Art of Survival

It sounds more Taliban than zen , but there is a saying among teachers of the latter way of life, "If you see the Buddha, kill him!" The point being made in Zen's challenging way is that Buddha was a teacher not a god, and therefore visions or worship of him are forms of idolatry his followers should not fall for.

In March this year, Muslim extremists, for ideas of their own about idolatry, used dynamite to "kill" the giant Buddhas in Bamiyan, in the high peaks west of the Afghan capital Kabul. While blowing up...