why I said in some other talks, if you have self-transparency, take up responsibility, you don’t even need to be going too far into the study of the phrases.

You can even use your own language, and just say ‘consciousness, OK. Pāli word’s viññāna, means consciousness’. OK, so now you have two phrases that you just compared with each other. One phrase is in Pāli, one phrase is in English. What is the meaning of either of those? Or, what is the meaning of that phenomena that you’re designating through these phrases? Now, you will not arrive at that meaning if you start studying the etymology and the root of the word viññāna, and how it came to be, and ‘consciousness’ and so on. That might enrich your information, that can help you look for the meaning. But, if your attitude is not to look for the meaning, but onto the authority of the texts, the whole domain of where the meaning is is still invisible to you. So instead of going into more detail, more often than not, what you need to do is go back onto the word that you already know, consciousness, in your own language whatever that is, and say ‘OK, but when I say consciousness in my own language, what am I designating?’ What is the meaning of that phrase? What is it in my experience that I call ‘consciousness’ when I say it? And then you will realise that vast majority of your own day-to-day terms and phrases that you use are not understood. Because if they were, you would pretty much be understanding the basis, the framework of your experience as such. You would be developing clarity in regard to the five aggregates. So, not going upon what’s in the scripture means, not dismissing the scriptures and never reading the Suttas, it means taking up responsibility for what those scriptures mean to you. As simple as that.

Just reading a Sutta, right away, could result in you liberating your mind from passion, but it doesn’t, because of all the preconceived notions about the terms and phrases that you are reading, that you already carry, all those notions. Translating one phrase to the other does not highlight the meaning. It can bring you closer if you know where to look for it, but in itself it’s just comparison between different phrases. That’s it. In itself, scholarly study, scholastic study, can not result in any revelation of the meaning. Because for that, taking up that personal responsibility that precedes your scholastic study needs to be developed, and not abandoned, needs to be the framework of your study. So your study is then guided by the right attention, correctly attending to things, only for the sake of clarifying meaning. Not for the sake of satisfying intellectual craving for the more detailed study of these phrases, and comparison, and its development through history and so on. That all pretty much becomes a distraction.

So don’t go upon something that may be true, if there is no evidence to confirm it. So again, a thing might be true, but that in itself is not enough to accept that as a valid premise. So yes, dispassion might be true, but now I can say, yes dispassion’s true, nibbāna’s true, that’s it. Nibbāna’s real, I’ve done my work, I accepted that as a truth. No, nibbāna is real only if you attain it. There is a possibility of nibbāna being real for you, that’s what the Buddha meant by ‘the element of nibbāna is present in everyone’s experience’. But you can see how that happened in later schools. Simply, it may be true, thus it is real as such, an objective truth, so then people started saying ‘we are already in nibbāna’. That’s it, I don’t need to do anything because nibbāna, as a possibility of something that I can develop, well as such it’s true, thus I’m already in it. In other words, it needs to be verified for yourself. As I said, if the phrases are understood correctly, they will result in dispassion. So if nibbāna is understood correctly, you will be in it. You can’t just say, ‘yes, I believe in nibbāna, I accept it as a true objective value, but I’m not in it’. It doesn’t apply to you, and there is no nibbāna for you.

So the next one is basically, don’t go upon an axiom. Nayahetu means the first cause, the first premise. In other words don’t go upon, because somebody said this premise is first, to that extent, it must not be questioned. And everything else that comes after it, you can question that, but not the first premise. And I think probably the easiest example is generally the Christian view of belief in god. So you can question everything, even like, there were like existential philosophers who were Christians, and they would question everything in their entire experience, but they wouldn’t question the premise that the god is real as such. And that in itself is a contradiction. So if you question everything, you have to question even your starting premise that made you question everything. So nothing should be exempted from turning your reasoning to it and applying these same principles, of greed, aversion, delusion, freedom from greed, aversion, delusion.

Don’t go upon faulty reasoning, that’s kind of self explanatory. This one, it would also cover common sense, or using a personal experience as an argument to apply to these universal truths that the Dhamma is supposed to reveal. Greed, aversion, delusion, and freedom from it. So, there was the example in the Suttas of that, for somebody who is not free from sensuality. Where he met a monk who said ‘the greatest happiness is when you’re free from sensuality’. Now, this person, not being free from sensuality himself, could not see. He could not see that as a truth, and then he dismissed it. So he said ‘no, I don’t see that, thus that’s not true’. And that’s a fallacy in itself. Like, you might not see it, but that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t see it if you make the right effort. So if you don’t see the truth personally, it doesn’t mean there is no such truth. And the simile the Buddha gave, it’s like the two friends who came to the bottom of a mountain. One of them decides to climb the top, and when he’s at the top he exclaims ‘wow, the views from this top of this mountain are just so beautiful, you can’t even describe them’. The man at the bottom of the mountain turns around, he doesn’t see anything, just some forest, and he says ‘no I don’t believe that’s the truth, because I don’t see it for myself’. So then the man from the top comes, takes him by the arm, drags him up to the top of the mountain, and says ‘do you see now?’ And then he agreed, ‘yes’. So it’s the same if somebody wants to see the benefit of freedom from sensuality. They can not see it before they’re free from sensuality. And it’s even worse then if they can not see it before they’re free from sensuality, and then they choose to dismiss it as well, because they can’t see it. Then they will never decide to climb that hill and see the benefit for themselves.

