If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha
Day 177 / 365
Every religion in the world has a strict set of rules that its followers must adhere by. There would be things you can’t eat, can’t say, rituals you would have to perform on certain days. While all these rules might have had a good reason in the past when they were formed, with time people forget about those. And in the modern day, they would still follow these rules blindly even if they don’t apply
Zen Buddism teaches us not to follow any such ideals blindly. Buddhism is a spiritual journey, and on that journey, if you find the Buddha on the road, kill him and keep moving forward.
The phrase doesn’t mean that the Buddha is wrong. The Buddha here means whatever your Idea of Buddha is, or what it means to be enlightened. If at any time you start getting ideas in your head of any “rules” you must follow to be enlightened spiritually, throw those ideas away and keep going. They won’t be correct anyway, as there can’t be any set rules to be enlightened. Let me explain this to you more clearly with the help of a story.
A Buddhist teacher and his pupil were walking along the road when they encountered a beautiful girl. The girl wanted to cross a muddy part of the road and didn’t want to get her feet dirty, so she asked the teacher to pick her up and cross it. To the pupil, this sounded absolutely ridiculous, as he knew that he thought that as Buddhist monks they must restraint from even looking at women let alone picking one up. This is why he was shocked when the teacher happily picked up the girl and put her down on the other side.
As they walked back the pupil felt furious towards the teacher. When they finally reached home he asked him — “You are supposed to be way more knowledgeable and enlightened than me, how could you carry that girl on the road?”
The teacher replied — “I carried her for some time and put her down. Are you still carrying her in your mind?”
This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here
Yesterday’s blog — Eskimo Infanticides