Traditions: Bahá’u’lláh’s Hidden Words; Pāli Buddhist Kālāma Sutta Motif: Responsible judgment rather than secondhand acceptance Connection verdict: Independent ethical-epistemic comparison, not documented borrowing Article status: Expanded Date: 2026-11-04
Summary
Both passages resist unexamined reliance on another person’s judgment when evaluating what should guide action.
Read the two scenes
The Hidden Words aphorism addresses the hearer directly as a recipient of God’s gift of justice. Its instruction to see with one’s own eyes is inseparable from turning toward the divine standard it names. In the Kālāma Sutta, the problem is more public: competing teachers denounce one another, leaving a community uncertain. The Buddha’s response neither canonizes inherited authority nor tells each hearer to follow preference. He moves to greed, aversion, and delusion, asks what harm they produce, and considers the assessment of observant people. Both reject borrowed certainty, but they propose importantly different procedures for responsible judgment.
What connects—and what does not
Hidden Words Arabic 2 presents justice as a divine gift enabling the hearer to see and know personally; AN 3:66 asks the Kālāmas to test qualities by harm or benefit and by the judgment of observant people, not simply by private intuition.
The Buddhist passage is often misread as unrestricted individualism; its ethical tests and counsel from the wise are essential to the comparison.
Why read them side by side?
The pairing clarifies why autonomy in religious discernment can be coupled with either revelatory justice or tested ethical consequences.
Sources and reading notes
- Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words, Arabic 2, official Bahá’í Reference Library — The aphorism calls justice beloved, instructs one to see with one’s own eyes and know with one’s own knowledge. Revealed in 1858; Shoghi Effendi English translation.
- AN 3:66, To the Kālāmas, Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu translation — The Kālāmas report rival teachers; the Buddha rejects blind reliance on reports, tradition, inference, or teacher loyalty, then tests qualities through consequences and the observant. Pāli discourse transmitted in a redacted canon, individual composition date uncertain.
Research limit
A named parallel can establish literary reuse or related tradition; a general resemblance alone cannot prove borrowing. Linked editions and translations vary. Where a source is identified as secondary orientation, the comparison does not claim direct close reading of that tradition’s primary text.