If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! Tùy chọn

[justmevn]

"The Truth does not make people free. Facts do not change attitudes. If the guru is dogmatic, all that he evokes in his pilgrim/disciples is their stubbornly resistant insistence on clinging to those unfortunate beliefs that at least provide the security of known misery, rather than openness to the risk of the unknown or the untried. That is why that Renaissance Magus, Paracelsus, warned that the guru should avoid simply revealing "the naked truth. He should use images, allegories, figures, wondrous speech, or other hidden, roundabout ways."

Chân lý không làm con người ta tự do. Các sự kiện có thực không làm thay đổi thái độ. Nếu vị đạo sư giáo điều, võ đoán, tất cả những gì mà ông ta gợi lên ở kẻ hành hương/đệ tử của mình là sự chống đối bướng bỉnh, cứ khăng khăng bám víu vào những niềm tin bất như ý nhưng ít nhất cũng đem lại sự an toàn của những khổ đau đã biết (quen thuộc), hơn là rộng mở với sự rủi ro của điều chưa biết hoặc điều chưa thử. Đó là lý do tại sao Renaissance Magus, Paracelsus đã cảnh báo rằng vị đạo sư nên tránh hé lộ chỉ "sự thật trần trụi". Ông ta nên sử dụng những hình ảnh, phóng dụ, hình tượng, những bài nói lạ lùng, hay những cách quanh co, che giấu khác.


Trích: If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! của Sheldon Kopp

"No meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The Buddhahood of each of us has already been obtained. We need only recognize it. Thus the Zen Master warns his disciple: If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!”

[justmevn]

Once upon a time, there was a man who strayed from his own country into the world known as the Land of Fools. He soon saw a number of people flying in terror from a field where they had been trying to reap wheat.
"There is a monster in that field," they told him. He looked, and saw that it was a water-melon.
He offered to kill the "monster" for them. When he had cut the melon from its stalk, he took a slice and began to eat it. The people became even more terrified of him than they had been of the melon. They drove him away with pitchforks, crying, "He will kill us next, unless we get rid of him."
It so happened that at another time another man also strayed into the Land of Fools, and the same thing started to happen to him. But, instead of offering to help them with the "monster," he agreed with them that it must be dangerous, and by tiptoeing away from it with them he gained their confidence. He spent a long time with them in their houses until he could teach them, little by little, the basic facts which would enable them not only to lose their fear of melons, but even to cultivate them themselves.

[justmevn]

1. This is it.
2. There are no hidden meanings.
3. You can’t get there from here, and besides there is no place to go.
4. We are already dying, and we’ll be dead a long time.
5. Nothing lasts!
6. There is no way of getting all you want.
7. You can’t have anything unless you let go of it.
8. You only get to keep what you give away.
9. There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.
10. The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there’s no compensation for misfortune.
11. You have the responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
12. It’s a random universe to which we bring meaning.
13. You really don’t control anything.
14. You can’t make anyone love you.
15. No one is any stronger or any weaker than anyone else.
16. Everyone is, in his own way, vulnerable.
17. There are no great men.
18. If you have a hero, look again; you have diminished yourself in some way.
19. Everyone lies, cheats, pretends. (yes, you too, and most certainly myself.)
20. All evil is potentially vitality in need of transformation.
21. All of you is worth something if you will only own it.
22. Progress is an illusion.
23. Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.
24. Yet it is necessary to keep struggling toward solution.
25. Childhood is a nightmare.
26. But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown-up.
27. Each of us is ultimately alone.
28. The most important things each man must do for himself.
29. Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
30. We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that’s all there is.
31. How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.
32. We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge.
33. All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.
34. Yet we are responsible for everything we do.
35. No excuses will be accepted.
36. You can run, but you can’t hide.
37. It is most important to run out of scapegoats.
38. We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.
39. The only victory lies is in surrender to oneself.
40. All of the significant battles are waged within the self.
41. You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.
42. What do you know for sure…anyway?
43. Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again.

[justmevn]

The most important things that each man must learn [is] no one else can teach him. Once he accepts this disappointment, he will be able to stop depending on the therapist, the guru, who turns out to be just another struggling human being."

Những điều quan trọng nhất mà mỗi người phải học là chẳng có ai khác có thể dạy anh ta. Một khi chấp nhận được sự thất vọng này, anh ta sẽ có thể thôi không còn phụ thuộc vào nhà trị liệu, vị đạo sư, người mà hóa ra chỉ là một người đang vùng vẫy khác.