The dialogues preserved in the Record of Linji present a pedagogy that is deliberately disruptive, designed to shake students loose from their reliance on concepts, doctrines, and roles. Linji’s famous shouts and blows, along with abrupt and sometimes harsh language, function not as expressions of anger but as pedagogical tools that cut through discursive thinking at its root. By shocking students out of habitual mental patterns, these interventions demand an immediate, non-conceptual awareness that cannot be reduced to theory or commentary. In this way, the teaching is not about adding more knowledge but about stripping away what obscures direct seeing.

At the same time, the dialogues show a consistent negation of purely intellectual or scriptural approaches. Linji criticizes those who seek truth in texts, rituals, or in the reputations of famous masters, warning that such external searching only deepens dependence. Instead, the teaching turns students back upon themselves, insisting that nothing is fundamentally lacking and that what is needed is a kind of trust in one’s own capacity for realization. This emphasis on non-dependence extends even to Buddhist concepts themselves, which are treated as potential fetters when clung to as ultimate.

A central thread running through these encounters is the pointing to what Linji calls the “true person of no rank,” an intrinsic, unconditioned awareness that stands prior to all social identities and conceptual distinctions. Rather than elaborating this in metaphysical terms, Linji uses vivid, everyday language and concrete images to direct attention to the one who is, at this very moment, seeing and hearing. The dialogues thus function as a continuous redirection: away from abstract doctrines and toward the living subjectivity that is already present, though usually overlooked.

Another striking feature of this pedagogy is its situational and highly responsive character. The same type of question may draw very different replies, because each response is tailored to the particular attachments and blind spots of the student in front of Linji. Sometimes he tests a monk by drawing out a conceptual position only to demolish it instantly; at other times he employs paradox and contradiction to undermine dualistic thinking, such as rigid oppositions between Buddha and sentient beings or good and evil. Through such testing and verification, the dialogues expose whether a student’s understanding is merely intellectual or genuinely rooted in direct experience.

Underlying all of this is a paradoxical stance toward authority. Linji relentlessly deconstructs blind reverence for patriarchs, scriptures, and institutional status, yet he also appears in the dialogues as a figure of uncompromising authority whose words and actions carry great weight. This tension itself becomes part of the teaching: true authority is shown not as institutional power but as the functional capacity to free others from clinging. The Record of Linji thus portrays a Zen pedagogy that is confrontational yet compassionate, unsystematic in form yet sharply focused in aim, always seeking to bring students back to the immediacy of their own mind.