Huang-po on "go read a book"

Besides pretending Zen isn't Buddhist - though literally all important Zen teachers were Buddhist monks - r/Zen bullies also like to pretend Zen is some highly intellectual and literary discipline. They do this to bully everyone outside their odd little cult by rudely shutting them down with their favorite catchphrase "go read a book". Except that "book" must be by one of a tiny set of teachers their cult chose to canonize.

Well, one member of this extremely exclusive set is a Buddhist monk named Huang-po, whom the bullies often invoke and quote here. Hey Huang-po, what do you think of reading books?

One day, the official Pei Xiangguo invited the master to come for a visit at his offices so that he could present him with a book he had written [on his understanding of Zen]. The master received the book and placed it on his chair without looking at it.

After a long pause, Huangbo said, “Do you understand?”

Official Pei said, “I don’t understand.”

Huangbo said, “If it can be understood in this manner, then it isn’t the true teaching. If it can be seen in paper and ink, then it is not the essence of our order.”

-- Zen’s Chinese Heritage by Andy Ferguson, page 137

Oops...

P.S. someone should really fix the "Four Statements of Zen" in the sidebar. It's quite confusing to read that Zen is "not based on the written word" on the right, where every thread on the left rudely admonishes people to "read books".

Submitted September 05, 2017 at 05:22AM by SilaSamadhi http://ift.tt/2eEJuqC