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If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients

Book by Sheldon B. Kopp · 7 quotes · Freedom, Self Acceptance, Absurdity

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If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients Quotes

“I do not mean to imply by this that a man can determine just what his world or his life will be like. A man, after all, is only a man. He stands somewhere between absolute freedom on the one hand, and total helplessness on the other. All of his important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data. It is enough if a man accepts his freedom, takes his best shot, does what he can, faces the consequences of his acts, and makes no excuses. It may not be fair that a man gets to have total responsibility for his own life without total control over it, but it seems to me that for good or for bad, that's just the way it is.”

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“That was when I finally got to it. This is just the way it was going to be. I could lose fifty pounds and be beautiful. I could write my Book of Books, and have it an underground success. I could even die and be reborn. But no matter what, I would always be as painfully shy and as bewildered by the social talk that brings people together, as shy and as bewildered as I had been since I was a kid. Without knowing what you say to leave without hurting, I pushed back my chair, stood up awkwardly, and silently wandered away. When I awoke I knew, for the first time again, that nothing ever really changes. The shyness is mine, like it or not. It's the best of me and the worst of me, and only the covering it up, the hiding it, and the running from it is not me. And for better or for worse, all of that that is not me is me, too.”

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“It is as if we are all tempted to view ourselves as men on horseback. The horse represents a lusty animal-way of living, untrammeled by reason, unguided by purpose. The rider represents independent, impartial thought, a sort of pure cold intelligence. Too often the pilgrim lives as though his goal is to become the horseman who would break the horse's spirit so that he can control him, so that he may ride safely and comfortably wherever he wishes to go. If he does not wish to struggle for discipline, it is because he believes that his only options will be either to live the lusty, undirected life of the riderless horse, or to tread the detached, unadventuresome way of the horseless rider. If neither of these, then he must be the rider struggling to gain control of his rebellious mount. He does not see that there will be no struggle, once he recognizes himself as a centaur.”

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“Sometimes life seems like a poorly designed cage within which man has been sentenced to be free. Condemned to this freedom, it is difficult for a man to face the fact that he feels like a misfit in this life, difficult until he discovers the secret that all men, finally, are misfits.”

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“Of course, being crazy can instead be a stubborn expression of self-destructive willfulness. There appear to be many people who choose to go crazy (or become alcoholics, addicts, criminals, suicides) rather than have to bear the pain and ambiguity of a life situation that they have decided that they cannot stand. With such patients, I try to make clear that I cannot prevent their going mad, but that I will not follow their madcap course from home to hospital and back. They may have any crazy feelings and ideas they wish, but in their community they have to act as if they were sane, if they want me to accompany them on their pilgrimage. The irresponsible act of going crazy, in order not to have to face up to the mess they have created in their own lives, is not one to which I wish to be an accomplice.”

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“Patients in therapy all begin by protesting, “I want to be good.” If they cannot accomplish this, it is only because they are “inadequate,” can’t control themselves, are too anxious, or suffer from unconscious impulses. Being neurotic is being able to act badly without feeling responsible for what you do. The therapist must try to help the patient to see that he is exactly wrong, that is, that he is lying when he says he wants to be good. He really wants to be bad. Mortality is an empirical issue. Worse yet, he wants to be bad but to have an excuse for his irresponsibility, to be able to say, “But I can’t help it.”

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