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The Koan of Sacrifice [1]

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Date: 2025-04-06

A vast array of religions around the world have practices and teaching of sacrifice, most of them heavily perverted from their sources. I maintain that the basic idea of non-attachment and no-self are present in one way or another in many of these religions, and that this is the ultimate source of animal and human sacrifice and much more. The idea, in principle, is to let go of what is most valuable to you, that is, what you are most attached to.

Judaism is founded on the myth of Abraham being willing to sacrifice not only his son Isaac, as in the painting above, but even God’s promises to him. Christianity is founded on the myth of God sacrificing his Son (Himself) to Himself so that he can forgive us all Original Sin instead of being forced to send us all to Hell. Aztecs sacrificed captured enemies by cutting their living hearts out, still beating. Mayans specialized in blood sacrifices by their Kings and Queens, by pulling strings of shark teeth through their own flesh, often their tongues. There are many forms of self-flagellation that draw blood. There are far too many animal sacrifice cults to attempt to list. There are many other kinds of sacrifice besides those, but all have in common giving up something of value to the worshipper, preferably maximum value.

The girl my money’s spent for,

The girl my back is bent for,

The girl I owe the rent for,

The girl I gave up Lent for…

Tom Lehrer, My Girl

I am making a bold claim here, one that in the nature of things cannot have direct historical evidence. Human spoken language and hence much of religion may be something like 100,000 years old, although there may well have been gestural languages before that. Much of that early religion was superstition, as much of religion remains today. But somewhere in there it was inevitable that there were kenshos of various kinds. Not what we now call Unexcelled Supreme Awakening as the foundation of Buddhism, but any of the hundreds of bits and pieces that go into that.

Buddhism has many foundations, such as the Four Noble Truths (particularly non-attachment), the Ten Precepts, the Perfections, No-Self, Changeableness, Buddha Nature, and, traditionally, 84,000 more. None of them involve material sacrifices to attain the favor of Gods, since Gods are in fact irrelevant in Buddhism. Nor can sacrifice overcome karma. Only the true will toward good karma can overcome previous bad karma, especially taking oneself out of the desire to do any form of evil. Trying to ignore karma, on the other hand, is the very worst form of karma, as set forth in the koan of Hyakujo’s Fox.

All wrong actions, behavior and karma, perpetrated by me from time immemorial, have been, and are, caused by greed, anger and delusion which have no beginning, born of my body, mouth and will; I now make full and open confession thereof. By this act of recognition of our past behavior and our contrition therefor, we open the way for the Buddhas and Ancestors to help us naturally. Bearing this in mind, we should sit up straight in the presence of the Buddha, and repeat the above act of contrition, thereby cutting the roots of our evil doing.

Thus we give up nothing, accepting the original purity of universal Buddha Nature, and the emptiness of self taught in the Heart Sutra.

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