Buddha's message throughout history

Spoiler : This post is about the history of the Zen tradition . Doesn't discuss cases.

I'm currently reading the introduction to Buddhism and Chan, in the Layman P'ang book by translated by Sasaki....

Here's something for you :

But the Buddhist doctrine of salvation that promised a future life of happiness to the oppressed and lengthy retribution to the oppressor found ready acceptance among the hard-pressed common people. Furthermore, Buddhist monks readily incorporated native folk beliefs and superstitions into the religion, and awed the people with displays of supernatural powers and miracles. The frequent shifts of power that occurred during the troubled years of the Three Kingdoms (221-64) and the Six Dynasties (265-580) weakened Confucianism and Taoism, but provided Buddhist missionaries with wider and more favorable opportuni- ties for propagating their religion.

Basically, before Bodhidharma, Buddhism in China was a display of superpowers and a religious game of power(?)

We might agree that this doesn't look like Buddha's message, though if all you read are the sutras, one might understand where the confusion about supernatural powers comes from.

What about Zen? What about this very unlikely solo trip, taken by an indian monk carrying with him the original , timeless, non-religious message of the Buddha?

What were the chances?

It amazes me how Zen spread out in China (relatively fast), like a seed that finds fertile soil, embarrassing all the people who though they "had Buddhism" and that Buddhism was contained in a show of adorned relics and temples, in playing contests of knowledge, etc., etc.

This almost feels like finding a golden coin in a million fake ones. The way Buddha's teaching of no teaching was manipulated made it very difficult for people to discern and understand whether they had a true teacher in front of them. After a few centuries of everybody deciding for themselves, and indoctrinating others on what they each thought Buddhism was... How is anybody supposed to navigate to the core?

And what about India? Bodhidharma came from there, but no "Zen equivalent" was developed there? How did we get to the mystic mess that we see today in India? A lot of "teachers" , gurus, but when you dig a bit deeper it seems that everybody holds on to some kind of doctrine.

Do we have any historical remainders that tell us more about who Bodhidharma might have been? Who recorded the story of the meeting with emperor Wu?

Zen historians, if any of you are in this forum, give me some context to better understand how all of this unfolded, I'd be grateful🙏

Book reccomedations appreciated as well.

Also for now I'll leave aside that the introduction to this book claims that from bodhidharma on, only seated-cross legged meditation has been taught, just to declare a few pages later that no cultivation is needed since everything is Buddha nature.

Submitted July 27, 2022 at 07:27PM by Brex7 https://ift.tt/wraGt4K