SPirit guide
Kalama Sutta
Two millennia before Carl Sagan penned his famous Baloney Detection Kit for critical thinking, another sage of the ages laid out a similar set of criteria for sound logical reasoning to help navigate the ideological maze of truth, falsehood and dogma-driven manipulation. Siddhartha Gautama formulated his tenets of critical thinking in response to a question by a tribal clan called the Kalama in Eastern India. The Kalamas asked the Buddha how they could discern whom to trust among the wandering holy men who seek to convert them to various preachings. His answer, delivered as a sermon known as the Kalama Sutta or the Buddha’s ‘charter of free inquiry’, discourages blind faith, encourages critical assessment, and outlines a cognitive toolkit for defying dogmatism. Implicit to it is integrity—it is the mark of the noble and secure intellect to encourage questioning even of his own convictions.
