Verify it
yourself
Both worry about the student who has absorbed a master rather than a truth. Both hand the test back to you.
“Do not go by reports, by traditions, by rumours, by scripture, by mere logic, or because the ascetic is your teacher. When you know for yourselves that these qualities are unskilful — abandon them.”
Kālāma Sutta, AN 3.65
“Truth lies open to all; it has not yet been claimed. Do not quote the master — form your own authority, and be a pupil only while you are still becoming your own.”
Seneca, Moral Letters 33 · paraphrase
Both refuse to let the tradition's prestige substitute for your own check, and both make the check practical rather than theoretical.
Where they partThe Buddha's criterion is moral consequence: what does holding this lead a person to do? Seneca's is authorial — stop outsourcing your judgment to a school, but stay inside the discipline.
