At the beginning, a zen master was a kind of self made man, he had no school education, he was perfected by himself, of course he had a teacher, but his teacher did not help him, in the way scholars nowadays are helped.
This lack of soft education made the ancient zen master all the more stronger and full of virility, this was the reason, that during the T'ang dynasty, zen was so active, so intense, so brilliant.
When the koan system came into vogue, during the sung dynasty, the halcyon days of zen were almost over, and it gradually showed signs of decline and senility.
D. T. Suzuki. An introduction to zen Buddhism.
T. O. M's comment.
Koans, I don't waste my time wid em..
It seems that, as has been stated elsewhere by Suzuki , the koan system is a way to feed zen to the masses, a kind of industrialisation of zen, that by its very nature, must water down the contents, in order to make it palatable for the masses.
Peace.
Submitted September 22, 2020 at 01:48PM by transmission_of_mind https://ift.tt/3hOKPFX
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