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Comment by bravura | Hacker News Reader

In the ninth century, the Buddhist sage Lin Chi told a monk, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."

I've been singlegänging around too long to let some upstart take the chalice. There can be only one.

I have two name doppelgängers on the internet. One I get spam for, the other I apparently get recruiting spam for. (We’re both software engineers.)

It was delightfully funny when a Google interviewer called me for a phone screen one random morning, and was quite annoyed I had no idea what they were talking about. Then I realized what happened.

“Do you think I’m an Android engineer from Yahoo?” “Uh… yes?” “Yeah, that’s not me.”

I later looked him up on LinkedIn. Turns out, he got the job.

I used to get those from Google about the person with my name who worked for Microsoft doing compiler stuff. Well, I didn't take any calls, just emails.

There's a lot of people with my name though... including a well-known author. I was really freaked out when I was taking a lunch break and the NPR announcer said I was to be interviewed on Fresh Air later in the day. I was woefully unprepared for such an interview; thankfully, it wasn't really me.

Alas, I can't find it, but there was a documentary quite a while ago (the 90s or aughts, maybe?) where the documentarian invited several people to dinner that all shared the same name with him.

I remember thinking it was kind of weird and cool

What was the purpose and context of that quote?

I’m not familiar with the lore enough.

What is the significance of there being a/the buddha existing?

I studied this a long time ago so I am rusty, but the meaning behind it from what I remember was that if you meet the buddha you kill him, because its killing your own biases, expectations and conceptions. The buddha on the road is supposed to be yourself in this situation.

“a Buddha” not “the Buddha”

That's not the quote, although I guess you could argue it needs a [sic]

Like "That's one small step for [a] man..."

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/07/13/armstron...

Nope, it's "the Buddha".

Technically, Chinese doesn't have words for "a" or "the". It's only in English and other Western languages that the distinction makes sense.

The distinction makes sense everywhere, but it's not tracked in Chinese (as in many other languages).

It's still possible to look at a Chinese text and determine accurately whether an English translation should mark definiteness or indefiniteness on particular nouns. That wouldn't be possible if the distinction didn't make sense.

Please explain the difference between a Buddha and the Buddha.

A Buddha is someone who reached enlightenment.

The Buddha is Buddha the guy.

Actually, The Buddha we all know about (Siddharta Gotama, affectionately called Sakyamuni, as he belonged to the Sakyan clan) is indeed the Buddha of our current world system, but there were Buddhas before him and there will be Buddhas after him -- they will just belong to different world systems. The next Buddha is referred to as Metteyya (Maitreya for the Mahayana folks).

An enlightened person is called an Arahat (Arahant). They are not Buddhas. The Buddha is one person in one world-system who rediscovers the Dhamma (Dharma) after it has been lost. Often a Buddha goes on to teach that Dhamma, but there are certain Buddhas who arise who never teach. These are called Paccekka Buddhas.

I guess it depends on your school of Buddhism and I think your statement is more in line with Theravada. In Vajrayana formulations, though, the goal is Buddhahood in a single lifetime and there are countless Buddhas that are used in practice. For example, in Aityoga [1] you'll often do visualization practice as, say, Tara [2] or Medicine Buddha [3]. Of course, all of it is ultimately considered illusion, as Niguma articulated so well in her dohas [4], but it's all useful for practice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzogchen

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(Buddhism)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaisajyaguru

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niguma

Citation? If I search Google for "meet buddha on the road kill him" (note, no "a" or "the") all the results show "the."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linji_Yixuan

An uncited translation that the article says comes from a manga comic. I'll trust the thousands of other translations a little more.

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