Only one victory

There are land sharks to be found even in modern Zen (maybe more like deceivers).  A Zen teacher can teach us meditation that is little more than a form of quietism.  But he will call it śamatha not realizing that śamatha, which is beyond the scope of most Zennists, is really one-pointedness of mind (citta-ekāgratā) in which the din of thoughts (citta) is transcended and Mind, as essence, is reached.  Meditation turned to quietism will not help the Zen adept to attain kensho which is about seeing one's true nature.  Bodhidharma said, on this subject:

To find a Buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a Buddha. If you don’t see your nature, invoking Buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless.

I would add to this, doing a ritual form of zazen is useless.  This would be doing the exercise of seated meditation (zazen) and treating this as the same as seeing one's true nature or kensho.  Yes, you are officially a Buddha when you begin doing zazen some will tell you.  But this is not true.  Seeing our true nature is difficult.  Quietistic adherence to a sitting posture is not the key to finding a Buddha.

The fusion of zazen and enlightenment (kensho) was not taught before the time of Dogen who radically changed zazen; who it seems had little if any respect for Huineng's teaching of seated meditation or other teachers, for that matter.  The history of Zen informs us that awakening is central—not meditation.  Meditation is a means.  It is like a raft to the other shore.  Raft and yonder shore are not the same.  Zazen and awakening to our true nature or kensho are not the same, either.

Such sharks would claim they have good intentions when teaching meditation.  And perhaps they do.  But there are limits to their capacity as teachers; and they should be first aware of their own limitations and not go beyond them.  With regard to more advanced students they have no need for teachers.  They know well what they must do; they drive themselves, accordingly, not seeking rest in some illusion but push ever onwards beyond the deceptive images of the defiled mind.  They have only one victory in mind, that is seeing their true nature.

Comments

[n. yeti]

A skilled captain would not go around torpedoing other vessels in the vain satisfaction of taking more passengers on board their own leaky craft. Indeed such is the path to the hells, I have heard.

[Avalon]

Any fool can steer a ship, but it takes a skilled mind, of certain qualities, to know and apply the right route to the desired destination.

[n. yeti]

To a hammer the entire world appears as a nail. Such a hammer, I think, will eventually get hammered soon enough.

Some teachers likewise convince themselves that everyone is a disciple -- or at least should be because of their own perceived superior gnosis. There is a great danger in that, I think, of pride, of rigidity, of hasty conclusions and of a kind of false belief in ones own virtue which begets a compartmentalized form of practice which ignores that every raft is different for every person (something alluded to in the Lanka) though they may all lead to the same shore. A teacher say, who might be very strong in some regards might be very weak in others, relying on rituals and objects, or even wavering into demonic teachings because of morbid fascination for the infernal light of the hells; this can even lead to grave error such as pissing on the teachings as recorded in Pali in favor of new fangled insights, again out of swollen pride, failing to recognize their own obscurations do not dissipate by instructing others in what they do know well, no matter how well or how often they do so. If there was one teacher who was perfect in spiritual knowledge in this world, it was Buddha, the world honored one; and he passed long ago into parinirvana. Yes, we are not different from that. The treasure is in our own hut. Sadly, in seeing ourselves as Buddha, we can forget that others are also Buddha, and this, I fear leads to rebirth if not in a state of woe, at least remote from the other shore. As a final point, Buddha made it quite clear that later times would be filled with imperfect monks and false teachings presented as Buddha's own. How we may know this is to study Buddha's teachings and compare them with the teachings of our day. If there is a discrepancy, my hunch is that going with what Buddha said is the right thing to do.