Plenty of zen buddhists for the last 50 years from Korea to Poland, from the US to Vietnam claim to have picked up the trail. But those closest to picking up the trail have not been converts at all.
And what is it to recognize the zen way? The verbal traces are merely clues, they don't really spell out what can't be spelled out.
At the final peak of zen in China, with Dahui, Wansong and Mumon there was a sort of a grand finale, a kind of a final send off.
The outward form of zen had never taken on its own separate institutional presence. Transmission was never a guaranteed proposition.
Students of zen today, there is nothing to grasp. There are no official soap boxes upon which to take a stand. A forum like this still spends a lot of time kicking frauds off of the soap boxes they wish to claim or establish. The first thing people do after recognizing something in this unique literature is to get clear on what zen is not, but this might not happen all at once.
What does happen "all at once" is the taste, the recognition, but even that can not be held on to > if it persists as a tanglible "presence", all well, but this also seems to often not be the case, call it ebbs and flows, or high spots, and low spots.
So, one more thing besides "what zen is not", is the nature of emptiness that zen points at. Obviously its empty and full at the same time. Its not something that can be retained by memory alone. Blow out the candle and see what happens. From where or what does this zen arise? If you can name it, you are off, if you can't name it you are off.
Obviously if you are not willing to observe a work in progress unfold, its going to be tempting to pin down a bit more. And so, the indigestion starts to become obvious in people who wish they could carry more than they really can. That's what Dahui, Wansong or Mumon have left us with. If you don't like it, take it up with them.
Submitted May 15, 2020 at 12:47AM by rockytimber https://ift.tt/2y6crFG
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