Lao Tzu (or someone like him) once said: “If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
I puzzled over this for a long time. It’s pretty counterintuitive—”Wait, we like the Buddha. Why should we kill him just because he’s on the road?” But as the years have gone by, I think I’ve gotten a decent handle on what he was talking about.
When you’re traveling, life seems so much easier. Well, unless things are going horribly wrong on the road; but when you’re moving along nicely your problems seem distant, everything seems possible, and every once in a while you get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, you finally have this whole life thing figured out.
Which is a nice feeling. But then, eventually, you come home again, and there are all those problems, right where you left them. Things that seemed like solutions when you were on the road rarely pan out. Or is it just me? I’d be curious to hear what other people think.
Anyway, I think now that Lao Tzu (or someone like him) was cautioning us against looking for answers outside ourselves: in a distant locale, or in some self-help book, or in something you found on the Internet. You can get useful clues that way, but the real answers are found inside, i.e. at home.
At least that’s what I’m thinking right now, here, today.
I always thought he meant you should kill him softly. You know, with his song.
i was curious and poked about. it was linji yixuan who said it. according to my source, he liked to freak his students out (shouting and hitting involved) to bring about enlightenment. he wanted them to ditch doctrine and to find buddha in themselves, hence your phrase and also this dry gem–
Nirvana and Bodhi are dead stumps to tie your donkey to.
as for your road-trip observations, i’d add that it’s not either/or–on the road, the world is doing the shaking; at home, you have to shake the world. either way, a new perspective is at hand.
[hint: try squinching your eyes and tilting your head to the side, like this….see what i mean?]
Those zen types are big on the hitting. Sometimes I wonder about those guys.
It’s really very simple; like the saying, “You can never step into the same river twice.”
“If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him” reminds us that the Buddha is not to be caged, defined or idolized. It reminds us to be flexible, and to accept changes as they occur. Do not stagnate in thought. Do not tie yourself down to only one way of being. Always learn. Capitulate to better ways that were previously unknown to you. Follow the path of least resistance with an open mind. Believe in yourself as the solution, and not the Buddha. The Buddha is the teacher; but, you are the practitioner. You have the power within yourself to be the Buddha. Always break down barriers and accept what you find on the other side. If you don’t like it, change it, walk away from it or accept it and move forward, learning from it. Do not say, “The Buddha said…” Discard the ego to attain greater wisdom.
Enlightenment is no thing.
The road we travel in life while we search for “enlighenment” will never fully be attained here on Earth. If we “see” the Buddha and think we have finally reached a completed “enlightened” state, we are fooling ourselves and feeding our ego. “Killing the Buddha” reminds us of our human nature. In that being human and having this human experience we will never be completely pure/enlightened. We will always suffer, fall, get up again and learn new lessons.