/lit/ - Literature

>>11103360
Oh shit that looks like a pube on my hairy titty

>>11103360
Zen is the rooster crowing. Zen is the vase that is knocked over and breaks. Zen is the old man opening the door.

>>11103360
Pretty much. This is why Asians are soulless automatons.

Zen is a specific lineage of Mahayana Buddhism that arose out of the confluence of Daoist and Buddhist ideas.

Zen still exists specifically within the Mahayana context, but is unique on it's very strong emphasis on experiential meditation over the study of sutras or devotions to deities. Zen is also famous for it's use of koans - short, nonsensical riddles that are used to "trick" the student out of intellectual thinking and instead experience reality-as-it-is.

Zen became popular in the West during the mid-20th century, primarily due it's perceived simplicity and deemphasis on ritual and dogma. The term "Zen" has even come to mean something akin to "calming," "insightful," "effortless," and so on.

Unless you're already a Zen master, the Zen is most definitely not just "it's fucking nothing."

>>11103360
minions tier

>>11103410
he's right tho

>>11103417
concepts are more real than "being" itself, hence their entire world view is bullshit

>>11103390
Is to "experience reality-as-it-is" going to the well to put out the fire that your master started by spouting paradoxes and leaving you at a loss for words, is Zen idosing for ancient Asians?

Zen:
>Zen is nothing and everything, it is presence and absence
It sounds like you're using vague paradoxical language to be able to point out anything as representative of Zen but revoke its status should it ever be questioned
>you just don't understand Zen

It's nothing more than the nip revival of sophistry, and the predecessor to terroristic obscurantism.

>>11103417
We get it, bro. You vape.

Zen is not about words and philosophizing, it's about experience. I'm not a Zen Buddhist but I can at least take the proposition that there may be certain things you can't understand without directly experiencing it. This is why all the people who criticize Zen as being meaningless just by reading about it are rather dense, because Zen tradition itself says that its truths are outside of words and their writings are necessarily very limited expressions.

I don't see how people have such a tough time comprehending Buddhism. It's really a lot less sophisticated than even entry-level Christian theology.
Have you ever repeated a word so much that it started to seem like a mildly uncomfortable bundle of sounds, meaning disassociating from the movements your mouth actually makes? That's what it's like. All the Mahayana and Theravada traditions do is giving you extreme, controlled dissociation.

>>11103360
>he doesn't realise that Christianity has the best of Zen without the lame "dude just chill and have a toke" bullshit of standard Eastern philosophy

>>11103444
The entire point of life is putting those kind of experiences to words somehow. Otherwise you can't relate it to other experiences and it is meaningless. That's probably why asians can compartmentalize their lives so much and are such easy victims for globalist materialism.

>>11103444
Exactly. Like ive had an experience that you couldnt even make up on the spot: the forms of people grow less distinct the more emtionally distant you become from them; the shapes they take on become unfamiliar.

>>11103435
This anon is pretty much correct and why the man of the East and the man of the West's brain is fundamentally different. The West moved beyond these types of arguments and this type of thinking back in the 5th Century B.C. The East stagnated. The West essentially said, and it's now fundamentally in the dna and has become part of the philosophy of what it means to be Western, "that's not good enough."

>>11103360
From what I can tell with Zen, which isnt much, it is far more open in using whatever means necessary to reach enlightenment.

If it is philosophical work in dealing with past writings of zen masters, then fine, whatever gets you there

If it is being beaten by a wooden pole, so be it. If its a riddle, so be it. If its sitting, so be it

I think thats where a lot of confusion comes from when people in the west keep telling each other, no, you dont really "get" zen. They understand a certain book, which came from some authentic source, which had particular advice on getting a particular student where they needed to go

I might be wrong but thats how it seems

>>11103475
That's almost completely backwards. Zen is autistically focused on zazen, which is indeed what most in the west think of when they imagine meditation - sitting very still, chanting and breathing slowly. The most varied/flexible Mahayana tradition is not Zen, but Vajrayana, which is aided particularly by the transparency and clarity of Tibetan prose, even in "twilight language". You can tell right away when something is symbolic or multi-layered, while in the other Mahayana traditions you get jerked around with meme paradoxes and no simple, sequential vehicles to their resolution.
Of course, every Vajrayana path takes far more effort than any white Buddhist is willing to put in.

>>11103410
You would know with your Facebook image

yes and that is exactly why it is great

>>11103461
You’re a retard.

>>11103463
You’re possibly insane.

>>11103501
Zazen is not just sitting to all zen branches. There are different ways to deal with it, and not all branches dont just think of their practice as solely zazen

>>11103426
There is some sense in there ridiculously incoherent methodology

>>11103616
Enlighten

>>11103866
I’m drunk.

From my very uniformed knowledge base of listening to a BBC In Our Time 40 min podcast on Zen and occasional Internet information osmosis:

The main hook to Zen is the idea that Enlightenment does not need the traditionally believed paths of rigorous monasticism (though it's not opposed to it), theological study, meditation techniques, metaphysics, etc. Enlightenment can come fast and much easier than some other sects would claim in a eureka moment - to anyone that is sincerely trying. In this way it is to more complex theology/study focused Buddhist traditions as radical versions of Protestantism is to traditional Catholic theology with a "faith and grace alone!" interpretation taken to an extreme.

That is why you often get faux wise bullshit replies from self assumed brainiacs. Zen has an idea that encourages an attitude of "setting you on the right path" by spouting nonsense when they sense you are seeking the scientific method to Zen. It's all about rejecting formalism and going to the ultra basics.

In lieu of any formal system to enlightenment Zen has developed an fetishistic focus on sitting in a certain way (that is not actually a technique to arrive at enlightenment properly!) and about a million "sayings" from previous "masters" that ironically overwhelm the text count of more formal Buddhist traditions.

It might have an endearing aesthetic, but it's pretty obviously ripe for abuse by charlatans and trolls since it has no criteria to distinguish correct from bullshit, other than Master prestige.

>>11103425
>misunderstanding it this much

>>11103374
>a pube on my
>hairy titty

>>11103445
Since you seem to know about Buddhism can you recommend any books for somebody has no experience with it?

>>11104056
No, he can’t, because he himself says he learned this from “occasional Internet osmosis” and a BBC podcast on Zen. This thread is basically the blind leading the blind, it’s people quibbling about something they have no direct experience of and criticizing the literature of a teaching which repeatedly expresses it must be directly experienced and cannot be fully captured in words.

>>11103360
No, Zen is fucking everything unironically