The paradigm of Ch'an, that which most reveals its intensity, precision, and spiritual ardor, is the relationship between master and disciple. The intensity is the result of the dynamic interplay between master and disciple in a game having the highest stakes, the eventual enlightenment of the disciple. This is crucial in a retreat because the disciple's presence there is a signal that he accepts the master's guidance. By coming to retreat, the student also accepts the challenge, unmistakably defined by the master, of bringing to bear all his physical and mental resources to progress to spiritual awakening. From the moment retreat begins, to the moment it ends, the relationship of both master and student is defined by this understanding. To go on retreat with notions less rigorous than this, is to start with an extra burden.

The relationship of master and disciple may be likened to that of patient and doctor. That the patient is ill is not in dispute. The illness is the patient's inability to abandon the delusions he has been harboring since birth. This inability is ultimately due to a deeply imbedded craving for form and existence, a desire for experience, carried as a karmic burden from one life to the next. Form and existence, when coupled with sentient faculties, lead eventually to the invention of a new and very sophisticated form, the self or "I". If left unrestrained, the "I" soon becomes the overlord of our conscious life. The belief in the self-entity is the root delusion which proliferates new delusions without end, and seemingly without regard to their consequences. If health means abandoning the habits of falling into delusion, then a radical re-education towards the idea of I/self is needed. The course of cure begins with the patient's recognition of his state, and his submission to the ministrations of his doctor, the Ch'an master.

The single most important qualification of the Ch'an master is that he has himself completed the same course of cure under his own master. In this sense he is not like the cancer specialist who has never had cancer, or the psychiatrist who has never been psychotic. He has himself travelled the path out of delusion on which he now guides his students. Beyond that, his level of attainment, his style, energy, eloquence, the qualities of his master, are individual matters. In any case, the significance of this qualification has to do with the notion of transmission.