It is not uncommon for beginners to ask how do you tell if a Buddhist teacher is enlightened? Given the fact that some teachers have, allegedly, groped their female students or used their authority to have sex with female students, it might be a good question. Unfortunately, this is tantamount to asking how do you tell if a Christian minister or priest is Christ like?
I faced the same problem when I was a young dude. Facing my teacher, I thought, or should I say, believed, that he was an enlightened Zen master and not just an abbot (he was only an abbot). It turns out that he was a homosexual and I was not which created some tension. The other monk who was there before I arrived, was the apple of the teacher’s eye. My teacher, in other words was a predator of sorts. But none of this quenched the fire of my enthusiasm for Zen—not in the slightest. It was just another pothole in the road to nirvana.
From the side of not being a Buddha, which I was, there is no way that I could tell who had or had not achieved enlightenment.
Granted that what Gautama realized whereby he became "Buddha" is within each of us or as our Christian friends might say: the kingdom of God is within you. But do we, personally, see the state of being a Buddha, i.e., buddhatā, or see the kingdom of God within us right now? The answer is no. And why is it no? Because our thoughts, opinions and convictions act as a barrier which block our seeing.
It is with the recognition of this that Zen becomes both more interesting and profound. Somehow we have to exhaust our thoughts, opinions and convictions. They are only on the surface like small ripples on a pond. They are also leading us astray because it is all we know.
But there is still away. It requires a retreat from everyone except yourself which means that you have to rely on your self to awaken—not some Zen teacher. Now it is up to you to break through the barrier of your thoughts, opinions and convictions to see the true Mind which is unthinkable, beyond opinions and convictions. In my example, it was a mistake on my part to assume my teacher was enlightened when he was only a few yards in front of me on the spiritual path. Do any of us really need a personal teacher, someone to hold our hand? No we don't.
If a teacher can't give a straight answer to the question "what gets reborn" then they're clearly not even a stream-enterer.
Posted by: david b | August 07, 2018 at 04:23 AM
In this existence there is a certain karmic order of communicability. It is this transmutability which leads to such things as commerce, trade, wealth and so on, enjoyed as good karma (but always dependent upon conditions) and likewise the transmission of disease, destructive habits such as heavy drinking, cruel practices taken as normal standards of behavior, political views and so on that are likewise passed from one sentient to the next amid the overall maelstrom of samsara.
There is an order to this, which appears as a law but is not, merely being one reflection of the endless light of mind finding contact with phenomena and echoing back to its source as things/phenomena/ideas changings hands or moving from one state to the next, one owner to the next, and so on. All of this movement is illusory. Because many of today’s students of Zen are told by rote and tradition a teacher is necessary to know their own minds, there is reliance on this perceived order of communicability and from this comes the reified notion of mind-to-mind transmission cherished by so many Buddhist schools. There is no transmission because there is nothing but mind from the very beginning. If one goes off in search of a Teacher who will serve a role that fits in this worldly order – a kind of transaction or tit-for-tat – perhaps it is possible to learn something in this way, handed down from person to person, again as tradition, legend and lore, and the communicability of experience in the dreamlike illusory state of samsaric “reality”.
However, it is just as possible through moral refinement and disciplined spiritual inquiry (the stocks of merit referred to in Buddhism) to stumble upon one’s answers on their own or by agency of the Tathagata which is not discernable in terms of movement or communicability, being altogether too subtle to grasp. It should also be mentioned that karmic associations from past existence carries over to this life, so really the learning of one life is not distinguishable from the spirits’ trajectory through endless manifestations in form, gross or subtle, in states of exaltation or misery.
How easy then it is to cease to look inward, and adhere to generally accepted standards that wisdom, just like a loaf of bread or a pair of shoes, might be acquired from a Teacher if one merely conducts themselves in the standard way by going to a religious center of some kind, and engaging in whatsoever of endless ritual forms or methods of practice, but all of these are not fundamentally any different that learning on one’s own. There is no real communication of wisdom, but merely the support of the Tathagatas from beginning to end. If this is recognized, one’s Teacher might as well be a gust of wind, because mind is already attune to the subtle signals of good merit which draw the spiritual seeker inward when all external seeking ends.
Posted by: n. yeti | August 02, 2018 at 09:36 AM
Well, i live in a city where the nearest master is 800 km. away and i don't even have the money to go there. I had a sort of a dream once (i wasn't fully asleep though). I was in a Zen monastery and i was about to ask a question to the abbot, but before asking the question i thought to myself "What am i really doing here and what problem do i expect this person to solve for me? Isn't Seeing this person as a master another delusion of my perception and desire?"
Posted by: Emmanuel | August 01, 2018 at 09:13 PM
Yawn.
Posted by: Adasatala | August 01, 2018 at 04:35 PM
"A sincere heart and the Chánguān cèjìn in hand is worth more than 10,000 teachers."
I know of thousands of such monks, that still know nothing beyond the taste of rice soup in the morning and empty stomachs in the evening.
All chanting and recitations between these temporal states of light-less misery, are merely the acts of a fool shouting at a distant wall, taking the return echo for proof of life on the other side.
Though the author of this excellent blog makes a good argument for trying passing through the gateless gate of Chan, it takes something of a spiritual genius to accomplish what he talks about without the guiding hand of a spiritual teacher/coach who has accomplished this on an immense availability of good merit and boundless virtue.
Were it not so, the amount of lonesome, struggling students (that far outwaves the amount of buddhist monks in the world) would produce a limitless amount of bodhisattvas and enlightened Masters (of the Mind).
But reality is not so, and the sad truth is that only a very few passing through this specific world (there are many others). in this part of the galaxy, are destined to encounter truly enlightened and skillful teachers, there to help and push the student to the utter brink of his wits, where the last leap into the sheer darkness of that which signifies the gateless gate into the blazingly lighfilled dharmakaya of countless Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, is such where the Mind-student awakes on his or hers great merit and good virtues which are purity of heart, discipline, fearlessness, and the great boundless and singular passion to leap through the gateless gate of Zen no matter what.
Posted by: Jung | August 01, 2018 at 12:53 PM