After the Shoken Tokudo ceremony, I addressed the sangha. Someone expressed concern over my use of “killing Buddha” in my talk and asked about it’s meaning. Of course, I was not saying to kill or harm anyone, that was not my meaning (please watch the video clip).
I would like to point you to what the founder of Soto Zen says about killing buddha.
In The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo there is a chapter called “The Point of ZaZen“. Dogen tells the story about Nanyue, Zen Master Dahui, who studied with Mazu, Zen Master Daji of Jiangxi. Without going into the whole text, the exchange started with Nanyue asking “Virtuous one, what’s your intention in doing ZaZen?” Mazu said, “My intention is to become a buddha”.
This exchange is certainly worth reading, however to my point, I will skip to the section I am concerned with here:
“As buddha has no fixed form, there is no escape from sitting buddha. Adorned with buddha’s no-fixed form, the practice of zazen is itself sitting buddha. In the dharma beyond condition, who can discriminate buddha from not-buddha? Falling away before discrimination, sitting buddha is sitting buddha.
Nanyue said, “If you sit buddha, you kill [go beyond] buddha.”
When you study sitting buddha further in this way, it has an aspect of kill buddha. At the very moment of sitting buddha there is killing buddha. If you want to find the extraordinary luminosity of killing buddha, always sit buddha. ”
In Gassho