I’ve noticed how much people are taken with the traditional Zen line “if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” This is a dangerous, but also, a very important point. I’ve just been reading The Mirror of Zen by the Korean master So Sahn and I think he explicates the meaning of this term in very helpful ways.
The superior person beholds the Buddhas and Patriarchs as if he were spying an enemy. He knows that if, in his search for truth, he becomes attached to the Buddha, he is hindered by the Buddha. If he is attached to the Patriarchs, the Patriarchs hinder him. Whenever you seek something outside your own mind, everything is suffering. It would be far better to just have nothing to do!
Of course the Buddha one must be most wary of is the Buddha we create in our minds. Of the three demons, greed (the constellation of grasping), hatred (the constellation of aversion) and ignorance (the constellation of certainties), the third, as Charles Dickens warns us in A Christmas Carol is the most dangerous. As the bumpersticker so wisely warns us: Don’t Believe Everything You Think. Perhaps it actually should be Don’t Believe Anything You Think…
We accomplish this and our nothing to do becomes one of the great miracles of life…
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