“Do not believe in anything (simply) because you have heard it; Do not believe in traditions, because they been handed down for many generations; Do not believe in anything, because it is spoken and rumoured by many; Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books; But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
A truncated version of the above quote was one of the first Buddhist teachings I ever encountered. It’s origin and phrasing is much disputed, but regardless, it is safe to say that it is a teaching of the Buddha, albeit one that has probably been rephrased. We must always remember that Buddhism was an oral lineage for several hundred years and, after being written down, it has been translated into many different languages and spread across the world, picking up and putting down various cultural trappings as well.
For some months now I have been reflecting on this teaching, which so compelled me when I first came to Buddhism, and what it means to me after nearly ten years of practice and study. Initially, I took it to say that we should ask many questions, test everything we received, and discard that which doesn’t work. This understanding is not incorrect, but I’ve come to see that there is another, deeper lesson. To explain it, I turn to a very truncated way this teaching has been given: Test everything I say, as you would a piece of gold.
Any one of us may have seen or held gold in our lives, but anyone who has worked with gold — melted it down, shaped it, applied it to various surfaces — will have a deeper understanding of it. A metalsmith learns how to separate out or combine different metals. They can see when it is valuable to make an alloy, perhaps to strengthen one metal for a particular application. A pure gold ring, for example, is likely to get bent or damaged. But mix it with something else, and it will hold up better. However, the metalsmith knows that there is a difference in value between the gold and whatever it has been combined with, and that too much of something like nickel, will cheapen that.
Nothing the Buddha left us is less than gold.
But after 2,500 years and travelling to so many countries, the genuine teaching can become obscured with cultural trappings. A skilled teacher learns how to bring cultural trappings into a teaching to make it relevant or accessible to their students. Sometimes, of course, the cultural trappings are damaging. They weaken, dilute or distract from the Dharma. As a student, we must learn to pull free the cultural trapping to see the purity of the teaching for what it is. We must be scientists, always asking questions and living the Dharma as an experiment. We do this through meditation, contemplation and repeated application, in various situations.
Consider the way in which we validate the written word over what is spoken. There are many reasons for this, of course. For years only a select few had access to education and training in reading and writing. It was often elitist, and the only things written down were religious doctrine, oftentimes meant as a way to control people or dictate what was ‘true’. Looking at the colonial dismissal of Indigenous cultures and practices as ‘ignorant’ or ‘savage’, we can see how the oppression and destruction of cultures with oral lineage holders further reflect this view. One of the many awful consequences of genocide is the slaughter of people who would have been lineage holders for their communities, all but wiping out the stories and backgrounds of a people.
Despite this cultural mind-set, there is nothing inherently valid about something just because it’s on paper or in a blog post. Anything written was once thought and often spoken before it was put down. Noting how we give authority to the written word, as well as the author or publication, opens up our minds to be a bit more curious.
Why is it we are more inclined to believe the findings of a study published in an article by the New York Times without fact checking?
Why do we so frequently invoke something like the American constitution as the pinnacle of human greatness despite being written entirely by white male colonial property owners who included human beings and stolen land amongst their ‘property’?
If the Buddha did not hesitate to ordain an untouchable man, why do we accept that he discriminated against women in a story that was first recorded some 300 to 500 years after his death?
This kind of scepticism does not dismiss what is valuable or mean having a closed mind. It’s a healthy scepticism that involves asking questions for one’s self, and opening up our understanding of the world so we can see it from a more expansive view than our ego, both personal and cultural, has to offer.
Contemplating, questioning and application of any teachings take time, but it’s worth it as we can begin to separate out what is wisdom and what is true from that which is based on the limited understanding of a different time and place or was created to oppress and control, rather than to liberate. Sometimes this wisdom will come in a flash, but more often than not, it is so subtle that it’s only when we pause to reflect that we will see how our understanding of a teaching has moved from something intellectual to something deeply felt and experienced, in which we can trust.
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Originally published on Medium.
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