ThatKir's /r/Zen Blogpost: Entry 6

1. Leftover spag' tonight; living dangerously with the Wuyi past 8 p.m. No follow from farmer on what she received from Fenyang that she thanks me...

2. Zen Masters are notoriously regarded as aggressive by outsiders, even those that come to their communes and hoist the flag; ring the bells.

   What treatment does this 'agression' get from other Zen Masters?

   How does it compare to the "aggressive" proselytizing-pushiness a lot of suburbanites experienced growing up?

3. Finally getting through The Lion's recorded sayings... The book says volume 1, but we don't get any info as to whether there's a volume 2 in the works.

   In terms of content it has both recorded sayings ala. Zhaozhou's record, sermons ala. Huangbo's record, as well as Fenyang's remarks-in-verse on other cases.

4. Found out that Emperor Yitian (1055-1101), a Tiantai Buddhist convert, decided to censor/burn the Platform Sutra and the (currently untranslated?) 'Baolin Zhuan' (eclectic collection of Zen cases + misc.).

   This obviously adds another thread into the mess of which manuscripts of the Platform Sutra got debauched, lost, or destroyed entirely, and when.

   See, here for a fun graph on how convoluted the whole manuscript-history of the Platform Sutra got. Nanyang Huizhong remarked, within -at most- 50 years of the Platform Sutra hitting the presses, that:

   They gather groups of three to five hundred cloud gazers, saying this is the message of the Southern School, taking the Platform Scripture and altering it, adding confused drivel and excising what the sage meant, deluding followers.

Submitted March 09, 2022 at 08:11AM by ThatKir https://ift.tt/BieystC