If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him by Sheldon Kopp

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him by Sheldon Kopp

Author:Sheldon Kopp
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-21T22:00:00+00:00


9. Tale of a Holy Warrior

John Bunyan chose to spend almost twelve years in prison, chose an anti-Establishment, religious non-conformity that cost him his freedom, while it earned him the opportunity to witness for what he believed in. He was a seventeenth-century English workingman, the son of a tinker, who became a dissenting preacher in the service of Puritanism, that “austere disciplining of life in the service of a fervid religious faith.”1

He wrote to tell his tale, to find his way, and to encourage his shepherdless congregation to face up to both political oppression and human temptation. He asks them to remember as they read his tale: “I have sent you here enclosed a drop of that honey that I have taken out of the carcass of a lion (Judg. 14:5-9). I have eaten thereof myself also, and am much refreshed thereby.”2

The most memorable rendering of his spiritual struggle is his allegorical novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress.3 The personal urgency of his journey is clear from the very beginning:

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled: and not being able longer to contain, he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying: “What shall I do?”4

Many patients about to enter onto the pilgrimage of psychotherapy also find themselves turned toward this venture by disturbing dreams, night visions that are prophetic statements of their spiritual/emotional crises. I remember one tortured young clergyman whose underlying motivation for seeking help was the growing recognition that he had learned the tricks of successful ministry in the absence of really feelingful spiritual substance. The superficial manipulative skills, which had served to make him appealing to many, were growing ineffective as he began to realize that his brand of inspirational goodness was a subtle form of evil, that he was up to no good. The week of his first meeting with me, he had dreamed that he was a powerful warlock casting spells. But in this dream he found all at once that his magical gestures and incantations no longer forked any lightning. He hexed impotently with his hands and muttered sorcerer’s gibberish, only to discover that for the first time no one was controlled by his witchcraft. That was the beginning of a long struggle which gradually allowed him to reclaim and renew his faith, not through control of others but through surrender to himself.

Bunyan’s dream-figure is Christian, the spiritual pilgrim of this allegory. The book is the Holy Bible, through which he has become aware of the prophecy of his coming destruction. He and his entire community are all to be “burned with fire from heaven.



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