thank you Taigu,
for some time I have been feeling this and 'am very glad that you have clarified
in a not at all 'grumpy grandpa' way.
I hope it is Ok to express a thought as I do not wish to cause offence to fellow students and I include myself in what I write.
I feel when we speak from the heart a disclaimer is rarely needed - but many of us are avid readers (I include myself in this) and it's a slippery slope to mix up our personal thoughts/feelings/life- experiences with 'read text'. It results in a certain form of expression that comes across as authoritative and universal and often relies on the term 'we' and a heavy use of 'zen language'. So at the level of written expression a personal expression may come across as a teaching.
I've realised after two years of being here and reading lots of books that my relationship to those seminal texts is a long way off any true understanding. I've become more cautious/ a lot less certain and feel I need to live those texts in my bones before saying anything much at all. I'm beginning to appreciate that it's a long journey and one that I make with faltering footsteps because retaining the simplicity of practice isn't easy.
It may be that many of us have participated in a similar journey (all of life is the journey?) in other aspects of our lives - roles that we've played, etc - but what I thought might be a simple side-step - a grafting of one line of thought/discipline onto another isn't proving simple at all, and no more should it be.
Referring back to living a training/text in one's bones. The sense I have is that the unsui here are doing just that - living the teaching in their bones - and though I didn't understand at the beginning (thinking - 'why don't they say more?') I now feel this is a sign of real humility - and maybe that pinch of salt contains a sprinkling of gold dust in it too
Thank you to all fellow students here and especially to our teachers.
Gassho
Willow