[Buddha-l] Aung San Suu Kyi and the latest Burmese prosecutions

[Richard Hayes]

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 2:16 AM, Ben Carral <info at bcarral.org> wrote:

>
>
>   What  it  seems  irrational  to me is, for instance,
> that a group of Zen students democratically decide what
> the  Mu  koam means,


I agree completely. Trying to decided democratically what a Zen koan means
would be every bit as irrational as accepting the arbitrary authority of a
Zen master and letting the master decide whether the disciple has passed the
koan. Zen is irrational authoritarianism from beginning to end. To try to
insert anything rational into it would be irrational indeed.


>   If  the  Buddha,  or  the good Zen masters, were not
> rational authorities, they would not be masters at all.


That's false. What makes Zen masters masters is nothing more and nothing
less than the fact that there are people who are willing to submit to their
power. Take away a disciple groveling at his feet and fawning for approval,
and a Zen master is just another bald man who doesn't get enough sleep.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes