Killing The Buddha Today

I notice how today is the anniversary of Robert Ingersoll’s defeat and capture at the battle of Lexington. A young lawyer commissioned as a colonel in the Union army, he was imprisoned before being paroled on the promise of not fighting further in the war, a common process early in that conflict.

A brilliant lawyer Colonel Ingersoll would go on to become attorney general for the state of Illinois as well as a renowned litigator. He was also the foremost public speaker of his day in defense of Freethought, himself holding a position variously described as agnostic and atheist.

I ran around the web looking to see if he made any comments on Buddhism. Buddhism, after all, was just beginning to be understood at the time Ingersoll was taking the public stage. I found a startling quote, “Anger blows out the lamp of the mind.” Startling, not for its content, I agree with this sentiment deeply and in fact find a romance with anger a continuing problematic aspect of several causes I otherwise admire. But, the language is classic Buddhist, and could easily be an aphorism straight from the lips of Gautama Siddhartha. So much so, that I cite it here with the caveat that I didn’t see its source, and am somewhat suspicious as to its authenticity.

Mostly Ingersoll’s Buddhist references appear to be passing and don’t show any particular insight into the tradition one way or another.

But, as I was rummaging around using search terms “Robert Ingersoll” and “Buddhism,” I ran across an essay by Sam Harris published in Shambhala Sun as Killing the Buddha. As it touches upon what I consider a shadow within a hard rationalist analysis of religion, it turned the specifics of my reflection in that direction.

In his essay Harris writes.

The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi is supposed to have said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Like much of Zen teaching, this seems too cute by half, but it makes a valuable point: to turn the Buddha into a religious fetish is to miss the essence of what he taught. In considering what Buddhism can offer the world in the twenty-first century, I propose that we take Lin Chi’s admonishment rather seriously. As students of the Buddha, we should dispense with Buddhism.

Harris’s article is well worth a read, it reflects the cool eye observing a tradition that doesn’t quite fit into the boxes our western culture reserve for religious sentiment. And it shows up, to my mind, in stark relief the limitation of the Western rational tradition as it considers spiritual insights.

I say this even as I consider the rational way a pearl of great price, something we need desperately, and for most of us, hey all of us, we usually need more of…

But, reason is a tool that is sometimes, particularly by its advocates, confused as an end.

When one is concerned with an investigation of the mind and its workings, this distinction becomes more obvious.

So, for Harris the Linji quote about meeting the Buddha is an observation that we need to avoid fetishizing the Buddha’s teachings, which he says have admirable qualities. I have no brief against either contention, nor his conclusion to that paragraph “as students of the Buddha, we should dispense with Buddhism.” That later assertion needs further reflection. I like, a lot, Stephen Batchelor’s version of a Buddhistless Buddhism. But, I’m also cautioned by others about simply creating a new fetish…

In fact there is a radical point here in Linji’s teaching that requires a profound humility. Yes, outside authority is always problematic. And we should take all teachings with a grain of salt. We are wise, I believe, to approach all truth claims as native Missourians.

But, Linji, I suggest pushes rather deeper, cuts rather closer to the bone than Sam Harris seems to get.

Don’t miss the forest for the trees…

The Buddha Linji suggests killing is really the one that calls itself “me.”

We gain little if we shake off the chains of others, only to voluntarily put them back on under the guise of thinking we know what’s what, you and I.

My favorite bumper sticker proclaims “don’t believe everything you think.”

My caveat is that it really should read “don’t believe anything you think.”

And, not just in the instrumental way. Which is the path of science, peace be upon that lovely discipline.

Rather, because this relentless pursuit of not knowing is itself the way of liberation contained in all those too cute by half stories and sayings of the Zen way.

Linji is calling us to the deepest not knowing…

Good advice then.

Good advice now.

Killing the Buddha Today