Don’t go upon bias, and again, everybody starts with a bias. So don’t go upon bias means, start putting yourself in question, even when you’re absolutely certain, you might be biased. If you don’t know for sure what the right view is, what freedom from greed, aversion, delusion is, it means you are biased whether you see it or not. Thus, it will be safer for you in terms of the authentic, contradiction-free type of reflection that can result in the right view, it would be safer for you to regard yourself as biased, even if you don’t think you are. Because if you are truly not biased, putting yourself in doubt will not affect you. And that’s why a sotāpanna is ‘beyond doubt’.

Don’t go upon another’s apparent competence. And that’s if somebody’s just a confident speaker, seems to know everything, seems to have an answer to everything. Even if he might be the Buddha himself, talking the absolute truth, if you choose to regard things that he’s saying as an objective truth because the manner of the way he’s saying them, because of his competence about it, that still does not absolve you from not seeing those things for yourself. In other words, even the ultimate truth that the Buddha teaches, unless you have the right view, is not your truth, does not apply to you. So the apparent competence of another can not be used as an objective truth, objective value, that you are partaking in, unless you saw it for yourself. In which case, you wouldn’t need competence of another. You wouldn’t need the majority. You wouldn’t need tradition to support you. You wouldn’t need people to agree with you.

Another Sutta where a man who has developed the right view says, even if the whole world says the Buddha’s wrong, the Dhamma’s wrong, he knows that’s not true, because he saw the Dhamma for himself. So in other words, he can not be swayed by any of these external standpoints because he sees the core, the root of the problem, and he sees the way out. And the root of the problem is greed, aversion, delusion. That affects your thinking, affects your bias, affects your perception, your reasoning, and makes you avoid responsibility for pretty much already implying meaning in phrasing and scriptures and tradition and everything else. But at the same time claiming, no, it’s because of tradition, it’s because of the scriptures, not because of how I took it to mean. And the point to make here is that this can sound like you’re a sort of a fundamentalist decided upon his religion, his interpretation, that it’s right and the whole world is wrong. But no, a sotāpanna in this case has arrived at such confidence not through deciding and through following these logical fallacies, but upon seeing for himself a way out of greed, aversion, delusion, that are universal in every person’s mind. So that means that the entire majority that disagrees with him, or that disagrees with the Buddha, if they were to free their mind from greed, aversion, delusion, they will see the same thing. In the end, they would agree with it, because they all climbed to the top of that mountain. That’s why even the Buddha himself said he didn’t invent the Dhamma or create the Dhamma or so on, he just rediscovered it. He just found it, like an ancient path that has been overgrown by the jungle. He just uncovered it. So it goes against the preconceived notions and greed, aversion, delusion, of the entire world. But it also allows the possibility for the entire world, if they were to free themselves from those preconceived notions, greed, aversion, delusion, conceit and so on, to see and walk the same path.

The last one is don’t go simply upon the consideration, ‘oh, he’s our teacher and thus we’ll just listen to what he says, and I won’t have to think for myself’. And that is quite common. People tend to get off on the attitude of a big, famous, established teacher, or confident speaker that arouses energy in them and wants to make them practise. But again, unless you are taking up responsibility for that experience of a confident teacher, you will be pretty much projecting and putting the objective value of practise onto that teacher. As if it is you doing it, although none of that applies to you. So a monk might be your teacher, but that still doesn’t mean that he can do the work for you. So that’s why it’s a logical contradiction.

Then the Buddha goes further to simply encourage the Kalamas to start using these more universal criteria for which they are personally responsible, such as greed, aversion, delusion, desire, freedom from desire and so on, to infer whether what’s being said aligns with those universal criteria that would result in general wholesomeness, or unwholesomeness as the case might be. So somebody might ask ‘yeah, but why is greed bad, and why is aversion bad?’ But again, that’s something you can arrive at for yourself. The whole world can say ‘no, greed is not bad’ but if you stop and think about it, clearly, rationally, not avoiding responsibility for it, you will arrive at certain universal conclusions that whenever there is a bad thing done in the world, adultery, cheating, killing, stealing, lying, harm, disrespect, disregard. Can any of those things be done if there is no greed, lust, aversion, passion involved? If a mind is free from greed, can it harm another? Can it want what somebody else has? If a mind is free from greed, my own mind, can it experience the pressure of desires that start controlling you and your actions and your choices, and make you lose perspective? Impossible. So, universally, whenever something unwholesome, unskillful happens to you or to others or both, it has to be either on the basis of greed, aversion, or complete careless distraction and avoidance of responsibility. So that’s why they are bad.

