Responses to Comments about Dharma Transmission

A bunch of these wild fox calligraphies arrived yesterday from Lee at The Bird’s Path. He suggested that they be used as “party favors” so I handed them out to the study group last night. Thanks!, Lee, for the wonderful treat.

Today I’d like to respond in a rolling fashion to some of the comments to yesterday’s post.

IMHO, although it is important to learn from everyone and everything, that is not a replacement for the teacher-student relationship anymore than learning about love from everyone we meet can replace a commited relationship.

Another example, I learn from my teenaged children but I don’t turn running the zendo over to them.

The robe and a piece of paper are necessary but not sufficient conditions to be a Zen teacher and are not something separate from the teaching/dharma. I think of Huangbo saying, “I don’t say that there is no Zen, just that there are no teachers.” This can be most thoroughly explored and appreciated within the teacher-student relationship, much more so than as a by-stander.

Dogen considered both the experience of transmission and the seal of recognition from an authentic teacher as essential. Dogen went so far as encouraging people to stop practicing if they could not find a true teacher. It seems to me that those of us in his line and students interested in the path of inquiry called Soto Zen should be very careful to deal with this point through and through.

Zen is, afterall, an ancestral tradition, handed on from generation to generation, not what any one individual wants it to be or thinks that it is.

What to do?

We can all encourage each other to only transmit the dharma in the most authentic circumstances. Students have an important role. The Shuso (lead practitioner) Ceremony, for example, usually follows some years after priest ordination (tokudo – leaving home) and involves the community testing the lead practitioner in public. That testing and feedback cycle ought not be reserved for a single ceremony and is essential for healthy transmission.

We can also recommit to our own thoroughgoing practice and do our utmost to transmit this wonderous way to the next generation.

More on the Genjokoan soon.