Wumen's Lecture, Case 5:

"Even if you have eloquence as flowing as a waterfall, it is of no use. Even if you can recite the entirety of the Tripiṭaka1, it is of no use. If you can respond here, you will turn the dead end into a living path and the living path into a dead end. If not, you will have to wait for the future to ask Maitreya."

https://art.as.virginia.edu/making-merit-east-asian-buddhist-material-culture-seventh-and-eighth-centuries

A key teaching in Mahāyāna Buddhism, the form of Buddhism that prevailed in East Asia, advocates devotional acts, such as the making of images, recitation of Buddha names or copying of sutras to accrue merit for the next life or to transfer the merit to others. Devotees and donors of a broad social background commissioned whatever they could afford to express their piety through image-making or copying of Buddhist sūtras. Such a desire to dedicate vast quantities of images and texts contributed to innovations in techniques that were pre-cursors to mass production and printing. This talk examines the religious and cultural milieu of the period, with a focus on the practices and evidence of efforts to mass produce Buddhist images as well as texts.

.

Welcome! ewk comment: Much of the controversy in this forum is because of the divide between secular educated people vs uneducated religious followers. Another example, as I pointed out yesterday, defining terms and making arguments for/against definitions is the ordinary work of graduate students everywhere.

That merit is a core tenet of faith in Buddhism, and that Buddhists spend time trying to accrue merit, and that Zen Masters reject merit, is common knowledge among educated secular people. Religious people who come in here pretending to "explain Buddhism" are often not even affiliated with church let alone an undergraduate program in Buddhist studies. The people who vote and content brigade in this forum have no formal training in Chinese history or critical thinking generally as part of their high school experience.

As I've said, it is IMPOSSIBLE to understand Zen texts without specific academic work. It's a separate culture from Chinese culture, a separate history from Chinese history, a unique time for the Chinese language which for much of Zen history was undergoing unique influence by India.