From The Hongzhou School of Chan Buddhism in Eighth- through Tenth-Century China by Jinhua Jia. (Bolded emphasis is mine in the text below):
As previously discussed, Mazu confirmed daily activities as the functioning of Buddha-nature and advocated non-origination as the practice of indiscriminative wisdom. In addition, Mazu and his disciples actually performed a new kind of religious practice -- encounter dialogue. In chapter three, we have seen there were antecedents of encounter dialogue in early Chan phase, and during the mid-Tang period when mazu, Shitou, Jingshan, and their immediate disciples were active, formal encounter dialogue emerged in two forms, the first involving witty, paradoxical phrases, and the second fictionalized accounts of enlightenment dialogues. Then, during the late Tang and Five Dynasties, encounter dialogue achieved full maturity with multiple forms, including iconoclastic illogical, nonconceptual phrases and physical actions such as beating and shouting.
It is not by chance that formal encounter dialogue emerged and matured during the period from the mid-eighth tot he mid-tenth centuries. First, Mazu's advocacy of ordinary mind and original enlightenment provided the doctrinal framework for the emergence and maturity of encounter dialogue. Since enlightenment involves nothing more than changing one's perception, what one needs to do is simply be inspired to relinquish his misperception that he is ignorant and acquire the right perspective to discover his own luminous mind and original enlightenment. This is the basic reason why momentary, situational evocation or inspiration becomes the salient feature of encounter dialogue Second, the Baolin zhuan, which was created by Mazu's first-generation disciple(s), describes an unbroken genealogy of special transmission from the Buddha to Mazu. This transmission was fabricated for the polemical, pedagogical claim of the superiority of the Chan over other scholastic traditions and the Hongzhou lineage over other Chan branches. Nevertheless, Huangbo Xiuyun and other second-generation disciples of Mazu interpreted this genealogy as a mind-to-mind transmission that was separated from scriptiural teachings and also a major doctrine and an actual practice of the Chan school. This interpretation later became a theoretical underpinning for the iconoclastic, radical aspect of encounter dialogue.
As a result, encounter dialogue gradually became an effective means of Chan teaching and practice. Unlike the personal meditation and cultivation of early Chan, the encounter-dialogue practice was a spiritual exchange and mental contest, which happened not only between master and student, but also master and master or student and student. It was not used for cultivating one's mind-nature, but for inspiring, activating, revealing, and even competing for immanent enlightenment and wisdom. Based on the Hongzhou doctrine, encounter dialogue soon became an important and dynamic religious practice of middle Chan and even identified with Chan itself.
My Notes:
Who is competing? Who is inspiring? What is being revealed, and what is being cultivated?
I took away several things from this: 1) Zen is a religion and consists of religious practice. 2) Mazu was a fraud and a liar. 3) "Making things up" seems to be a skill that Mazu would appreciate in the religious practice of encounter-dialogue.
Those who can't come up with appropriate turning words in the situations they face and fall back on conditioned, canned responses, how will they start their practice? Is it by turning around, or by turning within?
Submitted December 22, 2017 at 09:17PM by Dillon123 http://ift.tt/2CXOEV5
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