No Teachers of Zen
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In the ordinary education model, there are teachers who teach, students who learn, subject matter, standards of knowledge, and an educational institution that contains and certifies the educational process. While in some ways Zen might look like this, in fact Zen is not an educational process but rather a transformational one in which both teacher and student fully engage, each playing his or her proper role. The process itself affects the transformation.
Think of it as a machine with many moving parts that interact in a complex system, each part affecting every other part. No one part “teaches” while another “learns.” Yet run the machine for a while and something happens: a product is produced, in this case a seasoned Zen practitioner who embodies, in their own unique way, the values, the commitments, and mostly, the feeling and vision of a life of practice. So it’s just as Huangbo says: there is Zen but, strictly speaking, no teachers, although yes, the machine won’t turn unless all the parts function fully in their proper places. The teacher, not actually teaching anything, must occupy their place in the process. Another analogy might be a mandala: each element has its crucial pace in the overall design, but no element is sovereign. Only the overall design matters. So yes, in just this way, teachers are important.
Norman Fischer
from When You Greet Me I Bow; Notes and Reflections from a Life In Zen
Article: No Teachers of Zen