I think I need to let go of Buddha. I thought I had gotten over him but evidently I’m still sticking to him, like a person in emotional turmoil sticks to whoever he finds trustworthy. I don’t like made up things, I don’t like things that have discreet origin and prejudiced origin. I don’t want to, and maybe can’t, go into his origins but ultimately he is a name and an image that’s imprinted on my mind. Nirvana is a goal that I somehow set for myself. They both have discreet origins, I can see the fakeness. The mind needs a name for whatever it does or seeks. And once it gets the name it obsesses over it. That’s when things get corrupted. It is better to go nameless. Yes I am inspired by a force but it may not be Buddha. Yes I have a goal and purpose but it may not be nirvana. I think it is better to curiously go through life. Mind needs assurance, it wants a predictable future, a predefined path. It wants to plan everything. I think it is better to go unplanned, better to let deeper instincts lead the life.
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A person who destroys religious icons, statues or artifacts is called an iconoclast.
Maybe “killing” Budda is what needs to be done before you can become Budda-like.
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I don’t think anyone’s goal is “Nirvana” as it was described originally, quaero. People cling to Nirvana as paradise. They cling to Nirvana as an end to all suffering, unaware that life is suffering, and nirvana is not life and not death. It is the absence of all things, and thus impossible to look for.
I think the Buddha himself compared a human inquiring about Nirvana to a tadpole asking a frog that had been on land how the land was. The tadpole can only ask about what he sees, so he asks, “is land wet? Do you breathe water? Are there sharks?” And the frog has to say no to everything, because land is a negation of everything the tadpole knows. Nirvana is a negation of all things, which may be paradoxical but isn’t, because our system of logic in all it’s assumptions is incomplete, and so our paradoxes aren’t actually paradoxes in truth.
Long story short, I agree with you. Better to let a thing be nameless.
Wonderful post. Thanks, D.S.S.
I don’t know how to reach that kind of point, letting go…. All I can manage is silence, and let my silence be my thoughts. The name goes unspoken many days, because it doesn’t feel like it belongs anymore.
I applaud you, quaero. Like dumping any security blanket, quitting Buddha will probably leave you cold, confused and with a lack of cosmic purpose. But if you can withstand that on your own two feet, I say you’re a wiser soul than anyone who ever clung to any mass belief.
In particular I have a gripe with Buddhism, which was forced on me at birth, because it is a very self centered teaching. All about purifying the SELF and attaining SELF enlightenment and your own private salvation, fuck the rest of the world because suffering is natural. Obsessing over your own secret Nirvana is as self-centered as the quest for seven virgins. I dislike all organized faith/philosophy but at least the ones that stress service and charity provide a useful message that directly addresses the question of why we bother to keep living. Nirvana, nonexistence, heaven, seven virgins, all those things are at the bullet end of a gun. Service, charity and making the world a better place is the only thing that saves me, and a few other people who have posted here with a reason to live. I know I’ve gone off topic from your reason for renouncing Buddha but I wanted to add another reason also. One that worked for me.