Riding the Scree

The rocks are tumbling all around me.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Violent New Link


I'm adding a new link... killingthebuddha.com, here's an selection from their manifesto....

The idea of "killing the Buddha" comes from a famous Zen line, the context of which is easy to imagine: After years on his cushion, a monk has what he believes is a breakthrough: a glimpse of nirvana, the Buddhamind, the big pay-off. Reporting the experience to his master, however, he is informed that what has happened is par for the course, nothing special, maybe even damaging to his pursuit. And then the master gives the student dismaying advice: If you meet the Buddha, he says, kill him.

Why kill the Buddha? Because the Buddha you meet is not the true Buddha, but an expression of your longing. If this Buddha is not killed he will only stand in your way.

Why Killing the Buddha ? For our purposes, killing the Buddha is a metaphor for moving past the complacency of belief, for struggling honestly with the idea of God. As people who take faith seriously, we are endlessly amazed and enraged that religious discourse has become so bloodless, parochial and boring. Any God worth the name is none of these things. Yet when people talk about God they are talking mainly about the Buddha they meet. For fear of seeming intolerant or uncertain, or just for lack of thinking, they talk about a God too small to be God.

Killing the Buddha is about finding a way to be religious when we're all so self-conscious and self-absorbed. Knowing more than ever about ourselves and the way the world works, we gain nothing through nostalgia for a time when belief was simple, and even less from insisting that now is such a time. Killing the Buddha will ask, How can we be religious without leaving part of ourselves at the church or temple door? How can we love God when we know it doesn't matter if we do? Call it God for the godless. Call it the search for a God we can believe in: A God that will not be an embarrassment in twelve-thousand years. A God we can talk about without qualifications.

2 Comments:

Blogger Dedwarmo said...

I would believe in God if it was defined as that which is unknown or unknowable or incomprehensible. Hey I wonder if the word prehensile has something to do with incomprehensible. Prehensile has to do with grasping and incomprehensible has to do with being unable to grasp.

2:43 PM  
Blogger Henry said...

Yeah. I might believe in God if the words "divine mystery" or "some big crazy sacred bullshit" was substituted. Even the word God is a Buddha that needs to be killed. Too much baggage.
ps. I tried to research the root language that we get "incomprehensible" from, but when you do searches combining "incomprehensible" and "language" you don't get much useful. It's a mystery. Like God.

4:14 PM  

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