Kill The Buddha
By Jagath Asoka –September 16, 2016
Dr. Jagath Asoka
Shedding the blood of a Buddha is a heinous crime. I am not trying to be a provocateur, but imagine for a moment, a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk saying to his devout lay followers, “If you see the Buddha coming down on the road, kill him!” Of course, a Zen master used these words “Buddha, road, and kill” metaphorically, when he warned his disciple. This metaphorical Buddha can be a Buddhist monk that you venerate or your own self, if you have been striving to achieve nirvana. I think, it is much easier to understand this metaphorical road: your life or your chosen spiritual path. The Buddha is not a final point but points beyond himself to that ineffable being, virtues, and powers that is in all of us. If you have concretized all the virtues and powers on a figure, like the Buddha, all fix ideas must be killed, dissolved, or disintegrated. You must kill the image of God as well.
What is the insurmountable barrier for a Buddhist? Is it the image of the Buddha that we worship every day, the images that are so ubiquitous in Sri Lanka? When you have an image in front of you, you can worship this graven image, thinking about its inimitable virtues and powers. If you continue this activity every day, morning and night, without realizing that you, too, have these virtues and powers, what would happen to you?
Since Buddhism is not only an elite religion but also a popular religion, Buddhism provides bases or tools for meditation. Relic worship is very common in Buddhism. All these great stupas in Sri Lanka are reliquary mounds. Each one contains a relic. These stupas and Buddha statues are just tools for mediation on the Buddhahood and the Buddha powers within each one of us. For over two thousand years, we have been worshipping the Buddha statues, stupas, and relics and participating in rituals that are supposed to transform us spiritually; Even though the magic and majesty of all these sacred places and activities speak of exaltation of the spirit, furnish a base for mediation, and make the transcendent transparent, I am not certain whether we have any tangible evidence to show that we are spiritually any better now as a nation, compared to the inhabitants who lived before Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka. There has to be some correlation between religious activities of a nation and its spiritual growth. Even though there are so many Buddhist activities, discussions, books, and rituals in Sri Lanka, it seems like we—Sri Lankan Buddhists—are craving for something that we have not found, yet. Finding the Buddha within yourself is probably a Sisyphean task. We can meditate on the virtues and powers of the Buddha in front of a granite Buddha Statue, but if we do not find these powers and virtues within us we would remain without any spiritual transformation, just like the granite statue in front of us.
