Zen Under the Gun: THE LAST WORD

https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Under-Gun-Masters-Turbulent/dp/0861715926/

Zen Masters after Wumen:

Hengchuan (1222-1289)

Hengchuan said. "The early buddhas had the ability to emanate rays communicating enlightenment across diverse worlds. The ancestral Zen masters had the Last Word as the final impenetrable barrier. Both were brought forth in front of people to smash the nest of clichés of interpretive knowledge, and to cut off birth-and death root and branch.

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Welcome! ewk comment: Recording a podcast this morning, the question of what sort of frustrations people first have with Zen was lightly touched on, and I think this passage touches on the same thing:

 THE LAST WORD 

Zen Masters make a big deal of monks getting shut down, pwnd, shut up, stopped cold by questions Zen Masters ask or statements Zen Masters make. While religions and philosophies encourage people to work out logical or doctrinal answers to questions, Zen Masters emphasize the fact that if you don't know right now, if you can be stopped in your tracks in an instant, then you aren't enlightened.

Lots and lots of religious people have come into the forum and be shut up and down by Zen quotes (not to mention historical facts) and this tends to generate animosity... when really it's not acrimonious at all... it's simply Zen culture. In a way, it is disrespectful to get angry when you can't answer in this forum... not being able to answer is almost... holy... and to see this conversation-arriving-at-failure as a personal insult is to ignore the importance Zen Masters place on this moment in the 1,000 year historical record of Zen in China.

Of course Zen Masters also insist this "moment of choking" when Zen Masters get the last word is evidence of religions and philosophies having failed in a fundamental way... but that's okay, right? In a Zen forum, you are allowed to marginalize religions and philosophies... aka... nests of interpretive knowledge.

To all those people out there who blocked me, or started forums about me, or are still blaming me for Zazen not being related to Zen at all, remember... can't answer is a Zen tradition!

Submitted July 26, 2022 at 08:15AM by ewk https://ift.tt/MYLx3r0