Finding our own voice

Not so long ago there was a great monk who became known as the Ground Beating Monk. Whenever someone asked him as to what was the intention of Bodhidharma’s coming from the west, he would beat the ground with the Zen stick in his hand. He would beat the ground with his Zen stick whenever someone asked him a question and if he did not have his stick, he would simply hit the ground. At one point someone, hid his staff, and then asked him a question. The monk then simply opened his mouth and shouted ‘KATZ!’
At one time he was deep in the state of comprehension, the breath ceased moving, he could only resort to beating the ground to awake others; now that the stick was not at hand, and the breath could not travel, all that he could do was merely to open his mouth. This kind of state also demonstrates that Chán teachers teach others only through measure of realization, but not speech. In other cases even though they did exhibit words and sentences, those belong to personal demonstration of realization, but not to oral teachings. The ground-beating monk taught by demonstrating the stage of entrance; while others with the style of belching breath taught by demonstrating the stage of exit, as in the case of Shítou’s teaching Yinfeng. Further, because the breath ceases going out and in, the sense of bodily weight is completely lost, one feels extremely light and at ease.
The problem eventually became that all of his thousands of students would only duplicate his answer to any kind of question, they too would beat the ground. Something was getting lost in this as these students would visit other great Zen Priest’s and Monk’s and would respond to their questions by beating the ground. As the other great Zen Priest’s and Monk’s had no relationship with the great Ground Beating Monk they questioned the disciples who unfortunately replied that they did not know why they replied by beating the ground.
This kind of copying can only serve to perpetuate a system that is poorly translated and inadequately taught by the Ground Beating Monk’s disciples. Many Zen Master’s of the past have had teaching techniques, but Dàhuì Zōnggăo as well as Chinul Bojo were adverse to adopting the methods of the teaching. We cannot be monkeys merely parroting a teacher’s response, we must understand through and through why we are responding the way that we do. Finding our own voice is the way of Buddha.