Reddit reviews Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi

Oh, no need to apologize anyway. There's just a lot of... backstory.

You'll need to couple source material like the below with the above historical scholarship if you want to come to a full understanding.

As for some primary sources:

Tang dynasty teachers who were students of Mazu (one of the most influential Zen teachers ever)

Dazhu (although, relevant)

Huangbo

Baizhang (this text is prohibitively expensive on Amazon, so look in local libraries.)

Song dynasty teachers

Yuanwu (1, 2)

Hongzhi (1, 2) (note, take Taigen dan Leighton's introduction to Cultivating the Empty Field with a grain of salt, as he's a shitty scholar. He basically just misrepresents Hongzhi and Dahui's relationship. See Schlutter's How Zen Became Zen for more details.)

Song dynasty kanhua Chan teachers (kanhua is the main approach to Zen in both Rinzai and Seon)

Dahui (Yuanwu's student)

Wumen

A Japanese Zen teacher

Bankei (1, 2)

A Korean Zen teacher

Daehaeng (1, 2, 3)

___

Note that this leaves out huge swathes of the literature, including all of the literature associated with the East Mountain teaching, the Northern school, the Oxhead school, Soto, most of Rinzai, Obaku, most of Seon, etc. Of course, some people with more fixed and essentialist ideas of what "Zen" is object to the idea that some of these other schools/lineages are actually "Zen". Use your own head. (I'm not saying they're necessarily wrong; I'm just saying that once you feel comfortable with the basics, start to think critically about Zen and your own study of it, including e.g. how you would decide which teachings to follow, and why.)

There's no roster of "Zen masters^TM " anywhere, so the above is a bit of a random mix of my own choosing.

While reading, note what people say and ask yourself questions -- where do they agree? Where do they disagree? If they disagree, should that be reconciled or not, and why?

Some more pointed questions to ask for each book: What can one do to reach awakening? What ways to reach awakening are preferred over others? What practices and doctrines are criticized? Is there any cultivation necessary at any point along the path? If yes, what is to be cultivated? If the teacher is talking about the teachings of earlier masters, are those teachers being represented accurately, or are extrinsic frameworks being laid onto them to fit the later teacher's presentation of Zen? If you had to sum up the teacher's teaching in a slogan, what would it be?

Really, the main thing is that you can think critically about what you're reading, but the above reading list and approach would give you a really solid foundation for the things people tend to talk about on this forum.

Those aren't books of instruction, ewk. They are popular collections of certain people's enlightenment encounters.

Is Red Pine's translation of Bodhidharma not a direct teaching? Are letters of practice instructions from Foyan, Yuanwu, and Hongzhi not direct teachings? I suppose that Takuan Soho's instructions to Munenori on maintaining no-mind in daily life doesn't count either?

Why is it better for novices to dive deep into stories about Gutei's finger or think about whether the flag moves or not than it is to read directly from Huangpo? Isn't that like asking a baby to chew a piece of meat?

Dazhu Huihai, Hongzhi, Dahui all teach meditation.

http://terebess.hu/zen/huihai-eng2.html

http://www.amazon.com/Cultivating-Empty-Field-Illumination-Hongzhi/dp/0804832404

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