I’m not sure what you’re referring to here.
You know, I really find this so hard to understand.
Imagine that you had someone who was a pastor or teacher in Christianity. And when you asked them about the Bible, they had never read it, had only the vaguest notion that it even existed or what it contains, and could do no more than quote something like “the meek shall inherit the earth”. It’s just unthinkable.
And yet that’s exactly where we are at with Buddhism. In fact it’s even worse than that. We don’t even have to consider teachers. Almost any practicing Christian has a reasonable working knowledge of the Bible, if only from listening to readings at Church. And this is still better than the knowledge that almost all Buddhist teachers, including monastics, have of the suttas.
I simply cannot understand how anyone would take seriously a teacher who had not even bothered with the most basic minimal requirement of familiarizing themselves with their Founder’s teachings. If you think Buddhism is so great, should you not think it’s worth your while to read what the Buddha had to say?
Not that that guarantees someone is a good teacher or practitioner; obviously there’s a lot more to it than that. But surely this should be an absolute minimum to be taken seriously.