gregkavarnos wrote:Johnny Dangerous wrote:Lineage itself isn't important, but what it delivers is.
How exactly can you seperate the
lineage from what it delivers? What the lineage delivers cannot exist without the lineage (deliverer), and the lineage would not exist if it did not have something to deliver.
Heh, ok. it seems If this were true tradition itself would exist in a permanent state, and it would never change. And yet, every lineage or tradition of anything ever is in a constant state of flux. Why would the yanas even be called "yana" if this was the case, there would be no reason for conventional terms like those, there would be no need for vehicles that take one to the truth of a thing, because the teaching would be the thing itself. If lineage or tradition is of the exact same stuff as what it imparts, why does it ever change, and why is it even needed to have different vehicles to reach the same truth of a thing?
So perhaps my basic answer would be that because the truth of a thing (and not just some ultimate truth, even conventional ones) is difficult to come to, it requires alot of play with falsity and/or artifice to grasped..that is the entire purpose of a 'tradition' of any kind. All the stuff about transcending form after dwelling in form that one finds in Zen and martial arts for instance, is an example of the concept. It's a conventional concept, but as such it's a fine description of the function of lineage or tradition IMO.
Maybe you can explain to me where you believe my thinking is wrong here, so i'm completely positive on what you are asking, and what you are trying to demonstrate to me, other than just to demonstrate (as some of my countrymen might say) that you can be "more-righterer" than me