Moving from a selfish practice to practice for all

[A.J.]

Mahākāśyapa was clearly an important figure in early Buddhism, and is believed to have led the early sangha following the Buddha's death. However, many scholars feel that his qualities were considerably embellished in later records in order to instill within him the ideal qualities of Buddhism and the sangha itself. I imagine this would have been necessary to show that there were individuals of a comparable stature to the Buddha able to continue the tradition.

In Ch'an and Zen, the story of the holding up the flower is likely to be apocryphal but displays something important about about tradition and way of teaching which is, to my mind, more important that whether it is literally true or not.

This is also the case with the Sixth Patriarch, whose story in the Platform Sutra now seems to be near total hagiography rather than biography, written by one of his students in order to cement the place of his lineage as the true line of Zen against that of the 'Northern School'.

In the development of Ch'an (Zen) in China, there were many different Buddhist schools vying against each other for position so being able to establish a clear lineage dating back to the Buddha was important, and also establishing the authenticity of your own lineage.

However, I do think that dharma transmission is not a bad way of authorising new teachers and providing some degree of legitimacy, even if we know that can be abused sometimes. It also is, to me, a very lovely symbolic way of a teacher recognising the fact that you have grasped the great matter of life and death.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

Ideally dharma transmission would not be the equivalent of something like apostolic succession although it is funny that the ancient rationale seems similar. Given that there probably isn't an unbroken line of dharma transmitters anywhere that may put a monkey wrench in the notion that anyone today has such a derived authority. The idea of learning from someone who knew because they learned from someone who knew seems basically good nevertheless.

Gassho,

Andrew,

Satlah

[A.J.]

Right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi can be summed up, one might say, as right action, a program of compassionate co-existence, underpinned by the right actions of mindfulness/samadhi.

When I noticed that while I am sitting in "silence" harm toward others seems to be reduced, I began to sit more.

Selfish/not selfish. _()_

gassho
shonin sat today and some lah