Slay the Buddha!

by Dennis Green

There is an old Zen saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, slay him!” Now, why would some Zen master in ancient times say such a thing?

I’ve been meditating on these Zen poems, prayers, koans, sayings and parables for most of my life. I have tattered and dog-eared old copies of paperback books, such as Zen Poems, Prayers & Anecdotes by Paul Reps, an old Santa Barbara writer and artist who also produced what he called “picture poems.” And I have a book of those too.

I’ve got a five-foot shelf in my library dedicated to books about Zen, including Zen & The Birds of Appetite, Zen in English Literature, Zen Catholicism, Zen Telegrams and many others. I first discovered this philosophy of life when I was a teenager, fleeing from the Catholic Church, and right away it appealed to me, took hold of me by the frontal lobes and by my heartstrings as well.

So when I heard recently that that the Council of Catholic Bishops of America had condemned the practice of Japanese “Reiki” among Catholics, as a heresy of the first rank, and then watched an interview with the bishop who heads up that Council, watching this overweight, overwrought cleric describing how awful this healing practice is, “…coming as it does between the believer and God…” I immediately knew it was something valuable that I would enjoy.

If anyone, or anything, comes between the believer and God, it’s the priesthood. They tell us that without the Holy Sacraments that only Roman Catholic priests are qualified to perform, we are doomed and damned — from Confession to Marriage to the Last Rites — and that women are unqualified to be anything more than handmaidens of a lower order.

“Reiki is a superstition, a pagan belief that is very dangerous,” the Bishop said on camera, “and if there’s a spirit at work, it certainly isn’t God!”

If you meet the Buddha on the road, slay him! In other words, if you think the Buddha is out there, instead of within you, in your original nature, you have created an illusion that will betray you. If you meet the Bishop on the road, slay him! Where’s my Samurai sword?

So on the same program, “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly,” I saw a nun who teaches Reiki and heals people using its techniques. “I feel the Spirit working through me,” she says. Another woman describes it as a “laying on of hands” that is proven to speed the healing of many illnesses and recovery from surgery.

So I look it up online, go beyond the Wikipedia entry and onto the worldwide site itself. I read about it, and realize that I have encountered it before in other forms — in Kundalini yoga and in classes that one of my teachers, a nurse educator, called “Therapeutic Touch,” which is practiced at many hospitals worldwide. And it works! It comforts patients and speeds the healing process.

So “Reiki” is a combination of two Japanese words, “Rei,” meaning “divine spirit” and “Ki,” meaning “energy life force.” Ki is the same concept as “Chi” in Chinese, as in T’ai Chi and “Qi” in “Qi Quong.” The aim of all these disciplines is to keep it moving, keep it clean, get the chakras spinning clockwise, get the Kundalini, Serpent Power, all the way up to your Crown Chakra and beyond.

So get your Chi, your Mojo, your Kundalini goin’ on today! And if you meet the Serpent on the road, slay him! Otherwise, He just might bite you on the ass.

©2010 Dennis Green