Welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 88. I am your host Noah Rosheta and today I'm talking about killing the Buddha.

As always keep in mind the Dalai Lama's advice to not use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist, use it to be a better whatever you already are.

There's a famous quote in the Zen tradition that says, if you meet the Buddha, kill him. This quote is attributed to Linji, a prominent Zen master,

and the expression is often considered a koan. If you'll recall I've talked about koans in the past, a koan is somewhat of a riddle or a paradoxical question or a statement or story that is meant to confuse the listener out of their state of habitual reactivity.

The idea behind the koan is to present a question or a statement that cannot be understood with the intellect and much less answered with the intellect.

You can imagine this one doing exactly that if you are a Buddhist or a practitioner of Buddhism especially in older times where Buddhism was very intertwined at this point with the culture in Asia or wherever.

You may be living in this case with Linji, imagine telling a group of monks who venerate and are trying to emulate the Buddha's example and everything that they do to suddenly be told this expression if you meet the Buddha, kill him.

Linji was known for his way of teaching the Dharma. This is typical of his teachings. He would say something that would really make your head turn. That's the point of this expression.

Now, this specific koan has caught on in the West and Western Buddhism. It's been interpreted in many different ways by various teachers and practitioners.

One of the interpretations I want to share is actually from Sam Harris in 2006 essay called Kill in the Buddha.

Sam Harris, who many of you know is an author and neuroscientist and he's the host of the Waking Up Podcast. He had this to say about the koan.

He said the 9th century Buddhist master Linji 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 21st century, I propose that we take Linji's admonishment rather seriously. As quotes of the Buddha, we should dispense with Buddhism.

So that is the interpretation by Sam Harris, someone that I admire a lot of the work that he does.

I think there's a lot of truth to what he's saying but I don't think that's enough. It's beyond that.

As students of the Buddha, we should dispense with Buddhism is accurate but I would also say as students of any ideology, we should dispense with that ideology.

It would be accurate to also say as students of atheism, we should dispense with atheism or students of Christ or followers of Christ, we should dispense with Christianity or any expression along those lines.

I think it gets closer to what Linji was trying to accomplish with this koan, with the statement.

Now another thought that we can explore here with this comes from the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunru Suzuki Roshi.

In this book he says Zen Master will say, kill the Buddha. Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else. Kill the Buddha because you should resume your own Buddha nature.

So in this sense, kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else, it's like saying if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.

In other words, if you encounter the concept of Buddha and discover it is separate from yourself, then you are living in a delusion.

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