[MD] The Word is Not the Thing

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ron]
I was thinking that metaphysics was sort of the same thing to the 
intellectual level, it gives you a high like dynamic quality but it 
leaves you with a hangover.It's not it and quickly becomes static and corrupt.

[Arlo]
Right on, Ron. Too many people have a problem mistaking the forest 
for the trees. We crave junk-food (exotericism) when a diet of 
healthy food (esotericism) is much better for us.

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."

 From the "Daily Buddhism" website.

"The road is generally taken to mean the path to Enlightenment; that 
might be through meditation, study, prayer, or just some aspect of 
your way of life. Your life is your "road." That's fairly 
straightforward as far as metaphors go.

But how do you meet the Buddha on this "road?" Imagine meeting some 
symbolic Buddha. Would he be a great teacher that you might actually 
meet and follow in the real world?  Could that Buddha be you 
yourself, having reached Enlightenment?  Or maybe you have some 
idealized image of perfection that equates to your concept of the 
Buddha or Enlightenment.

Whatever your conception is of the Buddha, it's WRONG! Now kill that 
image and keep practicing.  This all has to do with the idea that 
reality is an impermanent illusion. If you believe that you have a 
correct image of what it means to be Enlightened, then you need to 
throw out (kill) that image and keep meditating.

Most people have heard the first chapter of the Tao, "The Tao that 
can be named is not the eternal Tao." (So if you think you see the 
real Tao, kill it and move on)."

This is why, historically, people have always had to invent new 
symbols, new fingers, new pointers, new art, because the 
signs/symbols/pointers/fingers/art become stale, they become 
cemented, reified and no longer serve us as pointers but as 
destinations. Metaphors become taken as "literal". We forget that 
"all this is just an analogy" and demand it to be "literal fact".

When we meet the Buddha on the road, we beg for her to make us her 
acolytes and priests and followers.