If you need some one to tell you you're enlightened, you're not.
If you are enlightened, you will never need to tell someone that they are.
Al Davis
----- Original Message -----
From: "eurydice" <eurydice@cruzio.com>
To: <Shakuhachi@communication.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2003 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: shakuhachi V1 #288
> One question I've always asked myself, regarding "authority," and "gurus,"
> and "no transmission outside the lineage," is this:
> WHO GAVE THE BUDDHA TRANSMISSION?
>
> Once you answer that question, you penetrate the diamond.
>
> I have sat zazen with many groups over the years (some of whom are led by
> ladies and gentlemen that claim dharma transmissions from famous roshis
and
> rinpoches), and I haven't locked eyebrows with anyone YET that I would
call
> enlightened, in the way that you can actually grok the enlightenent of
> (merely by reading texts of their words and exchanges) hoary old foxes
like
> Huang-Po, Dogen, Hui-Neng, Ryokwan, and Hakuin, to name a few.
>
> You can reach across centuries with these texts, and know that they were
> actualised there in the mind point.
>
> So I question who has the authority to grant or not grant
> mind-transmission, or certify enlightenment, when Shakyamuni himself
> achieved it by himself. (My apologies to the Tricycle and Snow Lion
weekend
> workshop and bbring your plastic crowd.)
>
> Gassho.
>
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