What is Dharma Transmission? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma_transmission I was reading the text of the wikipedia article on Dharma Transmission and was very surprised at its contents. Apparently in a lot of institutions in Japan currently but going back to China the reasons for “Dharma transmission” were not recognition of enlightenment. It was instead the recognition of transfer of institutional power. Perhaps few things matter here to those not interested in the Japanese Rinzai or Soto schools.
Wikipedia once again values little the original Zen tradition, the Zen Masters that are most valued in r/zen. But please excuse my take on what are the passages I valued from the article.
The concept of dharma transmission took shape during the Tang period, when establishing the right teachings became important, to safeguard the authority of specific schools.[15] The emerging Zen-tradition developed the Transmission of the Lamp-genre, in which lineages from Shakyamuni Buddha up to their own times were described.[6]
[...]
The common transmission does not include inka shōmei. Ideally inka shōmei is "the formal recognition of Zen's deepest realisation",[3] but practically it is being used for the transmission of the "true lineage" of the masters (shike) of the training halls.
The wikipedia article cites a certain “Manzan Dokahu (1636–1714), a Sōtō reformer”
According to Manzan, even an unenlightened student could receive dharma transmission:
Manzan argued that as long as master and disciple fulfill the condition of a personal relationship, then Dharma transmission 'with either an enlightened or an unenlightened disciple are both equivalent in [maintaining] the true tradition'.[59]
Quite a long part of the article is dedicated to how Dharma transmission is understood in the west.
In the Western understanding roshis are "part of a tradition that imputes to them quasi-divine qualities",[77] someone who "is defined by simplicity, innocence, and lack of self-interest or desire".[77] Nevertheless, the authorisation of teachers through dharma transmission does not mean that teachers are infallible,[78] as is clear from the repeated appearance of scandals:[77]
In this complicated world of living Zen, we can meet teachers guiding communities of practice with compassion and grace. But we also find Zen teachers having inappropriate sexual relationships, abusing the power dynamics of their relationships and otherwise acting in ways contrary to the mythic status of their positions as teachers. In recent years there have been a number of books and essays exposing the ills of Zen institutions east and west as well as the foibles of individual Zen teachers. Here in the west there are few lineages that have passed unscathed by scandals, mostly of a sexual nature. And in the east, particularly in the Japanese institutions, we’ve learned how masters and whole schools were at various times co-opted by the state, most notoriously in the years leading up to and including the Second World War.[78]
According to Lachs,[who?] those scandals have also been possible because of the status given to roshis by dharma transmission, and "a desire for the master’s aura, recognition, and approval":[77]
The students expect the real teacher to be an ideal teacher and look forward to having such an ideal teacher lead and instruct them. The student who enters the practice having read a myth will expect to find the myth and will think they have found the myth. Unfortunately, they have found the myth without recognizing it for what it is. What they really have found, all too often, is another story of ordinary, flawed human behavior.[77]
I would also like to talk about the relationship between this “deepest realization” and enlightenment or attaining Nirvana or Buddhahood from another part of wikipedia, the Zen at War article. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War#Enlightenment_and_authority :
Now that we’ve had the book on Yasutani Roshi opened for us, we are presented with a new koan. Like so many koans, it is painfully baffling: How could an enlightened Zen master have spouted such hatred and prejudice? The nub of this koan, I would suggest, is the word enlightened. If we see enlightenment as an all-or-nothing place of arrival that confers a permanent saintliness on us, then we’ll remain stymied by this koan. But in fact there are myriad levels of enlightenment, and all evidence suggests that, short of full enlightenment (and perhaps even with it—who knows?), deeper defilements and habit tendencies remain rooted in the mind.
Is this the kind of enlightenment we expect from Zen Masters or the Buddha? a limited enlightenment? Or do we expect a kind of living myth? a real-life version of the Buddha or a Zen Master that we have in the sutras and koans?
Submitted May 23, 2020 at 04:49AM by 2bitmoment https://ift.tt/2XmcDJl
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