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Zen (-Buddhism)
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| TranceGiant |
What is it all about?
Could some of you give me some clear and short definition/explanation? Some additional book-recommendations on this subject?
Thanks :toothless |
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| Renegade |
Looks like a good place to start:
www.zenguide.com
Also, I keep buying these Buddhist books off some Hari Krishna's that hang around my train station but haven't gotten round to reading them yet. Once I eventually get around to it, I'll keep you posted and let you know if there's any I can reccomend. :D |
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| DrummeRaver86 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
Also, I keep buying these Buddhist books off some Hari Krishna's that hang around my train station |
:happy2: |
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| Alccode |
Hi TranceGiant,
Why are you asking about Zen in the Political Discussion forum? If you want to know the politics behind it or whatever, then I can't help, but if you are interested in the actual practice, and therefore something deeper, maybe I can be of some small help.
Inevitably you will come to the topic of "meditation." Some misconceptions that you must be aware of (taken from the Meditation section on www.osho.com -- I tend to avoid the other sections and the bureaucracy/marketing there):
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Some Common Misconceptions
Meditation is…
1) Only for people who are on a spiritual search.
The benefits of meditation are manifold. Chief among them are the ability to relax and to be aware without effort. Useful tools for just about everyone!
2) A practice to gain “peace of mind.”
Peace of mind is a contradiction in terms. By its very nature the mind is a chronic commentator. What you can discover through meditation is the knack of finding the distance between yourself and the commentary, so that the mind, with its constant circus of thoughts and emotions, no longer intrudes on your inherent state of silence.
3) A mental discipline or effort to control or “tame” the mind, to become more mindful.
Meditation is neither a mental effort nor an attempt to control the mind. Effort and control involve tension, and tension is antithetical to the state of meditation. Besides, there is no need to control the mind, only to understand it and how it works. The meditator does not need to tame his mind, to become more mindful, but to grow more in consciousness.
4) Focusing, concentrating or contemplating.
Focusing, like concentrating is a narrowing of awareness. You concentrate on one object to the exclusion of everything else. By contrast, meditation is all-inclusive, your consciousness is expanded. The contemplator is focused on an object – perhaps a religious object, a photograph or on an inspiring aphorism. The meditator is simply aware, but not of anything in particular.
5) A new experience.
Not necessarily – sportsmen know this space, which they refer to as “the zone.” Artists know it – through singing, painting, playing music. We can know it through gardening, playing with the kids, walking on the beach or making love. Even as children we may have had experiences of it. Meditation is a natural state and one that you have almost certainly tasted, although perhaps without knowing the name of the flavor.
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The FAQ on that website is especially useful, and I highly recommend you read it if you have any interest at all in this subject.
Good luck! |
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| TranceGiant |
thanks for your help so far but I'm still looking for an explanation about what the idea of Zen IS.
and Alcode.....this forum was never meant to be politics only. In its better days this wasnt merely a place to discuss Bush, Hamas and Sharon....religious and philosophical topics are equally legitimate |
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| Alccode |
| quote: | Originally posted by TranceGiant
thanks for your help so far but I'm still looking for an explanation about what the idea of Zen IS.
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Ohhh... I see, well, the first thing to realize is that Zen is nothing "magical." It's just a simple, down-to-earth way of thinking about the world (well, not thinking about the world, exactly...lol). So if someone says to you, "Oh, Zen is too complicated for you," or, "It takes a lifelong effort to even glimpse the faintest glimmerings of the beginning of the understanding of the essence of Zen" (haha! :haha: ) -- then feel free to laugh and/or walk away.
Zen is pretty much a type of Buddhism that emphasises on finding 'enlightenment' in the present moment rather than some future "reward" for "meditation" for a long time.
An important aspect of Zen is that the 'enlightenment' experience can only be transferred directly from teacher to student... As you can see, this is a relic from master/student mentality.
Two central techniques of Zen are "zazen meditation" and koans. You're probably familiar with koans, like the well-known "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" These koans have pretty much lost all meaning today. The original purpose of the koans was to bring up a puzzle, or "riddle" that is utterly unsolvable. The point is that they *cannot* be solved but, rather, that they bring the mind to a state where it is so utterly confused, so totally lost, that it just stops working -- stops thinking, allowing you to grasp the underlying existence behind it, in a split-second glimpse. (This is necessary because the mind is 100% active... try it, just sit and watch your thoughts, you'll notice that you are always, constantly thinking something). So nowadays, instead of blanking out to something like, "what is the sound of one hand clapping," it just brings up to mind something else that has been conditioned into the mind. For example, when I hear that koan, I always think of that Simpsons episode where Bart & Homer want to win that golfing competition, and Lisa becomes Bart's "zen coach" .... :haha: hilarious episode. :) The funniest part was when Bart answered that exact koan with folding one hand in and out very quickly, thus making a faint "clapping" noise. :haha: That was one of the Simpsons' best.
Anyway, the "zazen meditation" bit of zen is nothing fancy... it's just, "Sit down and don't do anything." Literally.. It's not just, "oh, don't move." It's more comprehensive than that -- don't move, don't think... but don't *forcefully* stop thinking, just don't do anything. If you start thinking of something, don't bother doing anything about it... just watch it. The central point is not to use any effort whatsoever -- a good thing for lazy people! :toothless So if you find yourself straining or something, then just get up and do something else, then try again later.
