"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
Is this a contradiction?
No .. but it is circular, today we would call this a vicious circle. Though the term seems pejorative, the effect is an endless circle anchored only by a need to always re-examine one's own sense. of right ad wrong against the advice from others.
"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned."
Or as Skinner says, the physiology of all extreme emotions overcomes learning. Yet, there is danger here too .. the Buddha seems to teach avoidance of all great transcendental emotions. If it is desirable to never be burned by anger is it also a desirable NOT to experience beauty?
"Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world."
100,000 years ago, evolution led to the miracle of words. And they were as real as physical objects.
"Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it."
This does not eem to me to have been written by Gautama. How, if one is to pursue the curcle of self awareness can one have work? The word work here is wrong. Siddartha must have meant something like nature. Or perhaps the aphorism means that man and the word are one thing. Having words drive a need to understand, to model. Rather like the Delphic call to know theyself? But, in Siddartha's terms doesn't such an admonition imply an external force that determines work?
3 comments:
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
Gautama didn't say this. What he actually said was this:
"...don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering' — then you should abandon them."
-Anguttura Nikaya 3:65
Isn't it odd to consider the words of a human, passed on by hearing and repition, as holy scripture?
I have trouble imagining such doctrinal literalism in the mind of Gautama.
I'm not sure I understand your remark. Are you saying that Gautama, in this passage from the Anguttura, is saying that something should be regarded as holy scripture?
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