Today's Zen is not the Zen of Dahui

Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) is a very important Zen master right after Sixth Patriarch Huineng for the reason that his awakening, which was profound, gave him what he needed to get to the nuts and bolts of how koans or cases were actually meant to work and how they should be used; that if used properly, can lead to an authentic enlightenment experience; which happened for many of his time. 

Besides his great advance as to how koans are to be used, Dahui was also very critical of the practice of silent illumination 默照 in which the adept sits in a rigid posture, not uttering a word; being totally still.  According to Dahui, these practitioners do not actually believe in enlightenment and call enlightenment “madness” being only secondary to sitting. According to Dahui:

“The say that enlightenment is a construct and only tell people to sit like mounds of dirt rigidly assigned in rows, and teach them “quietude” (jing 靜).  They call quietude the roots, and enlightenment the branches and leaves.”

Achieving such tranquility or quietude 靜 rested on maintaining a devout attentiveness durning the sitting posture until tranquility was achieved.  Tranquility  implied that the previous unmanageable emotions and desires had calmed down, sufficiently, that they could be said to be under the adept’s full control.

But in itself, such quietude 靜 is not enlightenment; certainly not the enlightenment of Siddhartha.  For Dahui, it acted more as a limit if not a dead end that fell short of seeing one’s true nature—Siddhartha's enlightenment.  What we see today which calls itself Zen is not the Zen of Dahui.  It's the Zen of silent illumination 默照 in which the adept sits ramrod straight on a black pillow or zafu trying to achieve tranquility which they believe is enlightenment.  To reiterate, this is not enlightenment or kenshō insofar as the emphasis is placed on the psychological side rather than on the Zen side which is direct intuition of one's true nature (kenshō).  

Comments

[Aryeh]

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.015.than.html#kaccayana

[At Saavatthii the Ven. Kaccaayana asked the Blessed One:] "'Right view,[1] right view,' it is said, Lord. In what way, Lord, is there right view?'

"The world in general, Kaccaayana, inclines to two views, to existence[2] or to non-existence.[3] But for him who, with the highest wisdom, sees the uprising of the world as it really is,[4] 'non-existence of the world' does not apply, and for him who, with highest wisdom, sees the passing away of the world as it really is, 'existence of the world' does not apply.

[Jung]

From the article below;

"While this metaphor of a dream or mirage has been used for hundreds (even thousands of years), what this might actually mean from the perspective of science has never been fully explored. It means that what we think is real is actually a kind of projection — like a film, or more likely, an interactive synthetic experience, reminiscent of a dream. In today’s terminology, we would say it’s just like a video game!

In Buddhism, the whole idea is to reach enlightenment, to get off of the wheel of reincarnation, by “waking up”. In fact, Buddha literally means “one who is awake”. Just like the “red pill” from the Matrix wakes up Neo from his illusory reality, the practices of Meditation and Yoga have been created by the sages over the years for a singular purpose: to wake us up from the illusory nature of reality around us!"

Religion & The Simulation Hypothesis, Part 2: Is Karma A Questing Algorithm?

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-12/religion-simulation-hypothesis-part-2-karma-questing-algorithm