GO MEET A ZEN MASTER. SERIOUSLY.

Huangbo said

Even if you succeed in learning the three virtuous stages, the four grades of Hinayana saintship, and the ten highest stages of Bodhisattva attainments your whole mind still remains within the worldly and holy realms. Have you not read [the following]: 'All phenomenal changes belong to the realm of birth and death' and 'With force expended, a spent arrow is bound to fall and cause distasteful things to follow in the next incarnation. How can it then compare with the wu wei reality, which ensures a leap straight to the Tathagata stage?'

So Huangbo's quoting from Yongjia which Luk did a really, really bad translation of.

The message here is clear: people who 'practice' in order to attain an understanding of Buddha are just wasting time on something that will not only fail to get them to an understanding of Buddha but create problems for themselves that doing none of that BS from the get go wouldn't.

But that's what we get in this case: Buddhists believe in are inherent suffering and try to escape that imaginary problem by pursuing imaginary solutions. Psychonauts believe they have an ego problem so intoxicate themselves to 'dissolve' it.

A straight leap is all you get in Zen.

Since you are not a man of such calibre you should follow the converting instruction devised by the ancients in order to widen your knowledge and interpretation.

The man of calibre is Zen Master Yongjia. The 'ancient' in referring to Baozhi, a guy who hung out at the court of Emperor Wu of Liang, who said all sorts of stuff that isn't translated, who gets quoted across Zen texts.

Zen Master Baozhi said, 'If you do not meet with an enlightened master appearing in the world, you will vainly take the Dharma-medicine of the Mahayana.'

This is the bit that is just so juicy when we compare it to what's going on in all the self-proclaimed "Zen Buddhist" congregations. Withthem, it's literally all just ritual meditation, indoctrination, and social club-ing going on and, since no one in those churches is an enlightened master, whenever they speak about Zen cases it just becomes poison.

Since you're in /r/Zen it is your duty to meet a Zen Master. People who aren't serious about self-reflection will never ever have anything to contribute to a community of Zen.

Harassment via. vote-brigading, misrepresenting one's attainment, lying about Zen texts, taking and promoting psychedelics, defending the authority of sexual predators--all of that is just breaking the precepts and the stuff that stupid people on /r/Zen do b/c they can't prove they've met a Zen Master.

Submitted June 16, 2022 at 02:41AM by ThatKir https://ift.tt/Q98YVvR