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The confusing of sources of knowledge in Buddhism

In the first chapter there were some major assumptions about how we justify our beliefs. How do we know that we are going about things in the right way? Before we go any further in considering the doctrines of Buddhism, it is important to clarify this. To do so will also be part of my case that Buddhism has often betrayed its own core insights, for the assumptions that it has made about how we know are at the base of this betrayal.

How do we know anything? Philosophy suggests three possible ways: experience (of many different kinds), reason, and revelation. Of these, reason largely only processes the other two and assesses them for consistency. Reason does not give us new information, except (debatably) mathematical or logical information. There has been a lengthy debate about the role of reason in Western philosophy, but this need not concern us much here. It is experience and revelation that have been of the most concern to Buddhists.

On the face of it, Buddhism is unique among religions in the amount of emphasis it gives to experience as a source of knowledge. In the often-quoted Kalama Sutta[1], the Buddha responds to a group of confused villagers who have listened to too many conflicting claims from different religious leaders. They ask the Buddha whom they should believe, and how they can know who is right. The Buddha responds that they should not simply accept what is claimed on the authority of the person saying it, or because it is traditional or in a scripture. Instead, he says “When you yourselves know” the policy of the wise, then you should follow it.

This is often interpreted to mean that our own experience should be the measure of the truth. Exactly how this is interpreted, however, does vary. More conservative Buddhists[2] will point to the reference to the wise and claim that, once we know who is wise and have committed ourselves to following them, it is their guidance that is important. They also point out that the Buddha was speaking to uncommitted villagers, not committed followers of the Buddha. We may have no choice but to consult our own experience when we remain in doubt about whom to follow, but the conservative Buddhist case seems to be that it is not trustworthy in the long run. If our own experience told us all we needed to know, after all, why follow the Buddha at all?

So, the Kalama Sutta is ambiguous as evidence that experience is of prime importance in Buddhism. It is also in competition with a strong tradition of appealing to the Buddha’s enlightenment as a source of truth. The Buddha’s enlightenment, if it happened as it is told, was an experience of the Buddha. It is also claimed that we ourselves can reproduce this experience. However, we are not enlightened now, so we do not experience enlightenment but rather the illusions of unenlightened existence. So, at least in the earlier forms of Buddhism, there is an appeal to experience in the abstract, but not an appeal to our experience now, or even in the foreseeable or probable future.

Instead, the reliance is on the Buddha’s experience of enlightenment as a source of truth. This appeal to the Buddha’s experience I would describe as revelation, because that is how it appears to us now. The truth is claimed to have been revealed to us by the Buddha, whose words are then enshrined in Buddhist scriptures. The Buddha, it is claimed, had access to a level of truth that we do not currently have, and for that reason we should follow his advice.

Some Buddhists object to the use of the term revelation, which they associate with monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam. If pressed to define what they understand revelation to be, they would probably say that it must come from God. However, the word of the Buddha in traditional Buddhism functions in a very similar way to the way that the word of God functions in Christianity or Islam. The source of knowledge is far beyond what we can access ourselves, and it makes claims to perfection and finality that are very similar to those made for divine revelation. The ultimate source of the claimed truth (God vs. Buddha) is much less important than the claimed authority that is given to it. In both cases, in practice, that authority places the claims ascribed to it far beyond examination through experience.

So, if Buddhists claim that their religion is based on experience, and yet claim to be followers of the Buddha and to accept his words as authoritative, they are contradicting themselves. Just because Buddhists do not appeal to God, this does not mean their religion is not one based on revelation, nor that they don’t have to deal with the issues that revelation brings with it. It is not God that is the issue here, but rather our lack of access to the validating experience that supposedly tells us the truth about the state of enlightenment. Without access to this validation, we cannot have any justification for believing that the Buddha’s claims are true, but merely have faith in them, just as monotheistic believers have faith in God.

Nor is validation of the truth of the Buddha’s words any nearer for Buddhists than it is for Christians or Muslims. Buddhists may protest that they themselves may in future attain enlightenment and thus gain access to a perfect validation, but those who believe in God may also have a religious experience in which God will make his will indubitably clear. At the end of history God may make everything clear to everyone, but this is scarcely any less close to our experience, or any less predictable, than when we will ourselves gain a state of perfect enlightenment. In either case, faith is justified by the appeal to more faith that this will in fact occur.

Other Buddhists (particularly Mahayana Buddhists) are likely to say here that a distant enlightenment is not actually the basis of knowledge in Buddhism. Instead, we should recognise that we are enlightened already, and simply consult our experience in the present. Our intuitive experience, they will say, tells us that the Buddha’s teachings are correct. Others may lay the emphasis on a gradual or provisional engagement with the Buddha’s advice.

In either case here, there is one important question to be asked to determine whether experience is really the basis of judgement for these Buddhists, or whether they are just paying lip service to it. Do they follow the Buddha’s teachings because they are the Buddha’s teachings, or because they just appear to be useful? If they respond that usefulness is their criterion, then the Buddha’s teachings should be given no more priority than any other useful teachings. The source of the advice should be irrelevant.

Of course, practically speaking, the source of advice that we follow is rarely irrelevant. We build up relationships of trust with people, and if we find them to be reliable, we are likely to follow their advice in the future. For example, if I take my bicycle for a service and the mechanic, whom I have been using to service my bike for years, tells me that the bike needs a new bottom bracket. I am liable to simply believe him, rather than taking the bike round several other shops to get different opinions, or researching the subject in any other way. Can the relationship with the Buddha not be a similarly practical one of trust based on experience?

This might be the basis of judgement about real people whom we know, including Buddhist teachers that we know personally. However, it can hardly be the basis of judgement about a man who lived 2500 years ago, whose personality is mediated by ancient scriptures and traditions. To trust a “Buddha” based on these is actually to trust tradition or to trust scripture, neither of which is in itself trustworthy (a point we will return to later in this chapter). To appeal to a Buddha based on these is not to justify a personal trust through our own previous experience, but again simply to adopt an attitude of faith.

None of this stops the Buddha’s advice being good advice. But then, Jesus’ advice may also be good advice. Marx’s advice may be good advice. My local bicycle mechanic’s advice may be good advice. The basis on which I judge whether to trust it can only be my own experience, not the source of the advice regardless of my experience. This then implies that Buddhists who really believe that the basis of their religion is experience should investigate other sources of good advice with impartiality, rather than relying solely on the Buddha, or expecting that the Buddha’s advice will always take priority over other sources. If they do give the Buddha’s advice priority, it should be acknowledged that this approach is based on faith or commitment to tradition, not experience.

So, probably the first step for many Buddhists is one of greater honesty and transparency in their understanding of what their sources of belief actually are, and how they justify their faith in Buddhism. To use “experience” as a bland or vague term to cover the source of knowledge in Buddhism, when they are actually believers in a revelation, is both misleading and disingenuous.

Once Buddhists are clear about what they believe the sources of knowledge actually are, they are in a better position to consider whether these sources are justified. My argument in the remainder of this chapter will be that to use revelation as a source of knowledge at all is to betray the central insights of Buddhism, and that experience should be our sole source of justified belief. To see why this should be the case we need to look again at the Middle Way.

Continue to next section of chapter 2: 'Justified beliefs from the Middle Way'

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