The raft · the teaching to be abandoned

A man builds a raft to cross a river. Having crossed, does he carry it on his head for the rest of his life? The Buddha's point is stated flatly: the teaching is for crossing over, not for holding on to — and the same goes for the good teachings, never mind the bad ones.

The tradition's built-in instruction for letting go of itself — and a genuinely hard image to place beside a tradition whose texts are eternal and whose letters are the substance of creation.