So the Bodhisattva are almost-enlightened ones who give up a fair bit of their enlightenment in order to help others along the path? Would it be too offensive to describe bodhisattva as the "Jesus Christ"s of Buddhism? Both sacrificed their own personal self for the good of others… and so on… Say, when describing Buddhism to non-Buddhists, would it be too offensive to describe Buddhists who have reached Nirvana as gods, or God, and bodhisattva as the JC’s?
–Tim
How many Zen Buddhist does it take to screw in a light bulb?
The nightingale singing in the garden.
Homer:
*Uhh…well, sorta. I’m honestly not too clear on that point myself. The question is one concerning the difference between “enlightenment” and “Nirvana.”
Achieving Nirvana, as I understand it, implies that one has escaped the laws of Kharma and the inevitable cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Getting out of that trap is the basic goal of almost all Hinduistic mysticism. It’s why Jainist go around sweeping bugs off the path in front of them: the theory is if you can balance out good Kharma with bad Kharma, acheiving a Kharmic balance of +/- 0, you will be freed from the constraints of rebirth. You only get reborn if you have too much good Kharma, or too much bad Kharma.
Buddha’s solution to the problem was to follow the Eight-Fold Path, which he also happens to have had the honor of first discovering. That’s the basis of monastic Buddhist practice.
“Enlightenment” is often used synonymously with “Nirvana,” however, so I’m not sure how different the two concepts really are, basically (I made this mistake myself in my last post, I now realize). But within Mahayana there must be some sort of difference, otherwise how do you explain boddhisattvas? So, not really expert enough here to give you a very good answer to your question, I suspect that boddhisattvas are enlightened – they know how to acheive Nirvana (extinguishment) and could do so today, if they so wished, but they choose not to. They are supernatural beings who have decided not to leave the wheel in order to help the less fortunate.
Not offensive at all. But also maybe not so accurate. Consider Avalokita; he’s an old God. In Tibet, he was a she, and her name was Tara. You see, according to Buddhist scripture, many Gods, Goddesses, supernatural beings from various heavens and so forth, came to talk to Buddha after he had acheived enlightenment and ask him, basically, “Dude! How did you do that?” Because they were also, unfortunately, bound by the laws of Kharma (see Krishna’s lectures to various kings concerning this question. At one he points to a column of ants marching along the floor and explains that by the inescapable laws of Kharma, he will also one day be an ant). After that, Avalokita became the Boddhisattva of Compassion. (Actually, I think he sprang up from a teardrop, but the principle is the basically the same. To explain it clearly: old gods were incorporated into a new Buddhist context. ) So the Boddhisattvas are actually supernatural beings that have chosen to stick around and help mankind after having learned from Buddha how to shuffle off this mortal coil.
JC comes with a profound message to man, transforming the image of God from wrathful to loving, and (if you buy the hype) “absorbing” the sins of mankind to allow for spiritual redemtion. In addition, in speaking of Christian doctrine, there is an explicit acceptance of an immortal soul. So JC is really a Messiah, and a new religion was established as a result of his teachings.
Boddhisattvas don’t really play the same role in Buddhism, to my understanding. For one thing, the basic dilemma of Buddhism is suffering, not sin; and the solution is relief from suffering, not redemtion. In addition, the real heresey inherent in Buddhism, vis a vis Hinduism, is the insistance that nothing is permanent – not Brahman (sp?), the universal soul, nor Atman, that spark of Brahman that exists in every human, according to Hindus. Rejection of the concept of permanence puts Buddhism at odds with Christianity as well, which posits both a Permanent Big Guy (God, I believe they call him) and a permenant little guy (the soul, if I’ve understood correctly).
…the basic dilemma of Buddhism is suffering, not sin…
Are not suffering and sin both the result of want?
…and the solution is relief from suffering, not redemtion…
Is not redemtion relief from suffering?
…Rejection of the concept of permanence puts Buddhism at odds with Christianity…
Buddha did not reject the permanence of the road.
He just took a short cut.
That’s why you must kill him if you see him on the road.
Acid:
*Well, if you want to speak to Buddhist doctrine, specfically, suffering (dukkha) is the result of attachment (samudaya/tanha). Sin, understood to mean “seperation from God,” doesn’t really exist in a Buddhist framework.
