The Buddha saw that every truth expressed in words is instrumental, a means to an end. This is in line with the fact that all words are fabricated by the mind, and—as he himself observed—all fabrications are put together for the sake of something. They’re meant to serve an aim.
The Buddha chose his words so that they would serve the most beneficial aim of all: leading the listener to the reality of the end of suffering. He was once asked if he would ever say anything displeasing to others, and in the course of his answer he explained the framework he used in deciding what was worth saying and what wasn’t (MN 58). The framework boils down to three questions:
• Are these words true?
• Are they beneficial?
• Is this the right time to say something pleasing, or is it the time to say something displeasing?
If something wasn’t true, he wouldn’t say it. If it was true but not beneficial, he wouldn’t say it. Only if it was true and beneficial would he go on to the third question: Given his audience and their state of mind, would it be more beneficial to express that truth in a pleasing or a displeasing way?
The way the Buddha sets out his framework makes two important points. The first is that, as he goes through the various possible combinations of true/false, beneficial/unbeneficial, pleasing/unpleasing, there is one combination that he doesn’t even consider as a possibility: that a statement could be false but beneficial. For him, only true words could be beneficial in the long term.
The second point is that the Buddha also had no use for the idea that displeasing words were necessarily harmful. People are not damaged by hearing words they don’t like, especially if those words are meant to benefit them. The skill, here, of course, lies in knowing the right time and place for words of that sort so that they’ll actually have the desired beneficial result.
What this means is that the Buddha was interested in truths—as words—not for their own sake, but for how well they worked. He wouldn’t just give his students information about the path to the end of suffering. Simply listening to the words wouldn’t get them there. They would have to understand the words and act on them.
The Buddha’s desire for words that work not only shaped his teaching style. It also shaped the criteria he recommended that his listeners use in determining what was true Dhamma and what wasn’t. Just because words could be found in the texts claiming to come from the Buddha didn’t mean that they were necessarily true Dhamma. The only way his listeners could be sure that a teaching was true Dhamma would be if they were true enough to put the words to the test to see if they actually worked.
The texts prescribe a method for testing the truth of a teaching—any teaching—and this method is central to the Dhamma in the same way that the scientific method is central to science. Just as a discovery counts as scientific knowledge only if the researcher correctly follows the scientific method, Dhamma can be known as true Dhamma only if you test it in line with the Dhamma method. Like the scientific method, the Dhamma method has very clear standards for what does and doesn’t count as a sufficient proof of a statement’s truth.
The Canon lists the following reasons as insufficient proofs (AN 3:66; MN 95): A teaching isn’t true…
- just because you’re convinced it has to be true,
- just because you like it,
- just because it’s logical,
- just because it’s probable,
- just because it’s consistent—either through inference or through analogies—with other views you hold,
- just because it’s been passed down by an unbroken tradition,
- just because it’s found in scripture, or
- just because it’s said by a person you’ve taken as your teacher.
The basic standard for what does count as a sufficient proof is very simple in principle: A teaching is true if, when put into practice, you can see that it yields the promised results.
Of course, the very idea that you can test the truth of statements by putting them into practice and judging the results makes some basic assumptions about the nature of reality. This is true both with the scientific method and with the Dhamma method. Both methods make the following assumptions:
- Causal relations follow a pattern that holds true over time.
- What is true today, is true tomorrow.
- The causal pattern is not totally deterministic.
- You have at least some freedom to make choices in the present moment.
- Your actions are not totally determined by the past.
- The mind has the power to influence events.
- It’s not totally determined by material causes.
The Dhamma method makes one extra assumption that’s not necessary to the scientific method:
Actions leading to long-term welfare and happiness are better than those leading to long-term harm and suffering.
As for the standards to use in measuring what counts as genuine Dhamma, the Buddha set out two lists. The first list: You know that a teaching is genuine Dhamma if, when put into practice, it leads to utter disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to stilling, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding (AN 7:80). Disenchantment, means that you’re no longer enchanted with the causes of suffering, and so you no longer want to feed on them. Dispassion means that you no longer feel any thirst to continue creating the causes of suffering.
The second list: You know that a practice is in line with the Dhamma if, when you follow it, it leads to shedding conceit, to modesty, to contentment with the material requisites of life, to non-entanglement with other people, to aroused persistence (as opposed to laziness), and to being unburdensome to others in your material needs (AN 8:53). These last six qualities provide you with some realities against which to measure your practice along the way: not only in terms of the qualities you develop within yourself, but also in terms of the impact that your practice has on others.
– Four Noble Truths, Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, Chapter 3: The Truth of Words