The "Kalama Sutta", that's what. Also known as The Buddha's Charter on Free Inquiry. Ever heard of it? Those of us who have, and know its message forth and back, live by it and promote it every chance we get, and in force we demand that you rubes and billytards learn it as well.
Now there was this man, a prince in Northern India named Siddhartha Gotama. And 500+ years before Jesus Christ travelled about in his neighborhood teaching everyone a tired old schtick to blindly believe and to accept spiritual matters on flimsy faith, this Siddhartha (known as The Buddha hence) had travelled about and had taught a truly revolutionary concept: how about everyone investigate and examine and go by evidence and your own experience and simple common freaking sense instead of blind faith. Would that work do you think? (This Jesus fellow evidently hadn't heard the word).
Thus was born to mankind, over 2500 years ago, the idea that you and I and the enlightened and deficient alike should think for ourselves.
Cut to: Buddha - just like all other itinerant gurus, sages, holy men, rabbis, malcontents, miracle workers and loudmouths wandering town to town dispensing their wisdom - arrives in a town called Kesaputta, and the people there, the Kalamas, gather to hear his spiel, expecting the same old same old. So the Kalama leaders, who've heard it all before, drop a bomb and have the balls to challenge this serene renowned holy teacher. Here's how it went down:
The leaders said, "Buddha, travelling holy men visit us. They expound and explain only their own doctrines; the doctrines of others they despise, revile, and pull to pieces. Then others come and teach and do the same. So there is doubt, there is uncertainty in us concerning all of them. Which of these teachers spoke the truth and which falsehood?"
Instead of telling these earnest Kalamas, "follow me blindly for I know The Truth," Buddha laid this on them:
"It's proper for you to doubt, to question. Don't go by what has been acquired by repeated hearing, nor upon tradition, nor upon rumor, nor upon what is written in a holy book, nor upon guessing, nor upon dogma, 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 bad, these things are blamable, these things are censured by the wise, undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon them."
The speech goes on from there, but that's the gist. There are many translations, check em out.
Be seeing you.
No, but it pays humble homage to the themes Patrick McGoohan challenged us with in "Television's First Cult Masterpiece". That tense bizarre and beautiful masterpiece - The Prisoner - still fascinates new viewers, entertains us original fans, and forces everyone to pay attention, to think, to question. It's now forty years since it first aired; no other show from the 60s is so revered and reviled, so debated over. That's the way its creator wanted it.
Most people, fans or not, know the synopsis by now of course. The Prisoner's allegorical Village was a spectacular Italianesque resort populated by cheery people living what seemed enviable lives. But in fact the place was a Disneyesque gulag where the villagers had been brainwashed or bought into blissful submission, or tortured into revealing everything about themselves and betraying anyone they knew.
All ones' needs were provided for in this mysterious Paradise...but at the expense of privacy, individuality, identity, free thought, free expression, and hope. The iconic character called Number Six was the one villager who resisted the propaganda and the mind-control, questioned the official doctrines, defied the authorities, and attempted to rout the complacency of his pathetic cabbage-row neighbors. He's the one who fought to remain human.
This blog will emulate Number Six's attitude and world view...so to speak...in a manner of speaking...as far as it goes...in a sense...
In matters religious and political and a few topics more, I will challenge you to test your beliefs, examine your opinions, resist your impulses and to question your very thoughts. Because to live a life that avoids these things is to live in a New Village, as a prisoner of your own ignorance.
Be seeing you.
Most people, fans or not, know the synopsis by now of course. The Prisoner's allegorical Village was a spectacular Italianesque resort populated by cheery people living what seemed enviable lives. But in fact the place was a Disneyesque gulag where the villagers had been brainwashed or bought into blissful submission, or tortured into revealing everything about themselves and betraying anyone they knew.
All ones' needs were provided for in this mysterious Paradise...but at the expense of privacy, individuality, identity, free thought, free expression, and hope. The iconic character called Number Six was the one villager who resisted the propaganda and the mind-control, questioned the official doctrines, defied the authorities, and attempted to rout the complacency of his pathetic cabbage-row neighbors. He's the one who fought to remain human.
This blog will emulate Number Six's attitude and world view...so to speak...in a manner of speaking...as far as it goes...in a sense...
In matters religious and political and a few topics more, I will challenge you to test your beliefs, examine your opinions, resist your impulses and to question your very thoughts. Because to live a life that avoids these things is to live in a New Village, as a prisoner of your own ignorance.
Be seeing you.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
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