Shamelessly borrowing this idea from the noted Zen scholar McRae, Zen as we know it, was really put together during the Song dynasty. But even before this, while it was still developing itself, it more or less depended upon polarization. For example, individual Zen (dhyana) masters before Bodhidharma vs a monolithic Zen lineage traced back to the Seven Buddhas. Gradual vs sudden enlightenment. The division between northern and southern Zen. Essence vs function. The study of koans vs sitting meditation.
These kinds of ideological polarizations were and still are what fuel Zen's engine by which it made itself orthodox. But this orthodoxy, while coming from polarization, has never managed to bring to the fore, as it should, kensho (seeing our true nature) and all of its implications. The orthodox institution of Zen does not make realizers anymore than universities make creative people. The institution of Zen, paradoxically, as its external forms dominate, ends up hiding and devaluing kensho just as the American Patriot Act ends up emasculating the Constitution while claiming to protect it.
Turning the tables, looking at Zen from kensho, there is no 'orthodox institution'; no gradual vs sudden, etc. Such polarizations in the past now serve the present: to prop up a pseudo-orthodox institution whose main job is to keep the Zen fiction alive. More importantly, such polarization has only served to hide truth; to put it under an authority that is external to truth. If you go to a Zen center or a Zen monastery in Japan, the last thing you will hear is the need to attain kensho. In the book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki doesn't mention either satoi or kensho! Shouldn't it be just the opposite? A book for beginners should stress, always, kensho.
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