The Dangers of Believing the Myth of "Dharma Trasmission"

I highly recommend reading the entirety of this. Much of the focus is on the "recent" (60s-80s into the 2000s) events at the San Francisco Zen Center, but it uses them to expose general flaws in Zen/Chan (organizational structure).

I didn't know people believed, and were led to believe, that "Dharma Heirs" were essentially a (perfect) living "Buddha" (or something to that effect). I suppose I've been looking at this with the more practical eyes of a martial artist. Martial arts has lineage, but being a part of a lineage, even when someone is labeled the "heir", doesn't mean they're necessarily the most proficient student. It's often political or organizational. Done well these heirs create an optimal environment for students to become skilled at the art. Done poorly it becomes a mechanism for feeding an ego.

There were probably better passages to quote, but it was a long read and I just grabbed something when I was halfway through it.

He also includes a lot of sources to follow up with if you want to go deeper into any subject that's brought up.

"Richard Baker and the Myth of the Zen Roshi" by Stuart Lachs

It is fashionable among practitioners in the West to consider critical thought as "un-Zen." With this view in place, the entire spectrum of permissible thought is now caught and limited within Zen's mythological presentation, which was a completed creation by the eleventh century in China. Analysis or active use of "the discriminating mind" is frowned upon, or worse, it is viewed as a sign of having too large an ego. Any genuine interpretation or questioning of the meaning of Dharma transmission, lineage, the Zen roshi, their place in the institution, their accountability, and so on is made to seem absurd. The idea and ritual of Dharma transmission rather than the meaning or content of that transmission, becomes the prominent and meaningful fact. Zen elevates its leaders to super-human status, then emphasizes that we should be obedient and subservient to a powerful and supremely accomplished authority figure, precisely because he is powerful and supremely accomplished.

The student who enters the "practice" having read a myth will expect to find the myth, and will think they have found the myth. What they really found is another story of flawed human behavior.

Submitted October 31, 2019 at 09:29AM by CaseyAPayne https://ift.tt/2WuCcaq