Zen "Teachers"

A number of questions arise about what/who Zen Masters consider teachers:

1. Huang Po, instructing the community, said, "All of you people are gobblers of dregs; if you go on travelling around this way, where will you have Today? Do you know that there are no teachers of Ch'an in all of China?"

2. Yaoshan hadn't ascended the seat (to lecture) for a long time. The temple superintendent said to him, "Everybody's been wanting instruction for a long time--please, Master, expound the Teaching for the congregation." Yaoshan had him ring the bell; when the congregation had gathered, Yaoshan ascended the seat: after a while he got right back down from the seat and returned to his room. The superintendent followed after him and asked, "A while ago you agreed to expound the Teaching for the congregation. Why didn't you utter a single word?" Yaoshan said, "For scriptures there are teachers of scriptures, for the treatises there are teachers of treatises. How can you question this old monk?"

3. Chan master Yongjia said, "Traveling over river and sea, traversing mountains and rivers, seeking a teacher, asking about the Way, is called studying Chan. Ever since I recognized the road of Caoqi, I've realized birth and death are irrelevant." Elders, what are the mountains and rivers traversed? What are the teachers sought? What is the Chan studied? What is the Way asked about? If you seek teachers and ask about the Way in Huainan, the river lands, Mt. Lu, Nanyue, Yunmen or Linji, or study Chan with Dongshan or Fayan, this is running in search outside; this is called being an outsider. If you can take the inherent nature of Vairocana for an ocean, and consider the quiescent knowledge of insight to be Chan, this is called inward seeking. If you seek outside, it runs you to death; if you seek inside the five clusters of matter, sensation, perception, conception, and consciousness, this binds you fatally. Therefore Chan is not internal, not external, not existent, not nothing, not actual, not empty. Haven't you read the statement that inner views and outward views are both mistaken, the path of Buddhas and the path of demons are both bad?

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Welcome! ewk comment: r/Zen has seen more than it's fair share of all kinds of fake teachers, from www.reddit.com//r/zen/wiki/sexpredators like Alan Watts to sex predator apologists like Thich Hahn and Shunryu Suzuki.

Then there are the various internet gurus that try to start cults, and the internet Buddhists who can't be bothered with "right speech" or "right mind".

Rolling over them all is this "no teachers" teaching, the "Buddha path is bad" and "sutras are demon words".

Where does that get you?

Does it get you out of a high school book report?

All the people too chicken to AMA have been blocked now!

Who is left?

Submitted February 20, 2022 at 07:35AM by ewk https://ift.tt/5SoLBl2