Rolling Motion Smooth
Thay's responses to questions often surprised me. A student of Buddhism whom we met in Santa Barbara, California, asked what it meant to seek the Buddha and what happens when you find him. Thay answered, “I am a Zen master—and, as you know, Zen masters always reply incomprehensibly. So I will say that you only find the Buddha by killing the Buddha whenever you find him.”
Then he laughed and said, “But I am a nice Zen master, so I will tell you that the Buddha is truth and the only thing that keeps you from finding truth is your conviction that you have already found it. So whenever you find truth, you must recognize it is a lie, kill it, and go on in the search for truth. Becoming a bodhisattva—someone fully awake—is not reached via methods or ideologies or study or fasting. Memorizing all the sutras is helpful but will not force open the door. You can sit a thousand hours on a meditation cushion and still be stranded. A diet restricted to green leaves will not assure your entrance into the Pure Land. If you think you have encountered the Buddha, it is more likely that it is only a concept of the Buddha—an idol, an illusion. To encounter the true Buddha, we have to kill that illusion.”
-EYES OF COMPASSION Learning from
Thich Nhat Hanh, Jim Forest
Rolling Motion Smooth
Thay's responses to questions often surprised me. A student of Buddhism whom we met in Santa Barbara, California, asked what it meant to seek the Buddha and what happens when you find him. Thay answered, “I am a Zen master—and, as you know, Zen masters always reply incomprehensibly. So I will say that you only find the Buddha by killing the Buddha whenever you find him.”
Then he laughed and said, “But I am a nice Zen master, so I will tell you that the Buddha is truth and the only thing that keeps you from finding truth is your conviction that you have already found it. So whenever you find truth, you must recognize it is a lie, kill it, and go on in the search for truth. Becoming a bodhisattva—someone fully awake—is not reached via methods or ideologies or study or fasting. Memorizing all the sutras is helpful but will not force open the door. You can sit a thousand hours on a meditation cushion and still be stranded. A diet restricted to green leaves will not assure your entrance into the Pure Land. If you think you have encountered the Buddha, it is more likely that it is only a concept of the Buddha—an idol, an illusion. To encounter the true Buddha, we have to kill that illusion.”
-EYES OF COMPASSION Learning from
Thich Nhat Hanh, Jim Forest