When I google the phrase "lineage text", the top result directs me back here to r/zen.
Subsequent results leave me with a general sense of "lineage text" enjoying relatively non-technical English usage, in more or less incidental reference to the religious genealogical literature of eg. Sikhs, Daoists, Vajrayana Buddhists, Zen Buddhists etc.
These incidences, note, are modest in number, if we consider the overall amount of primary and secondary works where religious genealogy likely rates a mention. Looking at the references to Zen: one's an entry from an Encyclopedia of Monasticism. The other is a book I would definitely recommend readers here check out: Alan Cole's Fathering Your Father, a book which more or less reflects the current state of the field in scholarship on "lineage" as a Zen literary paradigm.
There are three instances
where Cole happens to use the phrase "lineage text", none of which signify a defined term of art within Zen studies, unlike eg."transmission history"/ "lamp history" /"denglu", "recorded sayings" /"yulu" etc.
I'm led to conclude that r/zen's use of the phrase derives solely from seeing it in this subreddit. That usage is peculiar to this community, a parochialism that cannot meaningfully be derived from any other source. A further observation we can make is that --unlike its non-technical usage in reference to religious genealogical texts or texts about lineage -- in r/zen jargon it appears instead to refer to texts from the lineage.
Elsewhere known as "Zen texts".
Submitted February 07, 2020 at 05:20PM by grass_skirt https://ift.tt/3bm1vSU
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