What is lineage?

Lately I've been pondering this whole question of lineage.

What is lineage?

We often have this idea in Buddhism, I think, that lineage is a single thread of influence: a teacher realizes the dharma through their teacher, then passes that realization to the next generation in a seamless transmission, like water poured from cup to cup.

But that has rarely been true.

Dogen, for example, studied in multiple streams of Buddhist realization. He started in the Tendai school, moved into Rinzai, and finally received transmission from his teacher in the Soto sect in China, which he then brought back to Japan.

My own teachers have been equally eclectic.

Baker Roshi studied with Suzuki Roshi, but has been profoundly influenced by Thich Nhat Hahn, HH the Dalai Lama, European Phenomenology, and the entire histories of Western and Eastern art.

Joseph Goldstein studied extensively in the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition. But he was also deeply touched and influenced by Dzogchen teachers. And he is currently adopting many of the ideas of the Sri Lankan trained monk and scholar, Bhikkhu Analyo.

Then there's Mingyur Rinpoche. He had four major transmission teachers, each with their own wide array of teachers, and a huge host of influential instructors in his scholarly studies. Not to mention Western science and psychology, from which he increasingly draws.

In my own case, as an American living in the 21st Century, my influences are manifold.

Yes, I've studied with Baker-Roshi, Joseph, Mingyur Rinpoche, other Buddhist teachers.

But I also can't leave out my psychological lineage, which includes the therapists I've learned from, my masters and doctoral educations, every supervisor I've ever had, my many patients and clients, and especially the two Hawaiian women psychologists who ran my internship this last year.

So I'm not sure exactly what lineage is anymore.

It's not a line, it's not seamless. But it is a force, or forces, and it seems important to me.

If I look into my own experience, I feel myself to be a nexus, a confluence, a point of contact; or perhaps like a rope braided of many fibers. Like a rope, these influences work together, are strong; unlike a rope, sometimes they find themselves in tension or conflict.

In the past, I have felt pressured to somehow choose a single lineage. But that simply hasn't been possible for me. All of these—Zen, Insight, Vajrayana, Psychotherapy—are alive in me, and to choose one at the exclusion of another dims that aliveness.

Lately I've been opening my heart and mind to the ways in which these influences influence each other, and the ways they move through me and make me who I am, both as a practitioner, and as someone who makes practice available for others.

I don't plan to answer the question of lineage anytime soon. But I am finding the question increasingly rich and touching.

Sending you many good wishes,
Craig