4. Why Do We Need Teachers?

Once you are on the road to the Great Way, you will have to go through the thornbushes of the mysterious Buddhist truth and overcome the hurdles set up by the preceeding Buddhist dharmas. Those of capability who have attained the high status of serenity can enjoy the place beyond, in which the heavenly women donate flowers and tirthaka can have a peek. Those predecessors and senior Zen masters of unlimited capability can exercise the power of  hatching by 'pricking the outer layer of the egg' if it is pecked from within by the hatching chicken. He talks all day without speaking; he walks all day without taking a step: if the teacher possesses this unrestricted ability, he will be able to open his disciples' mind.  

In teaching students, the teacher needs to have the special ability to address his disciples' minds  freely and enable them to open.  If he can do so, he will be a good dharma teacher.  Otherwise, he can not be a good teacher or a chief monk. To obtain this ability, the participant must be sharply awakened and study under a wise mentor for a long time.  After training himself and becoming mature, he can then wield his power to teach.  It is nonsense to try to begin teaching others just after you solve the hwadu. Only gold which is refined a hundred times will not change its color and can radiate its glow everywhere.  As the monk becomes like this refined gold, he can begin to lecture and become a leader. If he lives in leisure or spends his time in a cottage, however, believing that he has achieved some degree of attainment or has realized the hwadu, all that he does will only represent half of an accomplishment. When you examine the history of Zen, only the monks who had been severly trained and even beaten by their mentors were able to exercise the power of dharma.  No one exercised it who did not practice hard.

A lion drops its cubs down a thousand-feet precipice and only raises those who climb back.  It kills the others, thinking, "These are not my cubs."  A cat teaches its offspring how to catch mice.  Since even the animals are like this, how do one become a dharma teacher?  How can one become a teacher without having had a teacher?  You need teachers of good knowledge at every stage of your enlightenment. You need teachers of acumen to approve and confirm your enlightenment.

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