Does the saying, "If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him" relate to Theravada B

There's a saying, "If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him."
Does it apply to Theravada Buddhism as well, or only Zen Buddhism?

That's a Zen saying, so I don't believe it applies to Theravada.

yes, a Zen thing. They seek enlightenment by using koans and things of this nature to break up normal thought patterns, giving you things that don't make sense like the sound of one hand clapping, as a mental exercise. This does not necessarily apply to Theravada.

Buddhist practice is to attain Wisdom.
Even Buddha can be in the way to achieve wisdom if our focus is on his physical body rather than on his teachings.

That is what the phrase is referring to.

No, it does not apply to Theravada Buddhism.

I feel uneasy when I first saw this saying especially the word "Kill" even though it does not mean homicide. Some people might misunderstand Buddhism. There are plenty of words to use to challenge people to study deeper in Dhamma.

Actually it is Ch'an's saying (in Chinese) or Zen (in Japanese), nothing to do with Theravada Buddhism.

The actually meaning of the saying is not to encourage murder or homicide.

Also it is not intended to be arrogant, but many people have misconstrued it; many people base on reading a few texts of Koans of Chan school, and think they understood the sentence's superficial meaning.

The truth is, when one gets into deep meditative states, you can cross over to the spiritual realms, where you can see a real Buddha or false Buddha / Mara.

Since the traveling in spiritual realms or see many spiritual events in alter states do not in itself make you Enlightened; so to avoid see all these spiritual happenings, which may lead the students astray from the goal of awaken one?s mind, that is why he made that comment.

The idea is to tell all students of Ch'an not to be overly concern of spiritual experiences, see any Buddha will not do anything for you, but to have students keeping their mind on their real goal- "their awakening of the True Mind".

The Zen thing, asking you to discard and break through images, shells, blah blah blah, to reach the truth itself.

More than meets the eyes.... It's a Transformers thing, ha ha.