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those very idols of Buddha, and now he was ordering them to be removed. Someone stood up and asked, "Are you in your right mind? Do you know what you are saying?"
Lin Chi answered, "As long as I was thinking that I am, I believed that Buddha was. But when I myself am not there, when I am only an air bubble, then I know that someone like Buddha also could not have been there."
In the evening Lin Chi was again worshipping Buddha. People again asked him what he was doing. He said, "I was helped in my own non-being by Buddha's non-being. That is why I have been giving thanks. It was a thanksgiving from one bubble to another, nothing more." But these statements could not be properly understood. People thought that there was something wrong with this man and that he had gone against Buddha.
Autobiography does not survive. Deeply speaking, the soul itself does not survive. So far, we understand only that the ego does not survive. For thousands of years, we have been told that the ego does not survive when one attains self-knowledge. But to put it correctly, the soul itself does not survive.
In understanding this one is filled with fear. That is why we could not understand Buddha. He said, "The soul also does not survive; we become non-soul." It becomes very difficult to understand Buddha in this world.
Mahavira talked only of the death of the ego; that much could be understood. It is not that Mahavira did not know that even the soul does not survive, but he had in mind our limited understanding. Therefore, he spoke only of giving up the ego, knowing that the soul would automatically dissolve.
Buddha, for the first time, made a statement which had been a secret. The Upanishads also knew, Mahavira also knew, that the soul does not survive in the end, because the idea of the soul is a projection of the ego. But Buddha revealed the secret which had been closely guarded for so long. That created difficulties. Those who themselves believed that the ego does not survive started the quarrel. If the soul does not survive either, they said, then everything is useless. Where are we?
Buddha was right. How could there be an autobiography
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