Lineage Delusion

A fascinating article from the Sweeping Zen website. It questions the validity of the whole concept of ‘dharma transmission’.

Lineage Delusions: Eido Shimano Roshi, Dharma Transmission and American Zen

Almost every Buddhist teacher claims to have received his teaching in an unbroken person-to-person line that began with the Buddha himself. In zen, at least, this hits bumpy ground with the story of Hui Neng, the sixth leader of zen in China, through whom all subsequent zen dharma transmission passes. I won't go into all the details here, but the story of how he received transmission is considered by some scholars to be far-fetched, and possibly invented by his own students to conceal the reality that Hui Neng was a self-taught zen master who received dharma transmission from nobody.

Anyway, the article is a good read if you're interested in this stuff.