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It can go on being transmitted for thousands of years. The master has just to be clear before he transmits it, that the disciple will be able to carry it.
I will tell you a small anecdote from the inexhaustible history of beautiful Zen incidents....
One great Chinese Zen master was ready to leave the body, so he called a gathering of the monks. The monastery had two wings, each wing having five hundred monks.
So all of the one thousand monks gathered and he told them, "This week sometime, I am going to leave the body. I have not decided the day, because I have to choose the person to whom to transmit the flame. My method of choosing is that just in front of my hut, whoever thinks that he is capable of receiving the flame should write a sentence that describes the essence of Zen."
In those one thousand monks, there were a few very eminent scholars, and everybody thought that one of four people was bound to win the game. "We know much, but in a single sentence the very essence... and the master is not an ordinary master, you cannot deceive him."
Even the scholars were not ready to expose themselves, because it would be a great exposure if he said that what you have written is not the right thing. But one scholar who was the most famous in the monastery and its surroundings, went in the middle of the night so that nobody would know that he had written it. He wrote a beautiful piece that ordinarily would have been accepted. He said, "No-mind and the revelation of the buddha is the essence of Zen."
You cannot say anything against it. The poor fellow had done quite well. But in the morning when he saw it, the master said, "Who is the idiot? Catch hold of him... he has not signed his name."
Out of fear, the scholar had not signed his name. He was waiting so that if the master appreciated it he would come out, and if he did not appreciate it amongst one thousand sannyasins he would not be able to find who was the person who had written it.
He told his attendant to clean the wall. There was a great discussion all over the monastery, "This is strange. This sentence was clearly showing the very essence of Zen: No-mind,
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