They made a significant impact on me. The Meaning of Happiness published in and The Wisdom of Insecurity are striking primers to his work, and they underlined what Rowe was already teaching me: that life had no intrinsic meaning, any more than a piece of music had an intrinsic point.
Life was, in zen parlance, yugen — a kind of elevated purposelessness. The word "zen" is a Japanese way of pronouncing "chan", which is the Chinese way of pronouncing the Indian Sanskrit "dhyana" or "sunya", meaning emptiness or void.
This is the basis of zen itself — that all life and existence is based on a kind of dynamic emptiness a view now supported by modern science, which sees phenomena at a sub-atomic level popping in and out of existence in a quantum froth. In this view, there is no stuff, no difference between matter and energy. Look at anything closely enough — even a rock or a table — and you will see that it is an event, not a thing.
Every thing is, in truth, happening. This too, accords with modern scientific knowledge. Furthermore, there is not a multiplicity of events. There is just one event, with multiple aspects, unfolding. We are not just separate egos locked in bags of skin.
We come out of the world, not into it. We are each expressions of the world, not strangers in a strange land, flukes of consciousness in a blind, stupid universe, as evolutionary science teaches us. The emphasis on the present moment is perhaps zen's most distinctive characteristic. In our western relationship with time, in which we compulsively pick over the past in order to learn lessons from it, and then project into a hypothetical future in which those lessons can be applied, the present moment has been compressed to a tiny sliver on the clock face between a vast past and an infinite future.
Thanks for your insight, Esmerelda! I appreciate you taking the time to express your thoughts on this. It really is such a fascinating topic and wonderful to hear your depth of knowledge. Thanks for enhancing this topic further for our readers! I too believe that there is a deep and profound connection between Buddhism and Christianity, and I have outlined my views and conclusions regarding the connection in an essay I wrote titled the Purpose of Monotheism and Its Future:.
Esmeralda, I am afraid you are confusing the beliefs of some sects what what Buddha actually taught. You can find late Sutras and other writings that put forward the concepts you discuss, but there is no indication that they existed in early Buddhism or were part of the Buddhas teaching.
Although Nichiren is worse! As Buddha almost certainly DID say, you should question all that teaching and all those teachers and apply reason to the path. Hi Esmeralda thank you for your views on Buddhist philosophy.
I wholeheartedly agree! All of them taught that our inner essence is pure but clouded over by our karmic imprints, conditioning and habitual tendencies. So the only way to reach enlightenment is to purify those negative imprints and develop the six perfections of generosity, patience, diligence, discipline, compassion and wisdom.
Karma plays a huge role in our development and as you said this explains why children in one family can all behave so differently. I do hope you get this as you posted it 5 years ago!! Wish we could meet up? I live in East Sussex. Different religions are that hand, those who debate about the differences between religions, the Dog. It what all the religions point to, the moon. Do any of you see it? Hmm, well that is your point of view. But the official teaching of Christianity, for example, is that only it points to the true reality.
Going on the same terms of the parable, all religions, at their best, point at the moon and stars, at their worst, at putrifying dead corpses, but onlye Christianity points at the sun. Not saying that is true, but it it is not good to generalize a point about different religions, without taking into account their own view. I mean, Christ says he is the way, as in the only way to the father, in the Gospels.
You can say that it is not a true account, but I am talking here about the official teaching. Islam, from my shallow experience, also talks about the unique relationship Mohammed got with God — Allah is the word for God in arabic, it is not a first time, like Jesus. The first step is to control our minds through meditation and other techniques that involve mind and body; to give up logical thinking and avoid getting trapped in a spider's web of words.
It was called Ch'an in China. Zen's golden age began with the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng , and ended with the persecution of Buddhism in China in the middle of the 9th century CE. Most of those we think of today as the great Zen masters came from this period.
Zen Buddhism survived the persecution though it was never the same again in China. It was popularised in the West by the Japanese scholar Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki - ; although it was found in the West before that. If you're a westerner you may find it hard to shake off the intellectual and dualist ways of thinking that dominate western culture: these can make it difficult for westerners to come to Zen.
Zen Buddhists pay less attention to scripture as a means of learning than they do to various methods of practising Zen. The most common way of teaching is for enlightenment to be communicated direct from master to pupil.
Zen practices are aimed at taking the rational and intellectual mind out of the mental loop, so that the student can become more aware and realise their own Buddha-nature.
Sometimes even mild physical violence is used to stop the student intellectualising or getting stuck in some other way. Students of Zen aim to achieve enlightenment by the way they live, and by mental actions that approach the truth without philosophical thought or intellectual endeavour.
Some schools of Zen work to achieve sudden moments of enlightenment, while others prefer a gradual process. Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience.
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