If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him.

You may be familiar with the Zen illustration of the finger pointing out the moon. According to the story, we can become so enamored with the finger that we miss the moon it’s pointing to. So it is with much in life. We focus on the form and miss the content.

Among the opening words of ACIM we read: “The Course makes no claim to finality, nor are the Workbook lessons intended to bring the student’s learning to completion. At the end, the reader is left in the hands of his or her own Internal Teacher, Who will direct all subsequent learning as He sees fit. While the Course is comprehensive in scope, truth cannot be limited to any finite form…"

Among the closing words of the Course we read: “This Course is a beginning not an end…”

The Course isn’t intended to be a destination. By its own admission, it’s a way-station. Like the “good” guru that doesn’t want followers, but wants people to become their own guru, the purpose of the Course is to lead us beyond the Course itself.

Tradition tells us that Sidhartha said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” The Buddha on the road can appear in most any form --- a person, a place, an event, a book (Bible, Koran, even A Course in Miracles) --- all can be used as an authority external to oneself. To do this with ACIM is to miss the point of the Course in the first place.

The spiritual power we see in those who saw what most of us don’t, people like Sidhartha and Jesus, is that they lived as their own authority. Sidhartha pointed his disciples back to themselves as their own authorities (subsequent generations to him did not). Jesus pointed his disciples back to themselves (“the Kingdom of heaven is within you.”) (subsequent generations to him did not).

ACIM states it is a course in mind training. We might even see it much more like a course in mind-untraining. The Course systematically takes us through steps designed to remove the barriers of our previous social, political, and spiritual/religious training --- previous training that actually blocks our awareness and use of what the Course calls the Inner Teacher. This is the Course’s objective: to turn us back to ourselves as our own authority.

Nothing could be more consistent with the Course than for us to get to the place where we, literally, throw it in the trash. The Course is not a destination. It’s a way-station.

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