JMGinPDX wrote:
I'm more of a Zen guy, so if I met the Buddha, I would kill the Buddha.
And instantly die and be reborn in the lowest level of hell for a long long long time.
Buddha's don't have the karma to be killed
Of course, I didn't say it was possible, I just said he would go to hell
"There are these five inhabitants of the states of deprivation, inhabitants of hell, who are in agony & incurable. Which five? One who has killed his/her mother, one who has killed his/her father, one who has killed an arahant, one who — with a corrupted mind — has caused the blood of a Tathagata to flow, and one who has caused a split in the Sangha. These are the five inhabitants of the states of deprivation, inhabitants of hell, who are in agony & incurable."
And instantly die and be reborn in the lowest level of hell for a long long long time.
Well, sure, if I literally executed the actual living Sakyamuni Buddha physically standing right before me.
But as I indicated in my followup, I was joking.
And that's not what the Zen parable is about, either - if I "see" the Buddha, then I've immediately turned the Buddha into a THING, into an object of attachment, and that's going to hinder my true progress, so I must "kill" my conceptualization of the Buddha in order to get to the truth. That sorta thing.
But now that I had to explain the joke, it's not funny anymore, assuming it was slightly humorous to begin with.............
Yes I understood what you meant, but you didn't understand my insinuation: that we're on a Theravada forum.
...which doesn't necessarily mean we need to descend into overly-serious sectarian quibbling over inconsequential minutiae of doctrine that has little to do with the dhamma. Which, for all my love of the EBT's and my personal origin story in the Thai Forest tradition, DOES seem to be a thing in Theravada.
Ajahn Nanadassano (before ordaining) : Venerable Ajahn, what is the bigest error that buddhist do in their practice?
Ajahn Jayasaro : They stop practicing ...