If you come across Buddha on your path, Kill him.

If you come across Buddha on your path, Kill him. A somewhat relevant Zen Parable: "A young widow who returned home one day to find her house burnt down and her 5-year old son lost. Near the ruins of the fire was the charred remains of a corpse that she believed to be her child, and wept and wept. After the child's cremation, she kept the ashes in a bag and carried them with her day and night. But her son had not actually perished in the fire. He had been taken off by bandits, and One day the boy escaped and returned to his Mothers house. The boy arrived at midnight, when his mother was about to goto bed still carrying the boy's ashes. The son knocked at the door. "Who are you?" asked the mother. "I am your son." "You are lying. My son died months ago. The mother persisted in her belief and would not open the door. In the end the child had to leave, and the poor mother lost her son forever." In Zen Buddhism, Knowledge, habits, predjudice act as prisons. An attuned zen monk see's a table not as wood, brown, or 3ft tall, but as an infinite number of atoms with electrons dancing in and out of existance while all simultaneously in existance can be reduced to the mass of his finger.. The monk sees the forest, the trees, the fragrance of pine, the saw, the sounds of birds chirping nearby, the woodcutter, and the woodcutters parents, and the relation of all things in this one thing. He knows nothing is permanent... Things must be let go of, and new things adapted too. Nothing is stagnant, but everything is in constant change - which is necessary for growth; for awakening. To lock yourself into a preset ideaology - firm in your conviction, to him is to lock yourself in your own prison. -- Even if that is in complete accordance with your own belief set. Thus "if you come across the Buddha, Kill him" .. Kill your firm belief set. Kill your ideas, your knowledge, your habits and experience reality as it is, in the constant and every changing moment; pure. © Richard West 2007 - Feel free to distribute w/Copyright intact. HOME