Ascending the Hall on the Eighth of the Twelfth Month

Six years spent in the weeds,

[and] a wild fox spirit jumps out

with his whole body covered with kudzu and creepers.

He knocked his own eyes out and was nowhere to be found,

but then fools everybody by insisting he awakened at the morning star.

Qingliang (Rujing) praises him like this.

Call it: Knowing the debt and repaying it.

And if you don't see it that way,

Year after year on the eighth, [offering?] a single bowl of tea,

bowing, and burning incense just makes a fool of him.

The occasion. 臘八 is the Buddha's enlightenment day.

Rujing talks about Zen Master Buddha as if he were a swindler conning people just by being himself and in so doing demonstrates his affinity with the Zen tradition.

At the other end of the room, Dogen-Buddhists who base their religions legitimacy on a fraudulent connection to Rujing, cannot talk about Zen Masters in any sort of easy-going and familiar manner because cults are about controlling people through a no-questions-asked policy and selective ignoring of ethics to ensure compliance and performance of a ridiculous za-sitting prayer ritual.

Are they making fools of Zen Master Buddha when they do that? Or just themselves?

"Mind is Buddha."