{"id":4390,"date":"2018-04-03T08:27:57","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T14:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/?p=4390"},"modified":"2022-01-25T19:51:15","modified_gmt":"2022-01-26T01:51:15","slug":"what-good-is-zen-for-a-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2018\/04\/what-good-is-zen-for-a-student.html","title":{"rendered":"What Good is Zen for a Student?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

A few days ago, the prolific James Myoun Ford R\u014dshi (fyi, \u201cR\u014dshi,\u201d\u8001\u5e2b, or \u201cold dog\u201d \u2013 see photo)<\/span>\u00a0extraordinaire, offered up his considered opinion about \u201cWhat Makes a Good Zen Student?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Because I have a few thoughts of my own (well, not really \u201cmy own\u201d \u2013 mostly that I\u2019ve borrowed from others \u2013 including from the likes of Tetsugan and Hakuin), I throw this to the wind.<\/p>\n

Although, in this post, as you can tell from the title, \u201cWhat Good is Zen for a Student?,\u201d I\u2019d like to reframe the question and include how Hakuin might have regarded the issue too, given this is the Wild Fox Zen Blog \u201cYear of Hakuin.\u201d<\/p>\n

First and foremost, Zen is good for a student who has touched the tender heart of this swirling world of pain and is devoted to awakening for the benefit of others and the self. From this personal experience of intimacy and urgency, a student arouses the capacity to practice with uncommon diligence and intensity. Zen is good at supporting, encouraging, and fanning this flame of the Way Seeking Heart.<\/p>\n

Second and equally important, Zen is good for a student who has a reflective orientation and is driven to see things differently, to turn the light of awareness toward the unwanted, unappreciated, unlikely, and unconventional. In other words, a good Zen student questions and challenges their own assumptions about this life and<\/span> the answers offered by established thinking, including that of the Zen and Buddhist<\/a> tradition.<\/p>\n

Zen is good for other things too, like revealing how we\u2019re snagged or trapped in arrogance, deprecation, and\/or belief.<\/p>\n

One of the best things about Zen is that it\u2019s good for these things whoever you are. The many ways we vary don\u2019t change how much good Zen can do you. A person\u2019s gender identification, ethnicity, politics, religious beliefs, family of origin or other psychological issues, introversion, extroversion, sexual orientation, and perceived intelligence \u2013 don\u2019t impact the basic goodness of Zen practice awakening.<\/p>\n

Four Types of Students<\/h4>\n

In Complete Poison Blossoms in a Thicket of Thorn<\/em>, \u201cGudo\u2019s Lingering Radiance,\u201d Hakuin identifies four types of students, starting with those who Zen is really good\u201d for \u2013 \u201coutstanding seeds and buds.\u201d\u00a0\u201cSuch students,\u201d wrote Hakuin, \u201cpossess deep discernment and an innate ability that enables them to achieve liberation at a single blow from the iron hammer.\u201d<\/p>\n

This type is quite rare. I\u2019ve heard of them but don\u2019t think I\u2019ve actually met any. Well, maybe D\u014dgen, but we haven\u2019t met. Maybe Harada Tangen R\u014dshi was such a person. Katagiri R\u014dshi was not. I am not. James can still speak for himself. In any case, Zen in the West probably hasn\u2019t developed the critical mass necessary to find many\/any of this innately gifted type. And from Hakuin\u2019s bio, it doesn\u2019t even sound like he was primarily this type. So perhaps it isn\u2019t necessary.<\/p>\n

Next are the \u201cinitial penetrators.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNext there are students who move forward in their koan practice until they attain a strength that is almost mature. Thanks to a word or phrase of the Buddha-[ancestors] or perhaps some advice from a good friend, they suddenly break through into satori.\u201d<\/p>\n

Initial penetrators have some taste of awakening but in the hubbub of daily life, it slips away. And although initial penetrators can handle basic k\u014dan, when meeting a hard-to-pass-through (nant\u014d) k\u014dan, they are dumbfounded. This type, however, are willing to dig in and do the work, only sometimes bitter and resentful about Zen and their teachers. Zen is really good for this type.<\/p>\n

Hakuin\u2019s third type is the \u201cbelievers.\u201d This type \u201cunderstand[s] without any doubt whatsoever about principles such as the self-nature being apart from birth and death and the true body transcending past and present. But the great and essential matter of the Zen school is beyond them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBelievers\u201d have studied the dharma<\/a> sufficiently to have glimpsed the tracks of self-nature, but haven\u2019t seen the ugly butt of the ox for themselves. Zen is only good for this type of student when they run into the dead end of intellectual understanding.<\/p>\n

Finally, there are the \u201cself-deceivers.\u201d These students \u201c\u2026\u00a0come to believe in a teaching they hear, accepting it as true even though it has no more substance than a shadow, and cling tightly to it until the day they die\u2026. They have been bamboozled by words, yet continue to follow them scrupulously.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

This is the probably the most common type.<\/p>\n

Whether Zen is good for you depends more on the teachers and community you work with, in my view, than any type \u2013 because type isn\u2019t some static variable.<\/p>\n

Last words<\/h4>\n

So what? Whether you think Zen is good for you or not, my advice is that you follow the advice of\u00a0Nan-t\u2019ang:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must see your self-nature as clearly as if you are looking at it in the palm of your hand, so that each and everything becomes perfectly and unmistakably your own wondrously profound field of Dharma truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, the prolific James Myoun Ford R\u014dshi (fyi, \u201cR\u014dshi,\u201d\u8001\u5e2b, or \u201cold dog\u201d \u2013 see photo)\u00a0extraordinaire, offered up his considered opinion about \u201cWhat Makes a Good Zen Student?\u201d\u00a0 Because I have a few thoughts of my own (well, not really \u201cmy own\u201d \u2013 mostly that I\u2019ve borrowed from others \u2013 including from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Good is Zen for a Student?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A few days ago, the prolific James Myoun Ford R\u014dshi (fyi, "R\u014dshi,"\u8001\u5e2b, or "old dog" - see photo)\u00a0extraordinaire, offered up his considered opinion about\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2018\/04\/what-good-is-zen-for-a-student.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Good is Zen for a Student?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A few days ago, the prolific James Myoun Ford R\u014dshi (fyi, "R\u014dshi,"\u8001\u5e2b, or "old dog" - 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