Before You Judge, Begin With Yourself
Lessons from the Kusināra Sutta of the Aṅguttara Nikāya
“The right words at the wrong moment can still cause harm.”
Over 2,500 years ago, in the quiet town of Kusināra (Kushinagar), the Buddha offered a teaching that feels surprisingly modern in its moral clarity.
This discourse, known as the Kusināra Sutta, is part of the Aṅguttara Nikāya, one of the earliest collections of Buddhist scriptures. In the Pāli Canon, a sutta refers to a spoken teaching or sermon of the Buddha—succinct, oral transmissions passed down by his disciples, carefully preserved through generations.
These are not just religious texts; they’re living ethical guides that continue to resonate with everyday dilemmas of communication, leadership, and self-mastery.
This particular sutta is not about keeping silent in the face of wrong. Nor is it about blindly accepting others' behaviour. Rather, it's about the conditions that must be met before we open our mouths to criticise someone else.
In today’s world—where public shaming, callouts, and critiques are broadcast with ease—this teaching has never been more urgent.
The Five Things to Check in Oneself — Who are you to Judge‽
The Buddha’s message begins with a straightforward instruction:
Before you accuse or judge someone, examine yourself in five areas.
These five are not arbitrary—they are checks of integrity, compassion, and depth of understanding.
1. “Is my bodily behaviour pure?”
Before pointing fingers at someone else’s actions, one must ask: Am I living rightly in my own conduct? Do my physical actions reflect fairness, non-harm, and discipline?
Without congruence between what we do and what we say, even the truth can lose its weight.
Integrity begins with embodiment.
Imagine calling someone out for poor work ethic while regularly cutting corners yourself. Or criticising another’s parenting while your own relationships remain unresolved. If your walk doesn’t match your talk, your words become hollow.
This is the first call to integrity in action. Do you move through the world in ways that are honest, kind, and blameless? If your conduct is hypocritical, any critique you offer will be dismissed as projection, not wisdom.
2. “Is my speech pure and impeccable?”
Verbal discipline—truthfulness, gentleness, and clarity—matters just as much as physical conduct.
In modern life, this could mean not engaging in passive aggression, not hiding cruelty beneath sarcasm, or not making accusations under the guise of “just being honest.”
Speech, unchecked, can clothe cruelty in cleverness. The truth must still be kind.
Because how you speak often lands louder than what you say.
This is more than avoiding lies. It’s about whether your words are clean—free of manipulation, exaggeration, or unnecessary cruelty. Where communication is instant and amplified, this principle is both ancient and acutely modern.
3. “Is my heart established in love for my spiritual companions?”
Might sound abstract, but the meaning is clear:
Do you truly care for the person you’re about to judge? Is your criticism rooted in goodwill, or laced with resentment?
Even a truthful critique becomes poisonous if driven by envy or hidden rage. The Buddha instructs us to check if we truly wish well for the person we’re about to criticise. This transforms correction from punishment into compassion.
If a reprimand is fuelled by ego, envy, or vengeance—no matter how eloquently spoken—it loses its ethical footing.
Correction without compassion is violence in disguise.
And often, what we call “truth” is simply a masked form of rejection.
4. “Am I well-versed in the teachings?”
Do you understand the deeper principles that underpin what you’re criticising? Have you internalised the teachings you're invoking to assess someone else?
This doesn't necessarily refer only to religious doctrine. It could mean understanding the full context—knowing a person’s history, circumstances, and intentions before making a judgement.
Knowing a rule is not the same as understanding its purpose.
Wisdom grows not from memory, but from meaning.
5. “Have I mastered the code of conduct?”
This final question urges self-awareness about our own practice. Have we trained ourselves in the ethical and behavioural disciplines we expect of others?
Critique without self-mastery is hypocrisy.
The Buddha reminds us: train first, speak later.
It’s easy to weaponise ethical codes without understanding their context or nuances. The Buddha warns against this. Knowledge of conduct must be clear, detailed, and internalised—not wielded as a blunt instrument.
The Five Things to Establish in Oneself — The Ethical Foundations of Speech
Even after checking the five criteria above, one isn’t immediately free to criticise. Instead, the Buddha lays out five intentions we must firmly plant in ourselves before we speak:
1. Speak at the right time
Timing can transform truth into cruelty or grace. A true word spoken in the wrong moment can devastate, while a well-timed word can gently awaken.
Let truth be a sunrise, not a strike.
Timing is a virtue. Even a helpful comment, poorly timed, can do more harm than good.
2. Speak truthfully
This seems obvious, yet honesty is not just about avoiding lies. It's about resisting exaggeration, manipulation, or half-truths crafted to win an argument.
A distorted truth is more dangerous than a blatant lie.
Straightforward, but hard in practice. Do not twist facts or leave out inconvenient truths.
3. Speak gently
Gentleness isn’t weakness—it’s clarity without aggression. When speech flows from calm steadiness rather than harshness, people are more likely to listen and change.
Harshness wins silence, not transformation.
A gentle tone opens ears. Harshness shuts down dialogue. Even difficult truths deserve soft landings.
4. Speak beneficially
Ask: Will what I say actually help?
Criticism without the possibility of growth is just cruelty dressed in righteousness.
If the aim is not healing, then it’s only harm in disguise.
5. Speak from love, not from hate
Behind your words, there must be no trace of secret resentment, no hidden delight in the failure of others. Pure intentions are felt, even when unspoken.
Let love be the source—even of your dissent.
This is the core. Correction that does not arise from goodwill will eventually be exposed as resentment in disguise.
Why This Matters Today
We live in an age of commentary.
Social media thrives on sharp takes and hot judgements. Friends criticise friends over WhatsApp messages, employees endure feedback in glass-walled rooms, and public figures are dissected online by strangers who know little of their inner lives.
Even in so-called spiritual or therapeutic circles, critiques are often framed as "boundary-setting" or "calling in," while still carrying a subtle performance of superiority.
But the Kusināra Sutta does not ask us to silence ourselves. It simply demands that we speak from a place of alignment—with our actions, with our ethics, with our care for others.
This is a call for ethical courage. Critique is necessary—when done responsibly. But without introspection, critique becomes self-serving.
We see this often on social media, in workspaces, and even in personal relationships: the rush to "correct" becomes a theatre of moral superiority rather than a gesture of care.
A Personal Invitation
The next time you feel the urge to correct someone—pause.
Could you pass these five inner tests first?
And when you do speak—can your words carry the weight of truth without the sting of self-righteousness?
Because perhaps the deeper teaching here is not about accusation at all.
It’s about living in such a way that your words need no defence.
We often think of restraint as weakness. But here, the Buddha teaches that restraint is the highest expression of strength. The ability to pause, examine oneself, and choose one’s words carefully is not passivity—it is an act of immense spiritual maturity.
In the end, the question is not “Should I speak up?” but rather:
“Have I earned the right to speak with clarity, care, and compassion?”
Imagine a society where every act of correction came from someone who has passed through these ten gates. What would change? Likely everything—from our tone online to the ways we challenge injustice.
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If you’d like to explore further, here are the original sources and contemporary translations: