In Taoism there’s a famous saying that goes, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the ultimate Tao.” Another way you could say that, although I’ve never seen it translated this way, is “As soon as you begin to believe in something, you can no longer see anything else.” The truth you believe in and cling to makes you unable to hear anything new.
Our world is created by the way that we think and the things that we believe in. In the Middle Ages everyone accepted, out of fear, the idea that there was only one way to believe; if you didn’t believe that way, you were the enemy. It was death to all forms of creative, fresh thinking. Many things that people had once been able to see, they just couldn’t see anymore, because they didn’t believe in them. Once they began to think and believe only in a certain way, people literally couldn’t hear, see, smell, or touch things that were outside their belief system.
Holding on to beliefs limits our experience of life. That doesn’t mean that beliefs or ideas are the problem. The stubborn attitude of insisting things be a particular way; the way we cling to our beliefs and thoughts: these are the problems. To put it simply, not letting go of your belief system creates a situation in which you choose to be blind rather than be able to see, to be deaf rather than be able to hear, to be dead rather than alive, asleep rather than awake. People may become so fanatical that they kill and destroy when their belief system is threatened. Wars all over the world happen because some people are insulted that other people don’t agree with their belief system. It’s called “fundamentalism.”
It’s only human to want to hold on to something. We want to say, “Finally I have found it. This is it, and now I feel confirmed and secure and righteous.” Everybody is guilty of this. Buddhism is not free of it. But in Buddhism there is a teaching that would undercut this, if people would only listen. It says, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha.” This means that if you have found Buddha and can say, “The Buddha is like this,” then you had better kill that Buddha. This applies to people of all faiths and nonfaiths: If you meet the Christ that can be named, kill that Christ. If you meet the Mohammed or the Jehovah that can be named and held on to and believed in, kill him.
Although this approach sounds pretty aggressive, we’re actually talking about the ultimate in nonaggression. It’s quite easy to have beliefs and to hold on to them and to let our whole world be a product of our belief system. It’s also quite easy to attack those who disagree. The harder, more courageous thing — which is what the hero and the heroine, the warrior and the mystic do — is to look one’s beliefs straight in the eye, honestly and clearly, and then move beyond them. That requires a lot of heart and kindness. It requires being able to touch and know completely, to the core, your own experience, without harshness, without making any judgment.
“When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha” means that when you see that you’re grasping or clinging to anything, whether it’s good or bad, make friends with that clinging. Look into it. Get to know it completely and utterly. In that way, it will let go by itself.
It’s said in the teachings that if you hold on to your belief, there will be conflict. There’s a wonderful story about this: There once was a god who knew how men and women love to believe things to be true and to make religious and political systems out of their beliefs. They just love to make something out of nothing and then write its name on a big banner and march down the street waving it and yelling slogans, only to meet people who believe the opposite coming toward them with their banner, yelling their slogans.
This god decided to show people the absurdity of their behavior, so that they might have a good laugh. (A good laugh is the best way to kill the Buddha.) He constructed a big hat divided right down the middle, the left side being brilliant blue and the right side flaming red. Then he went to a place where many people of one religion were working in the fields on the left side of a road, and many people of another religion were working in the fields on the right side of the road. There the god manifested in all his glory; no one could miss him. Big and radiant, wearing his hat, he walked straight down the road.
All the people on both sides of the road dropped their hoes and looked up, amazed. When the god disappeared, everyone shouted, “We saw God! We saw God!” They were all full of joy, until someone on the left said, “There he was, in all his radiance — and his blue hat!” And people on the right said, “No, he had on a red hat.” The disagreement escalated until the people built walls and began to throw stones at each other.
Then the god appeared again. This time he walked in the opposite direction before he disappeared. Now all the people looked at each other, and the ones on the right said, “Ah, you were right, he did have on a blue hat. We’re sorry.” The ones on the left said, “No, no. You were right and we were wrong.” They didn’t know whether to fight or to be friends. Then the god appeared again. This time he stood in the middle and turned to the left and then turned to the right, and everyone started to laugh.
For us, as people who want to live a good, full, unrestricted, adventurous kind of life, here is a concrete instruction that we can follow: See what is. Acknowledge it without judging it as right or wrong. Let it go, and come back to the present moment.
From now until the moment of your death, you could do this: as a way of becoming more compassionate toward yourself and others; as a way of becoming less dogmatic, prejudiced, and determined to have your own way, and less sure that you’re right and the other person is wrong; as a way to develop a sense of humor about life, to lighten up, to open up. You could do this. You could also begin to notice whenever you find yourself blaming others or justifying your own actions. If you spent the rest of your life just noticing that and letting it uncover the silliness of the human condition — the tragicomic drama that we all continually buy into — you could develop wisdom and kindness, as well as a great sense of humor.
Seeing the way you defend yourself and blame others is not an occasion to criticize yourself, but actually an opportunity to recognize what all people do and how it imprisons us in a limited perspective on the world. It’s a chance to see how you hold on to your interpretation of reality. And that’s all it is — nothing more, nothing less: just your interpretation.
This essay is adapted from The Wisdom of No Escape, by Pema Chödrön. © 2001 by Pema Chödrön. It is printed here by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, MA (www.shambhala.com).
