A Parable From This Morning

If you meet the Buddha on the street–kill him. (from a famous Zen koan)

This morning something happened to me that I felt was a parable of life:

I got up early to meditate, to spend time with God, to recognize that I was the Beloved, to be still and know that I am not God.  As I sat down suddenly I see my 4 year old son looking at me in the other room–he too had risen early.  Instantly I was angry. I had been betting on an hour of undisturbed contemplation.  This was not in the plan.  I was about to haul him back to bed when I just sensed an inward voice…

I could go learn about being the Beloved, could go and enjoy this beauty–or I could embody it. I could love.  

So I went and I enjoyed my son. We laughed and whispered and ate grapefruit together.  

We experienced God.

This is what the Buddhists mean when they say we must kill the Buddha if we ever meet him.  If we meet him then we will cease living out the life he encourages–in this way he will have already died. It would be better to murder him than to enjoy him at the expense of living out the Enlightened life.

Or to put it in the language of my own Christian path–there is a difference between BEHOLDING and BECOMING…

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After Thought

This sort of reminds of that ridiculous movie “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” where Dewey is sitting inside his house during his son’s birthday party and he’s writing a song. His wife is troubled and asks why.  His response is classic: “It’s hard to party when there’s so much injustice going on in the world…I can’t spend all my time thinking about Dewey Cox no more–I’ve got to think about the OTHER people…”

Knowingly his wife asks, “Like your family?”

To which he responds, “No…um I mean like people having injustices done to them. Like, women and midgets and such…”

Classic