*A Christian might make this claim, but I doubt a Buddhist would. Certainly, redemtion might lead to release from a certain kind of suffering, but not from all suffering, as is promised by the Buddha. Nor is release from suffering the purpose of redemtion, as I understand it (although it might arguably be a side-effect); redemtion through grace allows one to reconnect with God.
I’ve done some more searching, and thus far I still can’t locate the actual source of the koan. The only thing I’ve really come up with is a reference to a book with entitled If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him, (Sheldon B. Kopp, 1972) and actually dealing more with psychotherapy than with Zen.
I’ll keep looking and let you know if I turn up anything else, Charms.
Oh, and Homer, in some Buddhist sects, including Mahayana, JC is believed to be a lama, or enlightened one, like a boddhisattva.
AcidKid: The central idea of Buddhism is that you don’t avoid suffering by changing your external circumstances but by changing your inner thoughts. Suffering comes from attachment to the world. So you suffer because you are starving, poor, sick, or because your servants don’t respect you, or that your invincable soldiers have only conquered half the world not all of it. You can’t avoid suffering by changing the world, only yourself. So you are still sick, starving, etc, you just don’t care that you are sick. You realize that being sick is a meaningless illusion. When you realize that you no longer suffer.
If I meet Buddha on the road, can I just rub his belly?
Let’s make a simple diagram here to help me understand some basic tenants of Buddhism.
Let’s pretend that right and wrong are non-relative. Pretend there is a zero point between right and wrong, and that actions can be increasingly right and increasingly wrong.
So we have a line:
<----Wronger—0---Righter---->
Now let’s make a second line, of good and bad. This lines is the effects of actions on the world at large.
<----Worse—0---Better---->
Now let’s make a third line, of happy and sad. This line is the effects (on you) of the the effects of the actions on the world at large.
<----Discontented—0---Contented---->
Now let’s intersect the first two at 90* angles so we have four quadrants, Wrong/Bad, Wrong/Good, Right/Bad, and Right/Good. Now let’s intersect the third line at a 90* angle to the other two, so we have a 3D graph. So now we have Wrong/Bad/Dis, Wrong/Bad/Con, Wrong/Good/Dis, Wrong/Bad/Con, Right/Bad/Dis, Right/Bad/Con, Right/Good/Dis, Right/Good/Con.
We can call Karma proximity to zero. Anything further from zero is an increasing amount of Karma, whether good or bad. Karma is only zero’d out when everything is nearest zero.
So achieving Nirvana would be, basically, zeroing out everything. All your right makes up for all your wrong, all the good makes up for the bad, all the contentment makes up for the discontentment, you hit zero all around, and poof, ding ding ding, you’ve won the game!
Being enlightened would be understanding how this works, and the methods required to “win”, so to say. And Boddhisattvas know how it works and can win at any time, but choose not to so as to help others learn?
But in winning, do you not also lose? By winning you have chosen a single path which denies you the wealth of opportunities of the paths not taken. Who is to say that a winning path is greater than a losing path? To lose has so much more available than to win. Perhaps winning and losing are both arbitrary and merely a product of not realizing that they are the same. In winning, you lose the opportunity of losing. And in losing, you lose the opportunity to win.
–Tim
PS I have respect for your beliefs, and I apologize if I step on any toes. It makes it easier for me to visualize this way. Sorry if I offend.
First, quickly, regarding the OP:
I haven’t found any more info regarding the question about killing the Buddha, and at this point I’m beginning to seriously doubt it’s authenticity as a true “koan.” I suspect that it’s just some slogan (possibly Zen) that Kopp picked up on and popularized as the title of his book in 1972, that subsequently came to be a well-known phrase; but if anyone else has any other info, I’d be interested to hear it.
Homer:
I don’t at all take offense to your intelligent questions, but I might not be the best person in the world to answer them. Also, due to time constraints, this will be a brief post.
To boil down the question to its essence, then: first, I think your chart seems a bit overly complicated. The real issue, when it comes to Karma, is morals.
In other words, the doctrine of Karma implies that there is an underlying moral structure to the universe. So the important axis in your chart, above, would be the right-to-wrong one. Karmac law posits that there are Right Actions, Neutral Actions, and Wrong Actions.
Anytime you perform a Right (Good) action, you “plant a seed” in the present, as it were; the seed will ripen, and eventually you will be rewarded with a good result. This is known as “reaping the fruits of Good Karma.”
