Killing the Buddha, Walking in the Dark (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

October 29, 2014

Killing the Buddha, Walking in the Dark  

“If you run into the Buddha, kill him!”

--9^th century Zen Master Linji

This koan, or puzzle statement intended to create doubt and force a new way of seeing things, is a classic of Zen Buddhism.  The idea at its simplest is this:  if you think you have identified the right way to enlightenment, you by that very fact show that you have gone off track.  At a more reflective level, the idea is that enlightenment, the Buddha nature, is within you.  It is revealed by discovering unity. If you still see it as something other than you, if your mind is still caught in the deception of duality, you are wrong. 

A Christian could hardly be expected to say, “If you see Christ, crucify him!”  But we do recite in the Ten Commandments “Do not make for yourself any graven image standing for God.”    The idea is the same as the Zen saying:  we deceive ourselves when we mistake any current understanding we have of God with God proper.  In the degree that we objectify God or Jesus, we are not at unity and not in the presence. 

Having a basic humility in limits in our faith, our doctrine, and our spiritual practices is key to healthy spiritual growth.  Though this may not entail regular “tearing down the idols,” “killing the Buddha,” and starting all over again, it definitely must involve recognizing the constraints of our current place, but continuing practice all the same, in an unhurried, steady way. 

A friend of mine from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship here in Ashland shared with me a poem that phrases this in another way, using a main image of their tradition, the lighted candle in a chalice or bowl for contemplative meditation. 

With or Without Candlelight

--John Marsh (from Victoria Safford, ed., With or Without Candlelight:  A Meditation Anthology [Skinner House Books: 2009])

If you are going to meditate by candlelight,

do not hurry to light the candle. 

The glow may concentrate your energies, but it will cost you

the contours of the room. 

If you walk the night forest by flashlight,

the electric beam may reveal details on your path,

but you will lose everything

outside your concentrated ray.

All that your light does not expose will become alien.

The sounds of animals will frighten you.

Shut off the beam, and you will travel the night forest

as one who belongs. 

Let us praise things dark and beautiful: 

The quiet of closed eyelids

The childhood of chocolate

The respectability of newsprint

The suddenness of a bat’s wing

The invitation of brewing coffee

The persistence of tar

The gentleness of nutmeg

The temptation of a cave. 

If you are going to meditate by candlelight,

Do not hurry to light the candle. 

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+