In our first class, we heard a discourse that the Buddha gave to a group of people who were confused, uncertain about which doctrine, of all that they had heard, was true. In this last class, the Buddha speaks to a group of brahmim priests, and to one precocious student in particular, who are in doubt whatsoever about the truth. The discourse illustrates the aphorism, which (according to a Google search) has been attributed to dozens of different people: “The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty.”

In our text for Class 8, the Canki Sutta, the Buddha has to deal with a smartass kid. Not surprisingly, he does that with compassion, patience, and gentle firmness.

The Canki Sutta is one of a grouped collection of discourses in the Majjima Nikaya in which the Buddha holds discourse with brahmins. In the first part of this sutta, the brahmin leader Canki, a supporter and feudal liege of King Pasenadi, learns that the Buddha is visiting nearby and resolves to go meet him. Canki’s brahmin friends try to dissuade him, on the grounds that he is better born, more powerful, and more important than the ascetic Gotama, and that rather than Canki going to Gotama, Gotama should come to Canki. But Canki understands that such hierarchical ritual has no place in this situation, and will have none of it. Accompanied by a group of other brahmins, he sets off for the park in which Gotama is staying, and finds him engaged in amiable discourse with some very senior brahmins.

There’s a young brahmin in the audience (probably with Canki’s party) who’s something of a prodigy, having mastered a body of esoteric learning that is typically mastered only with long years of study. Kāpaṭika was his name, and he kept interrupting the discussion. When the Buddha reprimanded him, suggesting that he hold his tongue until his elders had finished their colloquy, Canki told the Buddha that this young man was special, uncommonly wise and learned, one who had earned the brahmins’ respect. The Buddha accepted Canki’s correction and signalled Kapadika with a glance that he was ready to address his questions.

Kāpaṭika led off with a direct challenge. The brahmins, he said, considered their Vedic scriptures to be the only source of truth, and that all other teachings were worthless. What did the Buddha have to say to that?

Now it’s clear from the context, once again, that the Buddha’s reputation has preceded him—in this case, it’s the reputation for teaching that each of us must find our way to the truth by searching, and not by blind acceptance of scripture or a teacher’s authority. But the Buddha challenged the brahmin establishment in another way as well. That establishment was based on a strict caste hierarchy, with the light-skinned brahmin descendents of the Aryan invaders at the top, and the dark-skinned sudhas, descendents of the pre-Aryan tribes, at the bottom. Each caste had its roles and obligations, and all interaction between the castes was prescribed by ritual expanded from the rather vague and obscure verses of the Vedic hymns. The lowest castes were not even permitted to hear the Vedas recited, and so, presumably, were denied access to the special truth contained in those scriptures. The Buddha’s sangha was in direct opposition to all that: democratic, blind to caste, class, and color, communitarian in structure and practice. The large group of bhikkhus travelling with the Buddha must have presented a very odd and disconcerting picture to the good brahmins of Canki’s village of Opasāda, rather like the sudden materialization of a group of NYU graduate students at a Nebraska church social.

Kāpaṭika’s challenge to the Buddha, then, was freighted with meaning; it was not just a philosophical question, but a veiled attack on the Buddha’s legitimacy, on his right to be where he was, at the head of a rag-tag, multi-colored, outcaste mob of ascetics, and speaking on equal terms with such very senior brahmins, men at the top of the established order. All the more remarkable that the Buddha exhibits such patience with Kāpaṭika, almost a tenderness.

He begins, as he so often does, by asking his questioner to consider the foundations for the statements he makes: you say this is true and everything else is false. Do you know that from direct experience? Have you seen the truth with your own eyes?

And when Kāpaṭika is forced to admit that he has not, himself, known and seen the absolute truth he proclaims, then the Buddha takes him back through time, asking about his teacher, his teacher’s teacher, and all the way back to the legendary sages who first sang the Vedic hymns. None of them ever claimed to know from direct experience the truth they professed; none had seen that truth for himself. And the Buddha ends with the memorable simile of a chain of blind men, each holding on to the other, none able to see his condition for himself.

When Kāpaṭika tries to redeem his argument by appealing to the authority of tradition, the Buddha points out (after gently chiding Kāpaṭika for changing the ground of the discussion) that many people, holding to many different views, have appealed to oral tradition, to subjective faith, to the approval of others, to reasoned analysis, or to having held those views for a very long time, and have claimed that such appeals demonstrated the truth of the views. While some of those views may have been true, some were not. And those who held those views, and justified them on those grounds, missed seeing other truths. One simply cannot move from views justified by faith, tradition, the approval of others, logic or long familiarity to the definite conclusion: only this is true; everything else is worthless. That process, the Buddha told Kāpaṭika, does not preserve the truth.

And that’s where the tone of the discourse shifts, dramatically and suddenly. Kāpaṭika’s next question—how, then, does one preserve truth?—is not a challenge, but a request for illumination. At this point, I feel, Kāpaṭika’s native intelligence and real desire for knowledge overwhelm his desire to show off, and he takes the first step toward approaching the Buddha as a student approaching a teacher.

I also find the Buddha’s answer to Kāpaṭika’s question, and the discussion that follows from that answer, exceptionally interesting, persuasive, and relevant to our current situation, as citizens, as seekers, and as students of the Buddhadhamma.

It turns out that one preserves truth simply by being scrupulously accurate in one’s statements. One does not say, “this is true”. One says, instead, “I have faith that this is true”, or “I accept the tradition that claims that this is true”, or “I’ve held this to be true for a long time and see no reason to change my position now”. All those statements are indisputable; they preserve truth. But they are all humbling also, in that they clearly imply that the speaker has not, in fact, discovered truth for himself. And so, the next line of questioning concerns the discovery of truth. And even after one has discovered truth, through what is clearly a long and challenging process, one still has not attained a final arrival at truth. That is only attained by keeping at it, going over and over the steps by which truth was discovered, until one has arrived.

The whole teaching is clear, careful, and compelling, and Kāpaṭika stays the course admirably. By the end, he is convinced, enough to request that the Buddha accept him as a lay follower who has gone to him for refuge for life.

And perhaps most important, Kāpaṭika recognizes the prejudice which had marked his initial approach to the Buddha and his accompanying sangha: “Formerly, Master Gotama, we used to think: ‘Who are these bald-headed ascetics, these dark meniala offspring of the Lord’s feet, that they would understand the Dhamma?’” But now Kāpaṭika realizes that these are all men and women who are with the Buddha because they have discovered the truth—a process, he now understands, of no small difficulty.

I, for one, am delighted to have had the chance to listen in on the Buddha’s teaching to brash young Kāpaṭika. I’ve learned from the discourse, and I hope you have as well.