"if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." -- Zen Master Linji, (the founder of the Rinzai sect)
the quote above is usually interpreted to mean that if you think you've met someone who fits your notion of who the Buddha is, it's actually not Buddha, and the best thing to do is to "kill" your notion of Buddha by ridding it from your mind.
The song "Gunnin' for the Buddha" is about a couple of friends who enjoy discussing ancient Eastern philosophy while traveling through Greece (or through Europe, including Greece) together. these characters Mark and Danny are "gunning for the Buddha" in that they are pondering the teachings of the Zen Master Linji, questioning their personal conceptions of the Buddha, and/or possibly playing a game at trying to spot (read: hunting for) fake (or "half-baked") Buddhas. While agreeing to do so, they joke about "gunning" (substituted in place of "killing") for the Buddha during their travels.
They encounter one such would-be Buddha in a bar "down south" from their Greek hotel. he is disussing politics and nuclear fission in a pompous, self-important, probably inebriated ("all washed up") enough to result in a wicked hangover ("Moving on into the body of a beetle/ Getting ready for a long long crawl") possibly they consider getting into a philosophical discussion with the drunken blowhard in their attempt to expose him as a phony, thus "killing" the fake Buddha.
they take a bus uptown where they find more fake Buddhas, which they expose as fake by way of arguments relating to "Death and Money" (in discussing politics & economics) they describe themselves as "philosophical assassins" and as "deadly angels for reality and passion" in warning us not to be persuaded by "half-baked Buddhas" lest we be left with "nothing".
"if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." -- Zen Master Linji, (the founder of the Rinzai sect)
the quote above is usually interpreted to mean that if you think you've met someone who fits your notion of who the Buddha is, it's actually not Buddha, and the best thing to do is to "kill" your notion of Buddha by ridding it from your mind.
The song "Gunnin' for the Buddha" is about a couple of friends who enjoy discussing ancient Eastern philosophy while traveling through Greece (or through Europe, including Greece) together. these characters Mark and Danny are "gunning for the Buddha" in that they are pondering the teachings of the Zen Master Linji, questioning their personal conceptions of the Buddha, and/or possibly playing a game at trying to spot (read: hunting for) fake (or "half-baked") Buddhas. While agreeing to do so, they joke about "gunning" (substituted in place of "killing") for the Buddha during their travels.
They encounter one such would-be Buddha in a bar "down south" from their Greek hotel. he is disussing politics and nuclear fission in a pompous, self-important, probably inebriated ("all washed up") enough to result in a wicked hangover ("Moving on into the body of a beetle/ Getting ready for a long long crawl") possibly they consider getting into a philosophical discussion with the drunken blowhard in their attempt to expose him as a phony, thus "killing" the fake Buddha.
they take a bus uptown where they find more fake Buddhas, which they expose as fake by way of arguments relating to "Death and Money" (in discussing politics & economics) they describe themselves as "philosophical assassins" and as "deadly angels for reality and passion" in warning us not to be persuaded by "half-baked Buddhas" lest we be left with "nothing".