If You See Buddha, Kill Him….
There is a saying in Buddhism that if you see Buddha, kill him. This sounds a bit bizarre when the goal of an aspiring Buddhist is to attain Buddhahood. If you’re following the path of Buddha killing the founder of the order doesn’t exactly seem like the way to go about it, does it?
When we start out in a spiritual practice we’re generally given some basic instructions. The first things most people are told to do is clean up their act and be consistent (in sum). In Sanskrit this is called Yama and Niyama, right action and religious observance. These basics set the stage for the physical aspects of practice.
The physical instructions that the student might receive could be to do a daily exercise routine. Yoga has some physical prerequisites called “asanas” which are designed to enable the body to sit for long periods of time. Buddhists have some similar exercises to strengthen the body and are considered part of the initial purification practices.
As the student moves through the initial stages of spiritual practice they begin to notice various subtleties that they were previously unaware of. We’re all aware that we breathe but the process becomes much more detailed. The beating of the heart is felt in a way that is much more intimate. Even our sleep changes, we become aware of the subtle process of changing from frontal consciousness to seeing with our mind.
With all of the changes going on both mental and physical one may have an experience that they believe to be of spiritual significance. This might be accompanied by seeing lights, visions, perhaps sounds, etc., and the person tries to grab hold of this experience. It’s like ignoring the forest for the trees. Instead of continuing the practice the person just focuses on the experience they had losing sight of what they were originally setting out to do which was to become the Buddha.
The saying “if you see Buddha, kill him” is referring to the various phenomena that one may encounter during spiritual practice. Whatever you see or think you saw is not it. If you see Buddha, it’s just a distraction. The practice should be continued and the phenomena just seen as a sign post along the path of spiritual progression. As long as there is “other” there is “another” and there is still work to do.
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This is one of my favorite sayings by Master Linji. There are lots of ways of interpreting it imho.
Thanks for the interest lightsplasher! You're right, there are a lot of different ways of interpreting it. I've been reading through a lot of articles on here where people are writing about a lot of experiences in phenomena and I think that this distracts from what people should be paying attention to in their practice. Originally I ended with Shankara's 3 stages of practice to make a little more sense of it (1st stage: god I worship you, 2nd stage: god I am a part of you, 3rd stage: God verily I am you/I am that) if one were to become the Buddha then they couldn't possibly be distracted by Buddha. But, I didn't want to mention "god" and potentially offend anyone (happened a lot when I was studying eastern philosophy in college).
It is really tough to talk about any of these types of things without offending someone at some level. I've recently got into a bit of a heated argument over such concepts as 'personal will' and aligning it with a higher power. I just have to laugh about it all at this point. People are fun. :)
I think that the problem is that this sort of thing isn't something that you can simply agree with and understand. It's like trying to perceive beyond your own level of experience and the mind doesn't have any reference for it. Anyways, speaking of free will I wrote on on that a while back that you might like https://steemit.com/philosophy/@read3986/free-will-and-life-s-path
Interesting read, free will is such a complex subject. The problem with communication over complex spiritual issues does have a lot to do with finding some type of common grounds for discussion. Direct experience is not always a great reference when dealing with mysticism.
I like Teal Swans explanation of the differences between free will and determinism.
I like Teal Swan as a person but her explanation sounds sort of Hermetic or relative to early stages of practice. John-Roger was one of the first people talking about the Christ consciousness (msia)in the early 70's and the term has gotten a lot more popular now. If you're interested in that path he might be worth checking out?
My personal views tend to lean in a variety of directions - I haven't heard of John-Roger so I may check him out. I think it is interesting to see how all these things became a part of our collective belief system.
Your personal view sounds like the way to go, being open minded. John-Roger was the founder of the Movement of spiritual inner awareness (msia). His teachings center around the christ-consciousness and were the earliest to use the term that I know of. He died a few years back but he's written a lot of books on the subject and has a lot of videos on youtube. I was involved with his organization for quite some time. It has some similarities to Eckankar if you're familiar with that tradition.
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