Post by Reefs on Oct 11, 2024 9:57:05 GMT -5
Ken Wilber on the (in)famous Zen saying "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him..."
Q: I've heard this phrase spoken over and over again “if you meet the Buddha along the path kill him”... I'd love to hear your interpretation.
KW: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” is a very straightforward example of what we were talking about with neti-neti — it's not this, it's not that… Often the first thing that people will do is they're introspecting and they see something, like there's this amazing experience of illumination of infinite light, and then “woah!”, it just blows them away. And they go “Oh, that's it!”
And if you talk to any good spiritual teacher at that point, they'll go: “No, that's not it. That's something you can see. I told you, you can't see it.” So "if you meet the Buddha on the road and you see it, kill him", because that's not what it is. It's not an object…
What Nagarjuna was trying to do was, really clarify and strengthen this whole notion of how pure awareness itself cannot be qualified, you really can't describe it, you can't see it as an object, you certainly can't give it labels or names or theorize about it. And so he pretty much invented this notion of emptiness, which is the way it was understood from that point on.
And emptiness didn't itself mean formless, or it wasn't something that you could actually qualify your awareness by saying “There's this thing called emptiness and your awareness is the same as this emptiness”…
So in essence, what Nagarjuna did was an extremely sophisticated dialectic. What he did was basically, if you take any word that you want to apply to Ultimate Reality — that could be the Good, the True, the Beautiful; could be God, could be Godhead, could be pure Consciousness, pure Awareness, take any term you want — call that term X. And what Nagarjuna demonstrated is that Ultimate Reality is neither X, nor not-X, nor both, nor neither.
Well where does that leave you? What Nagarjuna was getting across, he actually would call that “prajna”, like “gnosis” or “knowledge", awareness knowing, “pro-gnosis”. It's the type of awareness that actually leads to an enlightenment, waking up.
And human beings have two major types of awareness, one is thought—symbols, images, impulses and so on — and one is just pure awareness itself. But what Nagarjuna won't let people do, it's just try to describe that awareness and just make a description out of it, because he's saying “No, that's just more thinking!”
So I'm telling you awareness without content is X, and the awareness we want is neither X nor not-X, nor both nor neither. And in that blankness “prajna” can arise. And that's what all these meditative traditions are attempting to do, is get us out of thinking and into “pro-gnosis”, into an awareness, that, because if you actually get into that awareness, it doesn't have an inside or an outside, it embraces absolutely everything that's arising, and you are that—“thou art that”. And that changes profoundly and forever your concept of who you are and what your true self is and what Ultimate Truth is. And that's what these great traditions do… Nagarjuna won't accept any answer except your direct awareness of that reality. And you have to have that.
That's where Zen gets all its craziness from. And that's why it's very common that you'll have a Zen koan, as in a story where the master will ask students a question, like does a dog have Buddha nature, and everybody knows the correct answer is “Yes!”, but the koan here is, Joshu says “No!” — and that's the answer. Do you have to figure out “What the hell, why do you say no, that goes against everything Buddhism says!”… except Buddhism doesn't say anything, technically, until you have that experience. That's what Buddhism is saying. So if you think a dog has Buddha nature, you're just caught up in theory. And so Joshu loudly says “No!” – That's “meeting Buddha on the road, kill him”…
KW: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” is a very straightforward example of what we were talking about with neti-neti — it's not this, it's not that… Often the first thing that people will do is they're introspecting and they see something, like there's this amazing experience of illumination of infinite light, and then “woah!”, it just blows them away. And they go “Oh, that's it!”
And if you talk to any good spiritual teacher at that point, they'll go: “No, that's not it. That's something you can see. I told you, you can't see it.” So "if you meet the Buddha on the road and you see it, kill him", because that's not what it is. It's not an object…
What Nagarjuna was trying to do was, really clarify and strengthen this whole notion of how pure awareness itself cannot be qualified, you really can't describe it, you can't see it as an object, you certainly can't give it labels or names or theorize about it. And so he pretty much invented this notion of emptiness, which is the way it was understood from that point on.
And emptiness didn't itself mean formless, or it wasn't something that you could actually qualify your awareness by saying “There's this thing called emptiness and your awareness is the same as this emptiness”…
So in essence, what Nagarjuna did was an extremely sophisticated dialectic. What he did was basically, if you take any word that you want to apply to Ultimate Reality — that could be the Good, the True, the Beautiful; could be God, could be Godhead, could be pure Consciousness, pure Awareness, take any term you want — call that term X. And what Nagarjuna demonstrated is that Ultimate Reality is neither X, nor not-X, nor both, nor neither.
Well where does that leave you? What Nagarjuna was getting across, he actually would call that “prajna”, like “gnosis” or “knowledge", awareness knowing, “pro-gnosis”. It's the type of awareness that actually leads to an enlightenment, waking up.
And human beings have two major types of awareness, one is thought—symbols, images, impulses and so on — and one is just pure awareness itself. But what Nagarjuna won't let people do, it's just try to describe that awareness and just make a description out of it, because he's saying “No, that's just more thinking!”
So I'm telling you awareness without content is X, and the awareness we want is neither X nor not-X, nor both nor neither. And in that blankness “prajna” can arise. And that's what all these meditative traditions are attempting to do, is get us out of thinking and into “pro-gnosis”, into an awareness, that, because if you actually get into that awareness, it doesn't have an inside or an outside, it embraces absolutely everything that's arising, and you are that—“thou art that”. And that changes profoundly and forever your concept of who you are and what your true self is and what Ultimate Truth is. And that's what these great traditions do… Nagarjuna won't accept any answer except your direct awareness of that reality. And you have to have that.
That's where Zen gets all its craziness from. And that's why it's very common that you'll have a Zen koan, as in a story where the master will ask students a question, like does a dog have Buddha nature, and everybody knows the correct answer is “Yes!”, but the koan here is, Joshu says “No!” — and that's the answer. Do you have to figure out “What the hell, why do you say no, that goes against everything Buddhism says!”… except Buddhism doesn't say anything, technically, until you have that experience. That's what Buddhism is saying. So if you think a dog has Buddha nature, you're just caught up in theory. And so Joshu loudly says “No!” – That's “meeting Buddha on the road, kill him”…
Doth he speak true? What dost thou reckon?