Yes, sometimes ‘good things’ might be done out of greed or aversion, but that is secondary. The root of the problem, the framework because of which the whole mass of suffering and fighting and conflict and killing exists in the world remains unchanged. Yes, it doesn’t always result in killing or lying or stealing, but potential for it remains, and sooner or later it will. So it’s better off then to not have such a basis existing in your own mind, basis of greed, aversion, delusion. And then, whatever you do will be good, whatever you do will be selfless, whatever you do will be free from ill-will and friendly. So in other words, greed, aversion, delusion, are completely redundant for good, for doing good, but are absolutely necessary when the bad is done. That’s why it’s better to abandon it, it’s better to avoid it, it’s better to give it up. So using those criteria then, when you hear different philosophies, different teachers, different instructions, you ask yourself, OK, so does this lead to freedom from greed, aversion, delusion? To what extent? In what manner? Or, it doesn’t even deal with it. And then, if you realise that it doesn’t even address those things, it certainly does not help mind not free from greed, aversion, delusion, to reach freedom from greed, aversion, delusion, then it’s not really a relevant teaching. Because it’s rooted in greed, aversion, delusion. As simple as that.

Then the Buddha goes on, saying ‘does the greed appear in a man’s mind for his benefit or harm? Being given to greed, being overwhelmed and conquered by, mentally overwhelmed by the pressure of greed, the man takes life, steals, commits adultery, tells lies, prompts another to do so, and so on’. So that’s what we just said. It’s same for greed, aversion, and delusion. That’s why you shouldn’t go by these external criteria (majority, tradition, hearsay, authority of another, and so on). Because they mask your responsibility for the meaning behind those criteria. Meanings for which you are responsible. For as long as your responsibility for the meaning is covered up, greed, aversion, delusion are invisible. Which means you don’t really see what’s beneficial for you and what isn’t. That’s why first, you don’t go by these criteria on their own, but you question, reflect, put them in doubt. Then the responsibility for your choices, for your actions, and for the meaning that you get from things will be felt as yours. You will feel the weight of it, ‘oh, I could do this or I could do that, either way it’s on me, which means the consequences of that will be equally on me’. But see, it’s easier if I say ‘oh, I’ll just do that because our tradition does this’. Now whatever comes out of it, I won’t feel responsible for it. Doesn’t matter what that results in, I’ll say ‘well I just follow tradition, I did my duty’.

And you hear that a lot, like among soldiers who are in the army. They actually go and kill people saying ‘oh, it’s my duty’. Yeah, but you chose to take on that duty. You chose the meaning of that duty for you. Thus, all the actions that come out of that duty are on you. Doesn’t matter, even if the entire society agrees that it’s a good and wholesome thing to do, protect your country and so on. You’re engaging in killing which can not be done without greed, without aversion, without some sort of delusion, which means you are engaging in unwholesome states, that will have unwholesome results. Yet you’re fully oblivious, blind, covering up the responsibility for it, because you projected it onto the ‘duty’. This duty’s impersonal, ‘I just serve my country’, or something like that. No, you serve your own interpretation of the meaning of ‘serving the country’. So, you serve yourself. You’re always responsible. And that’s not a pleasant truth for the vast majority of people, because the vast majority of people live by placing the responsibility for their actions, for their interpretations, for their meaning, onto the external authority. Onto the external criteria, onto the external views, religion, philosophy, tradition, and so on. And that’s why they do remain victims of their own greed, aversion, delusion, and then get subjected to everything else that follows.

That’s also why for example for a sotāpanna, somebody who has seen the right view, he says ‘nobody can be my guide’. I.e., no external circumstance can be taken as my guide to tell me what to do, because internally I see what needs to be done. Universally. To be free from greed, aversion, delusion. And that’s why also no amount of blame, the worldly winds that the Buddha talked about, praise, blame, fame, disrepute, all of that, none of that can really, existentially, affect or disturb somebody with the right view. Because he doesn’t depend anymore on those external criteria for avoidance of his own responsibility. Thus, when that external majority or tradition, if they are against something that an individual sotāpanna might be doing, he won’t be affected by it in the same manner he would be affected by it if he is bound by that tradition or majority for avoidance of his personal responsibility. That’s why praise and blame will cease to affect you, because you don’t exist any more in that publicly assumed domain where praise and blame apply. And you existed there before because you used that assumed domain to avoid responsibility for your own actions, choices, interpretation and meaning.

