Wednesday, June 17, 2015

A Room of My Own: Killing the Buddha Haiku

written in response to  Linji Yixuan's koan:  If you meet the Buddha, kill him!

killing the Buddha
in a midsummer dream --
a rash on my hand

1 comment:

  1. Below is excerpted from the Wikipedia entry, "Koan:"

    Thinking about the Buddha as an entity or deity is delusion, not awakening. One must destroy the preconception of the Buddha as separate and external before one can become internally as their own Buddha. Zen master Shunryu Suzuki wrote in "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" during an introduction to Zazen,

    Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else. Kill the Buddha, because you should resume your own Buddha nature.

    One is only able to see a Buddha as he exists in separation from Buddha, the mind of the practitioner is thus still holding onto apparent duality.

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