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Killing the Buddha has a second deeper meaning beyond Buddha is not sacred: to detach from all past teachers / buddhas. Buddhism (at least the Zen Buddhism tra

Killing the Buddha has a second deeper meaning beyond Buddha is not sacred: to detach from all past teachers / buddhas. Buddhism (at least the Zen Buddhism tradition I am learning) teaches one to detach from all things. This is part of opening the mind and experiencing things as they are and not through one's misconceptions. So eventually a student masters this and all other teachings by his masters and all past buddhas. At this point the student must detach even from these buddhas. So if you meet the Buddha? Strike him down! You have no need of him anymore.

jjs 15y ago
The Buddha you meet on the road is not the one you're looking for. Consider the koan: Does a dog have Buddha-nature? This is the most serious question of all. If you answer yes or no You lose your own Buddha-nature. What I got from this one is that the dog question is meaningless until you can answer the real questions it implies: "Do I have the Buddha-nature?", and "Does such a thing actually exist at all?"