The Most Profound Advice
Our understanding of the profound advice of the Buddha will depend on our background and the build-up to this moment. For me, it was realising that suffering was due to the environment we lived in which created mental disorientation.
So the Buddha’s statement, “Do not take my words for the truth: test them for yourself” hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d been following others who knew the right vocabulary but had little or no empathy; they were hollow-sounding boards.
After observing and analysing the Buddha’s advice, “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it ”, we discover that we are the truth we seek. We realise that we are the living Dharma, and aspire to that which agrees with reason and is conducive to the good of all.
The Buddha advises not to accept a teaching simply out of:
- Hearsay or oral tradition
- Lineage or past habit
- Rumour or public opinion
- Scriptural or textual authority
- Mere logic or surmise
- Inferred reasoning
- Analogies or superficial thought
- Personal views or preferred theories
- A speaker’s apparent competence
- The thought, “This ascetic is our teacher”
Liberation occurs because this advice hands the authority of truth back to us. We are the alpha (the beginner) and omega (the conclusion). When we stop following people who are just echoing what they think they should say, we finally open the door to a place of genuine, tested truth and deep empathy.