If you are not affected by praise and blame because you don’t existentially depend on that assumed domain any more, you will not have ill-will towards people either. People that criticise you or disagree with you. That doesn’t mean you’ll pretend that you know what they say is right, or something like that. No, you have the more objective criteria now, the criteria of the right view. But no amount of criticism, no amount of attack by the majority or hearsay, none of those reasons can be taken personally now, because you’re not personally involved with that assumed domain any more. So that’s why if somebody does cultivate the criteria that the Buddha instructed the Kalamas to, they will go beyond ill-will inasmuch as they go beyond passion. Because it kind of goes hand in hand, it’s pretty obvious. Because you’re not out there, publicly assumed on the level of tradition or majority, thus when that tradition or majority might disagree or attack you or criticise you, you will not be able to take it personally, because you are not personally involved. And then which means you won’t lose perspective. Which means if, say, the majority starts disagreeing with something that a sotāpanna does, he won’t act out of fear, because he’s not afraid of them. But that doesn’t mean he’ll dismiss what they’re saying either. He’ll have perspective, he’ll have enough space to see ‘well maybe they do have a point’. Not that they understand the meaning behind it, but that doesn’t matter. So then you wouldn’t have a problem changing the ways, or not changing the ways, depending on you know if greed, aversion, delusion, would be sort of encouraged by changing the ways.

That’s why in the Suttas, in the Vinaya especially, there are many of those smaller rules for the monks. Kind of like, circumstantially arisen responses to the environment, to people of the time. You know, monks lived in certain areas where people didn’t want them to walk across the fields during this time of year. Then they complained, and the Buddha said ‘don’t walk across the fields during that time of year’ and so on. The point is, none of those rules, none of those standpoints, are directly relevant towards practise. But what is relevant to the practice is being left alone, not being harassed by people. So then the Buddha would tell monks just go along with those things so they will leave you alone. Because otherwise, they’re gonna hassle you and make your life more difficult, which might make your practise more difficult in turn. But then, on the other hand, there was an instance when a man came to the Buddha and said to accept his daughter as a gift, as an offering to him. Because she was so beautiful, and many other teachers would have accepted her, or kings and so on, but he wants to give her to the Buddha. And the Buddha just mocked him and the whole experience of offering your daughter. And I’m sure the majority of people would have agreed with that man, but see, going along with that can not possibly result in non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion, can not set the example for others to practise toward non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion. So it would have been inappropriate to do so, even if the Buddha had no desire toward that woman. So you don’t always go by the majority, the criteria remains unchanged.

What is beneficial is what is rooted in non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion. What is rooted in freedom from pressure of desires, what is rooted in dispassion, disenchantment, giving up of the acquisitions, simplicity, and solitude. That’s the criteria that must not be abandoned. So if sometimes you encounter things in day-to-day life that you are unsure about, just stack them against those criteria and see. And then you would also see if they’re relevant or not. For somebody like, say, a lay practitioner, somebody who is still in a lay setting but tries to practise the Dhamma, yeah, putting up with other people will be inevitable. Interactions with them, their demands, expectations and then you might sort of be doubtful as to how far should I go, what should I do. Same, you recognise how relevant things that are asked from you are, how much would they affect your practise, your solitude, your precepts. If they wouldn’t really make much difference, you go along with it so they leave you alone.

If they would make a significant difference, like, I dunno, your parents are pressuring you to get married, then you just have to draw a line. And then, even if your whole country and all of your relatives and everybody disagrees with that, because ‘the right thing for a man is to marry and start a family’, you say ‘no’ because the right thing for a man is to not give in to greed, aversion, delusion. And then you take responsibility for it. Then if, for the rest of your life, they don’t want to talk to you and dismiss you, doesn’t matter. You know what the truth is in the sense that you’re closer to the right criteria of truth, which is non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion. That doesn’t mean it will feel light, right, or always justified. An undeveloped mind not free from doubt will be pressured, will be sort of doubtful, will be trying to kind of sway you. But you stick with the criteria that you now know for yourself are beneficial. Even if it doesn’t always feel like that. And that’s the true practise of going against the grain. So yeah, Kalama Sutta is very actually useful, and it can certainly result in the right view. If applied rightly, if the responsibility is taken up correctly on the right level, you will not fight the world, but you will not be part of it either by depending on that existential acceptance, and avoidance of responsibility through various sorts of externally assumed standpoints. And that in itself is that would constitute what the Buddha was calling the mundane right view, which then, if you cultivate, you will get to see the root of suffering, and the way out. Which is pretty much the whole point.