In Zen, a potential student comes to a zendo, and asks if they can participate. The proper teacher bows, and points at a place in the zendo for that person to sit and a zafu to sit on, and they show them how to sit properly, giving them their best tools to begin their journey to know themselves.
There may be some instruction sessions, but the Zen school is very clear that any instruction is simply “a finger pointing at the moon, and not the moon itself”.
There is no book that can help us find ourselves, and i suspect this is why Jesus never wrote anything down. Home (the place where we arrive when our questioning is satisfied) is only home if it is a part of us that we carry with us everywhere….. (Home… Now… Here… present attention)
We ourselves are the only ones who can search for ourselves, or perhaps to put it more clearly, we ourselves are the only ones that can find what we are searching for. There is no book that can do this for us. Looking outside ourselves for home doesn’t work. In fact, looking inside ourselves doesn’t work either….. Home is Here. Home is Now. Home is Body and Mind in the same place operating together in this present flowing moment.
So, when the Zen teacher is asked what is Zen, the answer is “attention”…. when asked what does that mean?, the reply is “attention attention attention”.
but that is only my take on the issue.
Reality is Dharma 