Indeed I would have most preferred "spirits & spectres" because that one has a neutral connotation in Chinese.
The referent of your 三殺法, "kill the buddha-spirit, kill your demised-forebears"《临济录》(written back when Taoism had not been fully differentiated from Buddhism) was way more suicidal in ideation..
What are the various connotations of gods, ghosts, spirits, and spectres in Chinese?
(Continue the series: 天 大 人 小 ??)
Come to think of it, "God is Dead" is true for both christians and Nietzsche's madman: as Gautama's charioteer explains, living things are subject to age, disease, and death; the christian god is subject to none of these, therefore He –not being quick— is dead.
