If You Meet the Buddha on the Way, Kill Him
(Reflections Inspired by Chapter 8 of Pema Chödrön’s The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness)
The Illusion of One Truth
There’s a part in many of us that longs for certainty — a place to rest, a way to say, “This is it. I’ve found the answer.” It feels safe to believe that we’ve discovered the one path, the true teaching, the right way to live.
And yet, this very longing — innocent as it may be — is often the beginning of separation.
Pema Chödrön shines a clear and unflinching light on this tendency. She writes about the quiet but dangerous way we begin to cling to our truths, and how this clinging leads not to liberation, but to conflict — both within and without.
She speaks of how even in spiritual communities, people begin to argue, compare, and divide. Who’s doing it right? Who’s the better teacher? Which path is the real one?
It’s not just about religion or ideology. It’s about a deeper habit in the human mind — the desire to make things fixed, knowable, unchanging. And in doing so, we stop seeing clearly.
There’s a moment in the chapter when Pema shares one of the most startling lines from Buddhist tradition:
“If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him.”
This saying is deliberately provocative. It shakes the mind awake.
It means: if you think you’ve captured truth in a form — a teaching, a person, a practice, a belief — let it go. Because the moment you believe “this is it,” you’ve already lost touch with what’s real.
You’re no longer relating to life directly. You’re relating to your version of it — your concept, your symbol, your frozen idea.
“If you meet the Buddha and say to yourself, ‘It is this way. The Buddha is like this,’ you like more that Buddha — the one you can describe, control, and explain, kill him.
We project our longing onto teachers, leaders, authors, or sacred figures. We elevate them, follow them, quote them — sometimes even worship them. And slowly, without noticing, we give our power away. We do this all the time.
We stop looking into our own direct experience, and instead cling to someone else’s truth. We lose our connection to the fluid, changing, breathing world — and grip instead to an image, a certainty, a name.
That’s why the instruction is so fierce. Not to promote violence — but to protect us from the deep spiritual violence of forgetting ourselves.
The Fundamentalism of Belief
Pema writes that fundamentalism — whether personal or collective — is born from our fear of groundlessness. From our discomfort with not knowing. From the trembling truth that there is no final answer.
So we choose sides. We cling to one view. We begin to divide: who is right, who is wrong? And from there, the seeds of conflict begin to grow.
This is how wars begin. But it’s also how relationships fall apart. How communities break. How we isolate ourselves inside our certainty. How we stop listening. How we lose touch with the tender, contradictory truth of being alive.
“There is not one truth,” Not one way. Not one method. Not one perfect teacher. Just the courage to meet what is real — moment by moment.
We don’t just do this with ideologies. We do it with teachers, too. We elevate certain voices, certain figures, certain lineages — and place them above life itself. We follow people more than we follow presence. We take refuge in their certainty instead of meeting our own experience directly.
The Practice of Letting Go
This chapter is not a condemnation — it’s an invitation.
Pema isn’t telling us not to practice or to stop learning. She’s pointing us back to something deeper: a willingness to stay open.
Mindfulness, in this light, is not just watching the breath or calming the mind. It’s seeing our own need to grasp. It’s recognizing when we’ve started clinging to a “truth” that cuts us off from life.
Real practice is asking ourselves, gently:
“Am I using this belief to stay present — or to avoid discomfort?”
“Am I seeing clearly — or defending what I already think I know?”
“Am I following someone — or listening to myself?”
Meeting the Buddha — and Letting Him Go
Reading this chapter touched something deep in me.
It reminded me of how often I want to find the answer. How often I reach for a figure to admire, a teaching to hold on to, a system to explain things. How often I wish to have the only truth. And how — even in subtle ways — I begin to disappear inside those beliefs.
But what Pema invites us into is something more honest. Something more alive.
A path not of answers, but of presence. Not of certainty, but of courage.
So the next time I meet the Buddha —in a book, in a thought, in a person, in a moment of insight —may I bow in gratitude…and then remember the teaching:
“If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him.”
Not to destroy, but to stay free.Not to disrespect, but to stay awake. Not to dismiss truth, but to make room for the infinite ways it continues to unfold.
