ABSTRACT
There is a Zen saying that if one meets the Buddha on the road one should kill him. It is tempting to see this as a further Japanese exhortation to holy violence, but the lesson is inspired, perhaps, by yet another setra, contained in the RatnakEXa collection. In this setra a group of virtuous Bodhisattvas are depressed at the thought that no matter how moral they are in this life their spiritual progress will be hindered by the immoral deeds they did during their infinite past lives, ‘killing their fathers, mothers or Arhats; destroying Buddhist temples or stepas; or disrupting the Satgha’. As a skilful means in order to help these Bodhisattvas let go of the conception of Self which is at the root of their spiritual anguish, Mañjuzrc, the Bodhisattva particularly associated with wisdom, took up a sharp sword and lunged towards the Buddha with the intention of killing him. The sword is Mañjuzrc’s sword of wisdom, his principal iconographic feature in Buddhist art. The Buddha deflected this apparently murderous intent. The point of the lesson was, it seems, two-fold. First, the Buddha who appears before the assembly is empty of intrinsic existence, and he is thus truly ‘killed’ when he is seen this way. Second, since not just the Buddha but all things lack intrinsic existence, if the Bodhisattvas can gain an insight into emptiness, their past wicked deeds can be understood as ultimately illusory and no real barrier to spiritual progress. Recognizing the moral dangers of this teaching, the setra adds that those in the assembly whose spiritual progress was mediocre, through the Buddha’s power, failed to see Mañjuzrc with his sword and hear the Buddha’s teaching on the subject.1
