The Wisdom of No Escape: How to love yourself and your world

by Pema Chödrön

There are wars all over the world because people are insulted that someone else doesn’t agree with their belief system. Everybody is guilty of it. It’s what is called fundamental theism. You want something to hold on to, you want to say, ‘Finally I have found it. This is it, and now I feel confirmed and secure and righteous.’ Buddhism is not free of it either. This is a human thing. But in Buddhism there is a teaching that would seemingly undercut all this, if people would only listen to it. It says, ‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha.’ This means that if you can find Buddha and say, ‘It’s this way; Buddha is like this,’ then you had better kill that ‘Buddha’ that you found, that you can say is like this. Contemplative and mystical Christians, Hindus, Jews, people of all faiths and nonfaiths can also have this perspective: if you meet the Christ that can be named, kill that Christ. If you meet the Muhammad or the Jehovah or whoever that can be named and held on to and believed in, smash it.