Anytime you perform a Wrong (Bad) action, you “plant a seed” in the present, as it were; the seed will ripen, and eventually you will be rewarded with a bad result. This is known as “reaping the fruits of Bad Karma.” And so on.
You can see the principle at work most clearly in close interpersonal relations – when you’re irritated, for example, and snap at a work-mate, and they snap back at you. Bad act – bad response (fruit).
However, the fruits of Karma (the word means, literally, “action”) ripen at different rates. For example, your work-mate might not snap back, but instead go around thinking that you aren’t such a pleasant fellow really. He might say something negative about you to some of the other folks in the office; your boss might hear about it, and decide a few weeks later that maybe you aren’t really ready for that promotion after all. You still reap the fruit of your bad karma, it just takes a little longer.
Karmic results, however, can take even longer to make themselves felt. In fact, they can span several lifetimes. If you’re a real shithead in this life, you might not taste the fruits of your actions until several lives further on, for example. (For what it’s worth, I think this is only one of several moral dilemmas posed by the Law of Karma, which is why I don’t really buy it, fully.)
Regarding the idea of acheiving zero Karma: that is the basic technique behind Jainism, if I’ve understood correctly. It is not, however, the idea behind Buddhism. Buddha followed the Jains for a long time before his enlightenment, and almost died as a result. His method, on the other hand, the “middle-way,” is a special technique that allows the practitioner to perceive the working of karma, and thus free himself from them. This is called the Noble Eight-Fold Path; it involved (if we hold ourselves to Theravada) a rigourous practice of concentration exercises along with “vipassana” meditation.
Vipassana means “insight,” and much like the SDMB, it’s main goal is the erradication of ignorance – in this case, ignorance of the workings of consciousness as tied to Karma and Samsara (the material world, essentially, although the word really means, “repetition.”)
The mistake here, the Buddha would probably say, is your attachment to “winning” and “losing.” These concepts are illusions that your mind has attached itself to; if you can truly realize this, you will be one step closer to Nirvana.
Good luck! If you make it, don’t forget to send us a postcard!
Mr. Svinlesha:
Thank you for your time and answers.
I realize I over-complexified (is that even a word?) by designing my chart. However, sometimes extraneous complexity allows us to see something we would not have with simplicity. What that is at the moment, I don’t know, I’m just trying to justify my overcomplexity. 
Absolutely! That was something I was trying to shadow, that there is no winning or losing, because winning and losing are the same thing. The only difference between them is your perception of yourself, whether you have perceived that you have lost, or perceived that you have won. In accepting that perception, you have disallowed yourself access to other, equally valid, perceptions of the same occurance.
–Tim
This book is a remarkable work, well worth reading, and I have found all Kopp’s books to be of value. It was a staple item in most bookstores for years, best-seller and all that.
As I recall, his explanation of the saying is that heroes diminish us.
If you find someone extraordinary and follow their teaching, you are likely to take their way, rather than looking to your own reality and finding your own solutions.
That’s why asking others for explanations of koans is pointless. The point of the question about the sound of one hand clapping is the search for the answer, rather than the answer (although I’m still grateful to Bart for his solution).
Kopp was able to find profound meaning in fairy tales, including the Wizard of Oz, and wrote with great honesty about his own failings and weaknesses. Which, I suppose, was a way of deterring his readers from seeing him as the source of The Way.
Bart = Bart Simpson.
Just in case anyone was confused. Sorry folks.
Redbart
The closest thing that I could find to the phrase in “The Mumonkan”, a classic collection of Zen koans with commentaries, is the following:
Something like the closing lines to the poem, in a memory telephone game, could be behind the mutation into the killing-Buddha thing. Any intermediate steps between it and Kopp, I dunno.
I have always believed that the law of Karma was amoral, and simply reflected the actions performed, without judgement as to whether an action was “good” or “bad”. The law of gravity, for example, works in a similar way, acting equally on all objects, whether they have large or small mass.
No meaning that comes from outside of themselves is real. The buddhahood of each of us has already been obtained. We need only recognize it. The zen master warns his disciple: if you meet the Buddha in the road kill him!
It’s a book of stories about psychotherapy.
Sweet evil zombie buddha.
Bolding mine.
Hmm. How’s that practice going for you? 
You mean sweet evil zombie bodhisattva, of course. As was mentioned upthread, Buddhas are never reborn.