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From: walsha@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Gurus
Message-ID: <1991Jun5.223703.23606@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 5 Jun 91 22:37:03 GMT
References: <1991May22.193018.17384@nas.nasa.gov> <1991May31.195225.15107@nas.nasa.gov> <1991May31.220051.16886@nas.nasa.gov>
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In article <1991May31.220051.16886@nas.nasa.gov>, sanjay@eng.umd.edu (Kumarasamy Sanjay) writes:
> In article <1991May31.195225.15107@nas.nasa.gov> walsha@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com writes:
>>> 
>>> "If you meet the Buddha, kill him."  (from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones)
>>> "There aint no guru who can see through your eyes."  (John Lennon)
>>
>>all very nice and rational. but if they day ever comes when you meet
>>such a person, all these well-thought-out words and reasons might 
>>drip away like ice cream melting off your stick. don't step in it.
>>
>>  ando.
> 
>  Would somebody explain me the statement
>   If you meet the Buddha, kill him

my own interpretation of this saying is that for a buddhist there 
is no infallible pope who is the source of all truth. any person's 
opinion is only a very dim reflection of ultimate truth. don't deify 
any one person or dogma. don't chain yourself to conceptions that
might need to be changed tomorrow.

however this seems to me to be different from the concept of a guru, 
a person on a spiritually different plane who can zip you through years
of trial and error towards your spiritual goal, whatever that goal may
be. these people exist, i suspect. this doesn't mean they're perfect. 
they, too, are very fallible and might even have a glaring weakness or two.
perfection is not necessarily a pre-requisite of anything. 

any path has its "buddhas" to be avoided. some might even make a buddha out
of a saying like "kill the buddha." the ruts in which our minds choose to 
travel are stubborn, not to mention tricky.

  ando.