A Question Of Lineage...

[johnrieber]

hmmm.

...

I don't think there is anything wrong with acknowledging your gaining of a key from someone else even if it was only done over a short period of time. You still have to practice on the path for the door you opened. If you practice wrong however, it is safe to say that you didn't gain the key, you only thought you did and you didn't open the door, you are still fumbling about with the handle.

i'm down with that. sometimes, a brief encounter with a good teacher can give you something you can work on for years. i'd go so far as to say that you can learn a very specific 'more' from a good teacher in a couple of hours and a couple of years of personal-practice problem-solving than some of their regular students might in the same couple of years, if you take the key thing seriously and work your ass off.

but if you can do that, it's more polite and accurate to give credit for the lesson learned to the teacher without claiming 'lineage' than it is to set yourself up as someone who's carrying on the teacher's transmission. i mean, if you can learn that much from a teacher over a weekend or something, you have to think about how much you haven't learned from them in the other 51 weeks of that year.

and if you are going to go out on a limb and say that you learned something from a particular teacher, you should be willing to show that teacher what you say you've learned from them, if there's some question about that. and let them make the call.

randomly, if you don't have a long-term committed relationship or a personal relationship with a teacher, no matter how much you may have learned from them, i reckon that the chan/zen of the thing is to give credit to the teacher if someone asks you 'how did you do that?'

claim nothing that hasn't been given to you, but say thank you every chance you get.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

yes, i agree, claiming lineage is a totally different thing.

if you don't have your little red card, then you haven't been lineaged. period. that's how it works and anyone who's been in a traditional system knows about discipleship, the red card, the tea, the kneeling, the public declaration and all the other "whacky" shit that comes with being a part of a traditional kungfu family.

alternately, there is nothing wrong with saying " i learned this little ditty from a cat I met in NYC and it's sweet"

[johnrieber]

maybe we could start a thread about sweet little ditties we've learned from cats whose formal students we are not.

i have a couple of good ones. but some of them are whacky.

[Doc Stier]

in zen practice, a considerable amount of knowledge can be transmitted with a nod of the head.
Actually, there is a whole school of zen that is ALL about the epiphany.

Sorry, Darth, but that's not a very good analogy, IMO.

The spiritual "epiphany", as you say, or a so called "sudden enlightenment", is only likely for the Zen practitioner who can relate it to his or her ongoing practice of self-inquiry through extensive daily meditation combined with regular instruction, correction, and refinement of the practices from the Zen Master. Such revelations are not very likely for those who don't already have an established meditation practice, or who only engage in a casually self-directed meditation practice.



Most of the Zen practitioners who have such experiences are in fact men and women who are tonsured monks, either living in a monastic community or living as wandering mendicants, and are in fact therefore already a formal member of the school's lineage, even if they themselves are not formal lineage successors.





Doc

[klonk]

maybe we could start a thread about sweet little ditties we've learned from cats whose formal students we are not.

i have a couple of good ones. but some of them are whacky.

Ya know... some of my best stuff is stolen. Sad, perhaps, but true! (Gots no red card.)

[Darth Rock&Roll]

in zen practice, a considerable amount of knowledge can be transmitted with a nod of the head.
Actually, there is a whole school of zen that is ALL about the epiphany.

Sorry, Darth, but that's not a very good analogy, IMO.

The spiritual "epiphany", as you say, or a so called "sudden enlightenment", is only likely for the Zen practitioner who can relate it to his or her ongoing practice of self-inquiry through extensive daily meditation combined with regular instruction, correction, and refinement of the practices from the Zen Master. Such revelations are not very likely for those who don't already have an established meditation practice, or who only engage in a casually self-directed meditation practice.



Most of the Zen practitioners who have such experiences are in fact men and women who are tonsured monks, either living in a monastic community or living as wandering mendicants, and are in fact therefore already a formal member of the school's lineage, even if they themselves are not formal lineage successors.





Doc

So you subscribe to therevada then? lol

I don't agree that only the steadfast meditating monks experience epiphany.
I believe sally the housewife who's never even heard of zen and never once sat in intentional meditation can experience it.

I believe truth is available to anyone even when they aren't looking for it.
I believe that everything that there is, is more than enough and that there is no requirement or criteria to knowing truth.

[lazyboxer]

One recurring difficulty with lineages is that although they aren't all created equal, with some pretty crappy ones around (sad to say), it's sometimes damn hard escaping from them. It's a truism among traditional Chinese painters and calligraphers that escaping teacher's influence to create one's own personal style is very difficult, if not impossible. 'Monkey see, monkey do' is an excellent skill for beginners, but filling that empty vessel with your life force takes natural intelligence, not just perseverance. Chris McKinley mentions how crosstraining opened his eyes, Confucius said 'the superior man joins with his friends for discussion and practise', and masters who won't let their students off the farm will get short shrift in the YouTube age.

[Doc Stier]

So you subscribe to therevada then? lol

I don't agree that only the steadfast meditating monks experience epiphany.
I believe sally the housewife who's never even heard of zen and never once sat in intentional meditation can experience it.

I believe truth is available to anyone even when they aren't looking for it.
I believe that everything that there is, is more than enough and that there is no requirement or criteria to knowing truth.

Sally the Housewife practicing Zen Meditation

C'mon, Darth, let's keep it real, OK?

I agree that transformative revelations can be experienced anywhere, at anytime, by anyone, whether a Zen Roshi or Sally the Housewife. However, logic would suggest that most often this happens to people who are already on a spiritual path of some kind and are already seeking personal insights, just as the most profound insights and revelations regarding martial arts are most often experienced by people who are already engaged in the arts.

We tend to attract into our lives that which we think about, talk about, read about, and invest some degree of emotional attachment to. So it only makes sense that this would usually be true of personal epiphanies as well. There can always be exceptions, of course, but these are extraordinary occurrences rather than the norm, IMO.

And, no, I do not subscribe to Theravada Buddhism just because I suggest that tonsured monks, who devote themselves to intense daily meditation practices, are more likely to experience Satori than Sally the Housewife is.

Doc