The sutta starts off by describing how the Buddha passes through the village of Kesaputta and is greeted by its inhabitants, a clan called the Kalamas. They ask for his advice: they say that many wandering holy men and ascetics pass through, expounding their teachings and criticizing the teachings of others. So whose teachings should they follow? He delivers in response a sermon that serves as an entry point to the Dhamma, the Buddhist teachings for those unconvinced by mere spectacular revelation.
Discerning Religious Teachings
The Buddha proceeds to list the criteria by which any sensible person can decide which teachings to accept as true. Do not blindlybelieve religious teachings, he tells the Kalamas, just because they are claimed to be true, or even through the application of various methods or techniques. Direct knowledge grounded in one's own experience can be called upon. He advises that the words of the wise should be heeded and taken into account. He proposes not a passive acceptance but, rather, constant questioning and personal testing to identify those truths which verifiably reduce one's own stress or misery. The Kesamutti Sutta states :
Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing,
nor upon tradition,
nor upon rumor,
nor upon what is in a scripture
nor upon surmise,
nor upon an axiom,
nor upon specious reasoning,
nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over,
nor upon another's seeming ability,
nor upon the consideration, The monk is our teacher
Kalamas, when you yourselves know: "These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness," enter on and abide in them.'
Thus, the Buddha named ten specific sources whose knowledge should not be immediately viewed as truthful without further investigation to avoid fallacies:
Instead, the Buddha says, only when one personally knows that a certain teaching is skillful, blameless, praiseworthy, and conducive to happiness, and that it is praised by the wise, should one then accept it as true and practice it. Thus, as stated by Soma Thera, the Kalama Sutta is just that; the Buddha's charter of free inquiry: However, as stated by Bhikkhu Bodhi, this teaching is not intended as an endorsement for either radical skepticism or as for the creation of unreasonable personal truth: Rather than supporting skepticism or subjective truths, in the sutta the Buddha continues to argue that the three unwholesome roots greed, hatred and delusion lead to the opposite negative results, i.e. they are unskillful, blameworthy, etc. Consequently, behaviour based on these three roots should be abandoned. Moral judgements of actions can therefore be deduced by analysing whether these actions are based on the unwholesome roots or not.
The Buddha's Assurances
The first and main part of the Kesamutti Sutta is often quoted, but an equally important section of the Kesamutti Sutta follows on from this. This section features the Buddha's four assurances, or solaces. The Buddha asserts that a happy and moral life would be correct if there is no karma and reincarnation. On these four solaces, Soma Thera wrote:
