Q37. How can a murderer be awakened?
~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
This can be answered very easily. What is called ‘the person’ (or ‘the individual’) has to be killed before being arahant. If what we call ‘the person’ hasn’t been killed, there’s no way to be arahant. First, the idea of ‘the person,’ of ‘self,’ of ‘I’ and ‘he’ or ‘she,’ of ‘being’ or ‘individual’ is killed. That is, any attachment to the ideas that ‘this is an animal,’ ‘this is a person,’ ‘this is an abiding entity,’ or ‘this is a self’ are dropped. To do this is to kill the person or to kill off the thing we refer to as ‘the person.’ Doing this, one simultaneously becomes arahant. Hence it is said that the person is killed off before being arahant.
The Buddha sometimes used stronger words than above. On several occasions he said that the parents must be killed before being arahant. ‘Mother and father’ are the defilements of ignorance, craving, and clinging, or any karmic activities that function as parents or propagators cooperating to give birth to the ‘I,’ to the idea of ‘the person.’ They must be killed off to become arahant.
Then there is the story of Aṅgulimāla, a notorious killer. Aṅgulimāla became arahant by killing off the person. When he heard the word ‘stop’ from the Buddha, he understood it in its right sense. Some people, through misunderstanding, try to explain what the Buddha meant in saying that he had ‘stopped,’ by explaining that he had stopped killing people as Aṅgulimāla was still doing when they met. That is, they explain that the Buddha had stopped all killing, whereas Aṅgulimāla was still going about killing people. This isn’t the right explanation. When the Buddha said ‘I have stopped,’ he meant ‘I have stopped being "the person," have completely ceased being "the person."’ Aṅgulimāla understood this rightly, with the result that he too was able to kill off the person, to kill the idea of being this individual. Thus Aṅgulimāla became arahant like the Buddha.
Even the simple word ‘stop’ in this story has been mis- understood by most people. It has been wrongly understood, wrongly explained, wrongly discussed, and wrongly taught, so that the account becomes self-contradictory. To say that one becomes arahant merely by ceasing to kill people is ridiculous. One has to stop being the person and kill the clinging belief in individuals, selves, ‘I,’ and ‘they,’ before one can be arahant. In other words, to become arahant, kill ‘the person.’
(From “Buddha-Dhamma for Inquiring Minds”)
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Buddha-Dhamma for Students (title of original translation) was composed of two talks given by Ajahn Buddhadāsa in January 1966 to students at Thammasat University, Bangkok. It was translated from the Thai by Rod Bucknell, and revised in 2018 by Santikaro Upasaka. To read/download as free ebook (pdf).
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Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives E-389