Over at his blog the wily fox Dosho has been ruminating on the nature of Dharma transmission in Zen. He notes how the forms are a necessary although not sufficient condition for the making of a teacher.
Dosho has open comments at his blog and they have come. Mostly, I’m impressed. A bit too much Zen talk, and a tilt toward either faith in capital letter masters or faith in Zen without any actual form or people, two mistakes; but on balance and I’m speaking even of those who have been tangled a bit in their ideas of what Zen should be, they struck me as folk genuinely dedicated to the way trying to make their way through the confusion.
The outward confusion (there is that inner confusion, as well. but a different point…) largely arising out of the obvious conflict between the mythic master, one who stands in an unbroken line of approval reaching back to the Buddha of history and the various realities which include the fact that Zen lineage first appears in early medieval China a thousand years after Gautama died and how a majority of early Zen teachers in the west have been embroiled in one scandal or another, mostly involving sex.
So what is the reality?
Teachers are the guardians of the practices of Zen. There are two principal practices both rooted in a practice of sitting down, shutting up, and noticing…
Most recently Dosho posted a lecture by his old teacher, a master of Dogen’s style, of complete submission to the form of practice. Just sit this way. Just bow this way. Just shit this way.
As someone who has found his heart way in the other Zen discipline wandering through the tangle of words and phrases, I’m a bit wary of the shadows of that just do it this way practice. Too many martinets, too many spiritual robots without a glimmer of insight into what they’re doing.
And, of course, of course, my way isn’t off any hook. I’m painfully mindful of how the way of words and phrases often produces glib folk who can talk a good Zen game, but whose lives are a complete shamble…
So two disciplines, each compromised.
So what’s the bottom line?
For me, like for Dosho, the credentials are critical. Well, critical if one follows the Zen way. There is no Zen without Zen teachers. (And no Zen teachers anywhere in the land, you know… But that’s a snare laid out by the old teachers of my Zen school…)
And by no means are the documents sufficient. They only guarantee someone missed the obvious gaps in their student’s realization and manifestation and gave them some bits of paper in a great flurry of bowing and incense and the spilling of small amounts of blood…
That question Dosho alluded to in his reflection, asked among that gaggle of Zen teachers about awakening as a prerequisite for Dharma transmission and its answer has haunted me for years now.
What do you mean you don’t need a verifiable experience of awakening to be made a Zen teacher?
And some insight, great or small, isn’t enough, either. Answering koans isn’t enough, either…
My take away about the disciplines and the acknowledgments is this.
Both the practice of bowing and the practice of words and phrases actually appear to be complete. People take them up and live their lives through them, with them, within them, around them…
And they live lives of grace, whether as Zen masters or just as foxes…
Some wake up, some don’t.
Same grace is there…
And the disciplines continue, the line of teachers struggle to keep the baby while pouring off, each in his generation, each in her generation, a bit of bath water.
Sometimes the baby goes and the way is lost.
Sometimes the baby is lost and the way is preserved.
Zen is like that.
Each heir does her best. Each heir does his best.
Some succeed. Some fail.
The Zen way is like that.
And even if one teacher doesn’t quite get it, or even a string of them in succession don’t get it, still, sometimes the student does.
It’s kind of magical.
And the way continues…
Zen is like that.
So, Dharma transmission in Zen is just a device. Usually skillful means, and sometimes just a way to get a girlfriend or a boyfriend or just to make a living.
But it is also a dragon hiding in the weeds, revealing only its tail to most.
And of those who grab it, some are extremely fortunate, and the dragon reaches around and bites ‘em.
And the Zen Dharma continues…
Zen is like that.
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