No doctrine can be considered true until it has been validated through ones own personal experience
To deal with the fact that many doctrines expound ideas which require a degree of trust and insist upon our faith in them, the Buddha , in his discourse with the Kalamas, recommended that we do not come to conclusions by simply placing faith in doctrines that lie beyond the range of our immediate experience. The Kalamas were a group of people living in the remote area of the Ganges plain. Various religious teachers would come to visit them and each would extol their own doctrines and tear down the doctrines their rivals. Confused by this conflict between belief systems, the Kalamas did not know who to trust.
To assist them with their confusion, the Buddha named to them ten sources of knowledge or guidance which should not be immediately viewed as truthful without further investigation to avoid fallacies. Four of these pertain to established scriptural authority: oral tradition (appeal to majority), lineage of teaching (appeal to tradition), hearsay (appeal to anecdotal evidence), and collections of texts. The next four pertain to rational grounds: logic, inferential reasoning, reasoned cogitation, and the acceptance of a view after pondering it. The last two pertain to appeal to authority: impressive speakers and respected teachers. The Buddha then went on to tell the Kalamas that values can only be considered truly valid until one witnesses their value for themselves.
The global attention of the right hemisphere precedes the narrow attention of the left hemisphere, making it more grounded in experience. Experiential understanding can be distinguished from conceptual understanding in that direct perception is involuntary and spontaneous (and thus worthy of our trust), while intellectual notions are the result of an individuals conscious choice (and thus less likely to be worthy of our complete trust).
It must be stressed that none of this means that we should reject all external authorities and to fashion our own personal path to truth. This does not mean we should completely reject all authoritative guides to knowledge and fall back solely on their personal intuition. Rather, what is being is offered is a simple and pragmatic outlet from which, by the use of skillful methods of inquiry, leads us to understand a number of basic principles that we can verify by our own experience and thereby acquire a sure starting point for our further intellectual or spiritual development.
References
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Bodhi, Bhikkhu. (2005). In the Buddha’s Words An Anthology of Discourses From the Pali Canon Chapter 3. Approaching the Dhamma (Location 1537). Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
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Bodhi, Bhikkhu. (2005). In the Buddha’s Words An Anthology of Discourses From the Pali Canon Chapter 3. Approaching the Dhamma (Location 1552). Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
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Bodhi, Bhikkhu. (2005). In the Buddha’s Words An Anthology of Discourses From the Pali Canon Chapter 3. Approaching the Dhamma (Location 1626). Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
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Emerson, W,. Ralph. (1844). Self-Reliance and Other Essays Chapter 2 Self-Reliance (Location 560-572). Dover Publications.
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Wilson, A., Robert. (1983). Prometheus Rising Chapter 15. Different Models & Different Muddles (Location 1417). Grand Junction, Colorado: Hilaritas Press.
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Anguttara Nikaya 3:65; I 188–93
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