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Winter Retreat - The Recorded Sayings of Linji
Each meditation student has different capacities—some are slow, some are quick; some are burdened with much sorrow, some are playful—so the Zen master, like a physician, must “prescribe according to the individual’s capacity.” In the Record of Linji, the Zen teacher is called the host, the student is the guest, and sometimes their roles are reversed; so as not to confuse newcomers, first comes the introductory teaching—the gentle, compassionate (sometimes stern) words of the patriarch, as natural as “eating rice and drinking water”—then comes the phase of direct treatment, that is, profound exchanges to help penetrate the path of practice.
Zen is not a matter of learning theories but is a spiritual “Zen battle,” requiring dialogue and sometimes wrestling to break through delusion. A question is only appropriate when it has the power to shatter the chains:
- Gentle words
- A thunderous shout
- A direct blow
When all three methods fail, the student is still caught in thinking—driving a stake into space. Instead of asking questions that can be looked up (the Noble Eightfold Path, the three vehicles; the twelve categories of teachings), one should only ask “life-and-death questions” that liberate oneself and the whole community, avoiding labels (tradition, nationality, method) in order to see the true person inside.
