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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Ironic to work so hard preserving something from a tradition based on impermanence that says if you meet the Buddha to kill him. Not that there's any reason not to preserve it.

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Sigh that "Koan" is not literally about killing the Buddha. It is recognizing the divinity is not in an idol or image, including other people. That strand of Buddhism says enlightenment is first found within, and after you find it you see it also in the external world, not in a specific form but you see it everywhere.

Most likely that Koan comes from Linji Yixuan aka 1600 years ago, but Buddhism is likely 2400 or older years ago.

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Linji Yixuan also has another saying "If you meet your forefather, kill him" once again this is not literal but is once again excessive reverence to other relationships instead of finding family in all things not just a specific forefather.

A similar statement would be Jesus Christ in the Gospels such as Luke saying you can't be his follower if you love your father, wife, children, siblings, etc more than him. Jesus demanded you love him more than you love your own life, and your duty to his faith is greater than your traditions saying "I must wait" to follow you for first I must bury my dead father and so on. [Once again it is probably not supposed to be taken literally for the Gospels choose certain metaphors for dramatic effect about how one organizes ones priorities.]

Very good chance the GP left those words at the river, hopefully you will too unless it's purely an academic study.

I never thought about the similarities before, that's an interesting point. You always hear about how the Bible is a collection of many different genres of writing, some which no longer exist, so it's confusing to people with no point of reference. Song of Solomon, for example, is just hilarious if you think of it as a detailed account of actual events and people. These concepts were probably spreading across cultures for so long before being deposited in a book or scroll.

Even though detachment from the illusion of matter is a goal of many forms of Buddhism, it is clearly necessary to use matter to achieve this goal. That is why zen masters write books in which they say books are worthless. And that is why they use reasoning to show that reason can only take us so far. They understand we still need the vehicles, but make it clear that they only serve the purpose of getting us to the destination.

Yept the "Middle Way" is both a rejection of pure asceticism and pure hedonoism, but a middle path between extremes. Material things can be used temporary but the goal is "to unfocus" and see beyond material things.

Reason and Language are useful as well, but the various buddhist teachers over 2400 years whole point is to unfocus and see beyond the limitation of how we try to use language to bring an artificial form of order that is not true understanding, nor is it true love or compassion. Instead it is a form of "clinging" that makes things feel overly familiar and safe when the nature of reality is constant change and finding peace with this "uncanny" and thus scary reality if we allow it to scare us in such a way.

Precisely. IMHO, a literal understanding of Buddhist writings frequently leads to absurd radicalisms. Many teachings, especially in the Zen tradition (which I'm most familiar with) make use of rhetoric and reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate the shortcomings of reason. They're not meant to be taken at face value. I doubt very much that a monk severed his apprentice's finger from the body as an educational device. When you read some Zen masters that dealt with actual problems, you see that they were reasonable, practical and compassionate.

It’s figurative, but unfortunately people do kill Buddhas, and continue to try and do so today. From physically attacking them, to poisonings, little has changed in 2000 years.

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