If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!
June 10, 2023•1,628 words
This is a copy of my highlights from this book. I have reformatted the original note to publish on Listed.
Noted Quote:
They are sure there is a right way to do things, though they have not yet found it. Someone in authority must know. Instead of understanding that ideas are merely feeble intellectual attempts to get a momentary hold on the unceasing flux of life, they act as though Nature imitates Art.
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!
by Sheldon B. Kopp
Related/Referenced Works:
Siddhartha
Canterbury Tales
Epic of Gilgamesh
Macbeth
Don Quixote
Dante's Inferno
The Castle
The Sorrow Tree
On the the day of judgment, each person will be allowed to hang all of his unhappiness on a branch of the great Tree of Sorrows. After each person has found a limb from which his own miseries may dangle, they may all walk slowly around the tree. Each is to search for a set of sufferings that he would prefer to those he has hung on the tree. In the end, each man freely chooses his own personal set of sorrows rather than those of another. Each man leaves the tree wiser than when he came.
p.17
God made man because He loves stories
p.21
All of the good/bad strong/weak, divine/ridiculous Janus faces must be seen, if I am to have any time with my mask off. And should I wear my mask too long, when I take it off and try to discard it, I may find that I have thrown my face away with it.
p.25
I do not with to engage in the brutality that masquerades as indiscriminate frankness. The "philosophy of the here-and-now," of "you do your thing and I'll do mine," is not my thing unless I am willing to face the consequences of my acts, to eschew needless hurting of others, and to know that no matter how into myself I am, from time to time I will surely act like a fool.
p.26
Do we build a house to stand forever?...
Does hatred remain in the land forever?
Does the river raise and carry the flood forever?
...From the days of old there is no permanence.
-- Utnapishtim
p.39
Childhoods Less Than Perfect
Contemporary pilgrims, whose spiritual journeys occur in the course of their psychotherapy experience, have grown up in the Freudian age, which inspires them to be much preoccupied with the conditions of t heir childhoods for which they blame their current misery. As with the rest of us, their childhoods were less than perfect.
Children are, after all, inevitably helpless and dependent, no matter what resources they may develop for coping with that towering world in which they live. Parents always turn out to be a disappointment, one way or another. Frustrations are many, and life is inherently unmanageable.
-- Lao Tzu
Helpless as we all are as children, to change the world, or to move on and take care of ourselves, we must develop ways of pretending that we are not so powerless. The fantasies developed in childhood, and maintained right to the door of the therapist's office, are termed "neuroses" in our Freudian age. But as we can see in the Epic of Gilgamesh, men have always tried to maintain illusions to protect themselves from living with the anguish of their unimportant momentary existence and their helplessness to change the absurdity of their needless suffering.
p.40
... but when I am not working, I am far more likely to fool myself, to indulge in my cruelty, and to trip on my arrogance.
p.43
But what if we are talking to ourselves?
What if there is no one out there listening?
What if for each of us the only wise man,
the only wizard, the only good parent we will
ever have is our own helpless, vulnerable self?
What then?
p.63
Even the most neurotically self-depreciating adult cannot maintain that she was once inadequate at being a baby
p.86
Don Quixote's Quest, the personal pilgrimage of his mad life, was to live in 'the world as it is traversed by man as he ought to be.' If this be the wine of madness, then I say: come fill my cup.
p.92
One such man is a lunatic. Twenty constitute an acceptable and sane community.
p.95
If we flee from the evil in ourselves, we do it at our hazard. All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation. To live without the creative potential of our own destructiveness is to be a cardboard angel.
p.109
The repentant sinner is ever God's favorite child. Every man lives in a state of vague Kafkaesque guilt. Like Job, we all feel that if we suffer, there must be a reason for it; that if we are unhappy it must be that we deserve it. So it is that we long for forgiveness, for redemption.
p.132
Canus: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. There is only this life. Live it, or give it up! It does no good to choose to live it reluctantly, hedging by whining that it's not sufficient that someone must make it better for you.
p.135
I came to therapy to receive butter for the bread of life. Instead, at the end, I emerged with a pail of sour milk, a churn, and instructions on how to use them.
p.138
Song of the Pygmies
There is darkness all around us;
but if darkness is, and the darkness
is of the forest, then the darkness
must be good.
p.139
Tony's Session
p.177-183
Freedom... another word for nothing left to lose. A man, after all is only a man.
p.193
The sage arrives without going
p.196
Once in the Orient, I talked of suicide with a sage whose clear and gentle eyes seemed forever to be gazing at a never ending sunset. "Dying is no solution," he affirmed. "And living?" I asked. "Nor living either," he conceded. "But, who tells you there is a solution?"
p.197
It was a trap. It led nowhere. One of the reasons I stopped geting high was that colorful fog came to seem like the only reality. Living between highs was too often an empty drag ... since that time, chemically induced pilgrimages have seemed to me to be misleading detours. The way must not be sought by putting ecstasy into my body, but by finding it within myself. Drugs can give you pleasure and being high can be fun but the essence of a pilgrim cannot be found in a vial.
p.203
They are sure there is a right way to do things, though they have not yet found it. Someone in authority must know. Instead of understanding that ideas are merely feeble intellectual attempts to get a momentary hold on the unceasing flux of life, they act as though Nature imitates Art.
An Eschatological Laundry List: A Partial Register of the 927 Eternal Truths
This is it!
There are no hidden meanings.
You can't get there from here, and besides there's no place else to go.
We are all already dying, and we will be dead for a long time.
Nothing lasts.
There is no way of getting all you want.
You can't have anything unless you let go of it.
You only get to keep what you give away.
There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.
The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no compensation for misfortune.
You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
It is a random universe to which we bring meaning.
You don't really control anything.
You can't make anyone love you.
No one is any stronger or any weaker than anyone else.
Everyone is, in his own way, vulnerable.
There are no great men.
If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.
Everyone lies, cheats, pretends (yes, you too, and most certainly I myself).
All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation
All of you is worth something, if you will only own it.
Progress is an illusion.
Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.
Yes it is necessary to keep on struggling torward solution.
Childhood is a nightmare.
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.
Each of us is ultimately alone.
The most important things, each man must do for himself.
Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that's all there is.
How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.
We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge.
All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.
Yet we are responsible for everything we do.
No excuses will be accepted.
You can run, but you can't hide.
It is most important to run out of scapegoats.
We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.
The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.
All of the significant battles are waged within the self.
You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.
What do you know...for sure...anyway?
Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again...
Until next time ...