Buddhism is not to be equated with your sentiments

What was the meaning of Huangbo directing Linji to see Dayu? Haven’t you heard it said that if you want to know the mountain road, you need to ask someone who’s traversed it. It was because Dayu was awakened at the impact of Guizong’s cane. But now brethren often make judgmental interpretations. We descendants of Linji use beating and shouting for Buddhist services, use the three poisons of ignorance to serve for compassion, taking you brethren into a void as born enemies. Be you Buddhas or patriarchs, ordinary people or saints, we’ll necessarily turn your faces around and switch your eyeballs; we’d rather be wrapped in hot iron and have molten copper poured down our throats than ever equate Buddhism with people’s sentiments. Haven’t you heard it said, “Even if the oceans are transmuted, I’ll never convey it to you.” Yantou said, “Spurning things is superior, following things is inferior.” Here there is no way of concession; how could people be randomly approved?

-Wumen

Beating and shouting for religious services? Subjecting you to the poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance while seemingly gaslighting you by calling it compassion? Buddhas and ordinary people all given the same face twisting eyeball swapping treatment? Who would want this? Why would a zen monk put on robes and respond to the sound of a bell? Clearly, it's not about getting what you want.

Elsewhere they dissolve sticking points and untie bonds for people, pulling out nails and stakes; I just add nails and drive stakes for people, loading a raft and sending you out to sea, making you find your own way to live—only then can you be a successor.

Here I don’t give people cases spoiling the sons and daughters of other families. If it’s an ordinary meeting, everyone in the world are brothers; if you come into my room, I take you for enemy assassins and protect myself—if I don’t make the first move, I’ll be killed by you.

-Wumen

Wumen is making some serious complications for his students! He doesn't help them get rid of their sticking points, he drives them in and throws them in the deep end out to sea to fend for themselves. First he wrote the Gateless Barrier cases; now he is ready to use "stand yer ground" laws for entering this zen school. Maybe it would be easier to just accept there is no special way to get a leg up on the universe and stop trying to make it fit your sentiments and wants.

Submitted April 23, 2021 at 04:36AM by jungle_toad https://ift.tt/3sJXPBS