Hierarchy of Wisdom

My teacher Mike Luetchford gave a talk about the problem of hierarchically structured Buddhist groups in the world. That was about 2 years ago in the Czech Republic. He said that in such groups there was someone at the top, who knows everything, is enlightened, makes no mistakes, then there are some people close to that person, who are almost as good as the big guy or big woman, then there are some people somewhere in the middle and then beginners, who know nothing and are treated like people who have a long long way before they can reach the top. But Mike said that Dogen sangha is not like that and that Dogen was not like that and that everyone who practices zazen is a buddha, so every beginner is very important and everyone has wisdom, perfect wisdom right from the beginning.

Brad Warner wrote a post about being criticized by Muho, the abbot of Antaiji, a famous temple in Japan, for not being a proper Buddhist teacher or something like that, Muho saying that a proper Buddhist teacher should be at one place available for the students all the time and answering their questions and dealing with all kinds of problems a Buddhist temple may have. This recent Brad's post about Muho's criticism has about 250 comments. I was wondering how Brad would decide who is and is not an authentic Buddhist teacher. I thought if Muho insists that only monks and nuns living in a temple have access to the wisdom and experience of Buddhism, he must be awfully wrong and he cannot understand Buddhism. But I don't know. I listened to the talk Mike gave about the hierarchy of wisdom and realized that we cannot rely on others when it comes to experiencing wisdom and practicing Buddhism. We have to employ our own wisdom, our own practice and there is nobody wiser than us. But then, what would Buddhist teachers be good for?

A Buddhist teacher is someone that points to the truth that we have, not pointing to the truth he or she has. The truth of Buddhism must be something universal, general, everyone's experience, not Brad Warner's or Kodo Sawaki's or Muho's. So of course, some Buddhist teachers may be misguiding us claiming things that go against the essence of Dogen's teaching, but often they only suggest something to encourage our practice.

Paradoxically, Antaiji is not a kind of military training, but a place that gives its residents freedom to practice zazen a lot, freedom to experience everyday life connected with regular zazen, it should be a place of freedom to experience, practice and study Buddhism. Not a place where it is our duty to experience and practice and study Buddhism. We should have a chance to experience and practice and study Buddhism, if we want to. And we need a teacher who will guide us to the freedom to experience the truth, our own experience, our own wisdom.