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The Kalama Sutta ( Sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya of the Tipitaka . In this sutta, Gautama Buddha instructs the people of Kesaputta — the '''Kalamas''' — on which basis one should decide which religious teaching to accept as true. The Buddha tells the Kalamas to not just believe religious teachings because they are claimed to be true by various sources or through the application of various methods and techniques. Even Buddha's own teachings are not to be accepted at face value. The Buddha provides ten specific sources which should not be used to accept a certain teaching as true, without further verification: # Oral History # Tradition al practices # News sources # Scripture s or other official Text s # Logic al reasoning # Philosophical reasoning # Common Sense # One's own Opinion s # Authorities or Expert s # One's own Teacher Instead, he says, only when one has personally verified that a certain teaching is Skill ful, Blame less, Praise worthy, and conducive to Happiness , then one should accept it as true and practise it. However, it should be stressed that the Buddha instructed the Kalamas to pay attention to the teachings of the wise; he did not advocate that individuals can or should decide truth purely by and for themselves. Nevertheless, the emphasis remains on one's personal verification of any teaching, and in particular whether a particular teaching reduces or eliminates the mental defilements of Greed , Hate and Ignorance , or vice versa (in which case it should be rejected). The Sutta and Pascal's Wager The Kalama Sutta may also be interpreted as presaging an approach to Pascal's Wager for assessing beliefs in specific doctrines. In the sutta, the Buddha explicitly argues that there are direct and immediate benefits - the "Four Solaces" - to be gained from acting ''as if'' the difficult concepts of Rebirth and Kamma are valid, regardless of whether they ''are'' valid. A Decision-theoretic analysis seems to show that this argument renders belief in these concepts Rational for all non-zero levels of belief. EXTERNAL LINKS
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