The old saying "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" applies to Buddhist scriptures. So often I see people pull this or that bit of text out of context and build a Grand Theory of Dharma around it. This is a perilous thing; very often a more comprehensive
The Kalama Sutta provides a good example. You've probably seen this passage quoted in many places -- "So in this case, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.," and so on.
Bhikkhu Bodhi writes of popular understanding of the sutta, "Buddha has been made out to be a pragmatic empiricist who dismisses all doctrine and faith, and whose Dhamma is simply a freethinker's kit to truth which invites each one to accept and reject whatever he likes."
But if you read the sutta all the way through, it's clear the Buddha was talking about moral or ethical judgments. And if you have a pretty good understanding of the Buddha's teaching, you recognize he's instructing us to apply rigorous standards, not just do whatever we feel like doing.
Here's another example, from Dogen.
"In the authentic transmission of [our] religion, it is said that this Buddha-Dharma, which has been authentically and directly transmitted one-to-one, is supreme among the supreme. After the initial meeting with a [good] counselor we never again need to burn incense, to do prostrations, to recite Buddha's name, to practice confession, or to read sutras. Just sit and get the state that is free of body and mind." [Bendowa, Nishijima and Cross translation, p. 6]
Now, this might be interpreted to mean that all that ritual stuff is stupid. But as Dosho Port points out, in other texts Dogen gives detailed instruction on the proper way to burn incense, bow, chant, etc. Dosho says he remembers chanting this passage during sesshin, right after offering incense and doing three prostrations.
Maybe I've been a Zen student for too long, but this doesn't seem the least incongruous to me. Dogen is infinitely subtle. His genius was in expressing the dharma without leaving anything for your intellect to cling to. So it's always perilous to take a couple of sentences of Dogen and take them at face value.
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