Submitted by ewk in zen

  1. The Record of Tung-shan (Dongshan)

After Ch'in-shan had been doing sitting mediation together with Yent'ou and Hsüeh-feng, the Master brought them tea. However, Ch'in-shan had closed his eyes.

"Where did you go?" asked the Master.

"I entered samadhi," said Ch'in-shan.

"Samadhi has no entrance. Where did you enter from?" asked the Master.

If Samadhi, the state of enlightenment, doesn't have an entrance... what does that mean?

I think the recent debate in this sub about ableism, wokeness, censorship, fairness, literacy, all that ignores something critical:

You can't make people good by telling them what to think.

So how do you make people good?

Zen Teachings of Lin-Chi (Linji), Case 35

One day Constant Attendant Wang called on the Master and together they went to look at the monks' hall.

Constant Attendant Wang said, "This hallful of monks— do they read sutras perhaps?"

The Master said, "No, they don't read sutras."

"Do they perhaps learn how to meditate?" asked the Constant Attendant.

"No, they don't learn how to meditate," said the Master.

The Constant Attendant said, "If they don't read sutras oe they don't learn how to meditate, what in fact do they do?"

The Master said, ""We're training all of them to become buddhas and patriarchs."

The Constant Attendant said, "Gold dust may be precious, but if it gets in the eye it can blind. What about it?"

The Master said, "And I always thought you were just an ordinary fellow!"

It is not only possible, it is likely that anti-ableist people are going to use ableist language to oppress people... control of language won't help. To get people to the ableist viewpoint you have to train them to understand what's going on, not simply force a language on them that they will inevitably subvert and rebel against.

The enemy isn't words... it's mistreatment and unfairness. Mistreatment and unfairness isn't the cure for that disease, caring is.

Some people say I mistreat evangelical Buddhists by "talking down to them" and calling them out for not being able to read and write at a high school level... but is that mistreatment?

Didn't they already demonstrate that they could care, but don't?

What if freedom is directly linked to being able to care without bias?

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