Gurus - The Journey Magazine

What It Really Means
to Kill The Buddha
By Marilyn Wise
he Ninth Century Buddhist master Linji instructed:
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
That enigmatic koan shocked and bewildered me
Tuntil its wisdom came in reflecting on my own journey
on the road of life.
Linji doesn’t really want to kill Buddha – just release
the attachment to the idea of who he is. Master Linji proposes
a key precept: Beware making the teacher or lesson
the locus of your belief, and giving away your own.
Here are a few thoughts on what, “Killing the Buddha”
means to me.
In the past, I’ve placed teachers or gurus on lofty
pedestals. They had the answers and any questioning I
had of them was suppressed until the spell was eventually
broken; they crashed off the pedestal and I, disillusioned,
went on to find the next more-perfect guru.
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He was brilliant and hung on
every word he uttered. He later
became involved in a scandal
and I was devastated, even
questioning the value of what
I had learned from him. If he
was flawed, then what I learned
from him must also be flawed.
Mr. Crawfield was my 6 th grade English teacher. He
made Shakespeare come alive in my heart. I thought he
was brilliant and hung on every word he uttered. He later
became involved in a scandal and I was devastated, even
questioning the value of what I had learned from him. If
he was flawed, then what I learned from him must also
be flawed. I have since come to firmly believe in the old
adage, “keep what you like and leave the rest.” Teachers,
like everyone else are subject to their own humanity.
As a youngster in the 1950s, I learned to stop trusting
my own knowing and look to others to tell me what
to do. There was a barrage of messages: Do it because I
said so; Nice girls don’t question their parents, teachers,
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ministers; Pretend you aren’t smart so the boys will like
you; Don’t confront or ask for what you want or you will
be shamed.
I learned, like so many children, the illusion that
safety, security and truth lived outside of me and in people
with authority. I stopped listening to my inner guru before
I understood that I even had one.
I betrayed others by pretending
to feel and enjoy what I did not.
I think the root of many addictions
is to medicate the pain of
not being true to one’s nature.
A betrayal so many of us experience is the realization
that there is no Santa Claus. In second grade, when best
friend Ann told me that my parents and the rest of the
world had just been making it up, I punched her in the
stomach. How dare she destroy my cherished illusion,
even though I’d really known all along it was a lie.
That is a socially acceptable example of the many
ways even well-meaning parents can disempower their
children.
I have learned as a therapist and in my own healing
journey that children feel safer to believe there is
something wrong with them than to believe the people
responsible for their emotional and physical safety cannot
be trusted.
I continued to search for Santa in the dogma of religious
or “personal growth” cults, political heroes, bosses,
lovers, husbands, causes and exploitive gurus.
They all fell short because I could not see them in
the beginning for who they were, or how it felt to be with
them – only how I idealized them and valued their beliefs
over my own.
For years I depended on others to define my reality
for me. I married a wonderful but not compatible man,
because he was what my mother wanted me to marry. I
tried to be what I thought others wanted in relationships
and disassociated from my own voice. By abandoning
that voice, the person that betrayed me the most was
myself.
I betrayed others by pretending to feel and enjoy what
I did not. I think the root of many addictions is to medicate
the pain of not being true to one’s nature.
t h e Jo u r n e y