DHARMA IS EVEN IN THE FART OF A FOOLISH MASTER
One cannot defeat the "great impostor" with cognitive intelligence and words.
That must be made clear.
It once was said that a single thought contains perfect wisdom.
Now it is important to understand that.
Now recently a student of mine received an e-mail.
In it the questioner asked the following questions in what may be considered an impertinent and disrespectful manner. Yet the answer deserves a reply because it was from a searching intelligent person whose mind was has been agitated by mind boggling cloudy Dharma.
The letter declared:
Hello,
Let me ask with which Masters has your master studied? During what time? And from whom he received the transmission of the Dharma? Can you give me names and places?
I will verify these. I have many contacts in China and travel every year. This Summer will be the tenth time. I ask because here is Spain there are many auto-declared masters of the Dharma and Chan who are not.
They are people who have studied Chan from books or have visited some temples.
For example *******, who teaches Shaolin Gong Fu and says that he is a Master of Chan.
And another, **********, who says that he is a master of Chan and really is only a student.
A master of Chan is one who has reached illumination, equal to Buddha Sakyamuni.
For this reason I would like to have this information to resolve my doubts.
Now, judge for yourself. Learn from the errors of others.
Sometimes, but fortunately not frequently, these questions are asked.
I have with me in the teaching room a bamboo cane and for more than twenty years I repeatedly tell any students that that cane is my lineage and my tradition, my ordination, my transmission and my master.
Many understand, some do not. Those who do not are condemned to roam like a savage beast for all their lives. They do not understand that there can be no Master in the sense that they they think of it.
Furthermore there is no is no lineage, and there is no transmission of the Dharma.
A Master in the true Chan Dharma sense is a "teacher" or an "expert".
In the Tibeten world of Dharma, the equivalent word concept a Lama and it is understood to mean "a good friend".
There is however a foolish idea held frequently that a "Master " is someone who must be "enlightened".
To suggest that is folly, for there is a great difference between Awakening and Enlightenment.
While an effective Master must be awakened, for that brings the total vision of the Dharma, others can teach, if they do so with clear vision and honesty and without Identity, at the level of their accomplished experience.
Clearly not simply with a cognitive understanding from tests.
One can see immediately with just a brief view of the Dharma world that many masters with lineage and glowing transmission are far from being awakened.
No. One must throw away that concept immediately. One must ask about the Dharma which is taught not the false ideas of transmission which perpetuate false teachings and build Dharma empires.
Yun men declared referring to that saying, "The whole universe is on top of this staff. If you can penetrate it, there isn't any staff in sight either. Even so, you'd still be in bad shape."
Extending that idea, he declared, "To read the scriptures, one must be equipped with the reading scripture eye. The lantern, the pillar and the entire Buddhist canon lack nothing."
Then, holding up his staff, he continued, "The entire Buddha canon is right on the tip of this staff. Come on, where do you see a single dot? Yet it is wide open."
This person, who may be sincere, asked what seems to be an important question in this world today. But the question reflects more the inadequacy of this student's search.
Now let me declare clearly that there is no such thing as transmission as it is understood by those without a clear mind.
Yunmen declared, when asked what the eye of the genuine teachings were, "It's everwhere", and at another time in reply to the same question, "It is the steam of rice gruel".
Do you all understand what I am saying? You can find the true Dharma even when listening to the sound of an ineffective Master farting.
But most of you cannot see that the Truth is within you, not outside. You cannot see it because you are running around after initiations, lineages, and transmissions and some Master image that suits your idea of Awakening.
Buddha received no transmission, nor did his great monks like Sariputra and the like.
Did Paul or Peter or other great disciples receive transmissions from Jesus the Nazarene? No, of course not. They recognized the truth in the Master and that alone.
Furthermore the teachings that open the way to the opening of one's mind do not come from one source but many. This fragile and foolish idea of lineage and transmission is quite new and dangerous, for it closes the mind and does not open it. (See SECRET CHAN GATE HISTORIC REVELATIONS.)
As a final pont as an introduction to this theme of not relying upon ideas of the cognitive mind, let me relate the following detail from Yunmen.
You all carry your staff across your shoulders and claim that you practice Chan and study Dao and that you are in search of the meaning of "going beyond the Buddhas and transcending the Patriarchs. Well here is my question to you. Is the meaning of going beyond the Buddhas and transcending Patriarchs present in all the twelve periods of the day --walking, standing, shitting, pissing-- and seeing the vermin in the toilet and the lined up mutton traded in the market?
You are on the wrong track searching for titles and transmission. Don't search in China or in a thousand and one books, though neither should be despised, only looked over with mindfulness, looking at the teachings themselves which are presented.