Actually this is a very interesting exercise. There's nothing really "spiritual" about all this... just try sitting down one day, close your eyes, and just 'be yourself'.. just sit and do nothing. It'll be incredibly hard to do! Trust me I've tried. :toothless
If anything, this exercise is interesting to demonstrate that the mind, as a machine, is constantly grinding its gears away. This is especially a good thing to know if you're studying Psych or Cognitive Science or the like... they don't really tell you about how the mind is 100% active. I mean, sure, it's common sense nowadays that electrons are always firing in the brain, but to actually *personally* realize that you're always thinking something or another, is quite interesting to say the least!
So those are pretty much the "building blocks" of Zen, if you will. I think I covered most of it, but if others have a lot more to add, please feel free to jump in and do so, and/or correct parts of my explanation.
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and Alcode.....this forum was never meant to be politics only. In its better days this wasnt merely a place to discuss Bush, Hamas and Sharon....religious and philosophical topics are equally legitimate |
You know, I had *no* clue whatsoever... in this regard I'm a relative newcomer. Certainly you'd never get the impression that philosophy is accepted here from the way this forum is standing NOW... :haha: It's like there are only 3 or 4 topics that keep getting tossed back and forth endlessly... Anyway, if this is actually supposed to be a "Political-Philosophical" forum, then I'm all up for it. |
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| JudgeJulez |
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (With Foreword by Carl Jung)
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
Both are written with the Western reader in mind. The book by Daisetz Teitaro is a 'classic'; I haven't had a chance to read the one by Shunryu yet, but my grandmother said its one of the most beautiful books she's ever read.:) |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | | You know, I had *no* clue whatsoever... in this regard I'm a relative newcomer. Certainly you'd never get the impression that philosophy is accepted here from the way this forum is standing NOW... It's like there are only 3 or 4 topics that keep getting tossed back and forth endlessly... Anyway, if this is actually supposed to be a "Political-Philosophical" forum, then I'm all up for it. |
This forum really should be renamed into political-philosophical forum. That way the title would be closer to what was originally intended for this forum anyway. |
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| TranceGiant |
@ Alcode
Thank you very much, that's what I was looking for. However I still got some questions.....
1. Would any senseless "riddle" count as a means to deactivate your mind? Like.... "Would green elephants puke more if they were born in December?"
2. What exactely do Zen-Buddhists hope to realize when reaching the level of "nothingness". Meaning of life? Why is not-thinking-anything considered enlightening? :conf:
3. What about other apscets of Zen like the question of the real existance of things. Is a tree really a tree? etc. Cause I've heared thing slike that coming from the Zen direction :p I've also heared that the spoon scene in Matrix 1 was based on Zen....could you please explain? |
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| Alccode |
I'm no "expert" by any means, I just know a bit from here and there...I don't really understand it myself. I'll try to answer as well as I can.
| quote: | Originally posted by TranceGiant
1. Would any senseless "riddle" count as a means to deactivate your mind? Like.... "Would green elephants puke more if they were born in December?"
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No. For example, that question that you have, is just like you said -- senseless. It's like, "OK, yeah, green elephants, woo-hoo, what's the point?" The reason you think this or, more accurately, the reason that it's not "mind-deactivating" is because it's visualizable (if that's even a word). I mean, you can imagine a green elephant. True, there is no such thing, but the mind is a wonderful thing and can snap on categories to each other to create new mental representations that don't even exist in the real world.
Things like, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" are powerful because in your mind, the action CLAP takes as its arguments two objects, namely, two hands. You can only clap two hands together, producing a noise. Similarly, if you stretching the semantics a bit, you can also "clap" two blocks of wood together. Other things associated with CLAP is the "clapping noise" as mentioned above, the idea that clapping is to be used as a show of respect, and many more things. Anyway, when someone asks you the sound of one hand clapping, it messes you up on many levels:
a) you are expecting "two arguments" to CLAP but get only one -- one hand. Your mind can't make sense of how one hand can clap, as it doesn't have a definition for that action.
b) the questioner asks you for the SOUND, which implicitly means that one hand clapping *does* make a sound. This would mean that it is possible. But because of (a), you don't know of any way that that can be done and, as far as you are concerned, it is an impossible feat.
Because of these things, your mind tries to make sense of the question, but it cannot. Remember, the mind is a giant information processing machine -- it tries to make sense of its input. What makes these koans particularly effective is that they are presented as riddles, as questions -- thus you are compelled to try to answer them. Even if they are mundane questions, you unconsciously (or not) try your best to get an answer. When your mind comes to face an unfamiliar situation, it *always* makes sense of it so it can catalogue it. But since it cannot answer this koan, it's "stuck". And this "stuckness" is what these koans are trying to do to you. It is intended that through the "stuckness", you will glimpse your underlying reality.
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2. What exactely do Zen-Buddhists hope to realize when reaching the level of "nothingness". Meaning of life? Why is not-thinking-anything considered enlightening? :conf:
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That is a very important question. I can try to explain in my crappy way, or I can give you an article that I found a little time ago that I found to be very very good in explaining this. Here it is:
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The myth of enlightenment
- Justus Kramer Schipper -
Enlightenment, liberation, redemption, self-realization: these are all words that point to a condition about which every seeker has his own imaginings. It must be very desirable otherwise it would not be sought so much.
The greatest misunderstanding concerning enlightenment is that it is seen as a property, that can be acquired. Something that will be added to your existence, to your life, and that is pleasurable to have. Yes, maybe the most desirable that you could possibly imagine. It can even become an obsession in which happiness can only be yours if the necessary condition of obtaining it is completed. And so, as long as we are looking for this property, this enlightenment we are from time to time deeply unhappy and desperate. When will I finally reach the state of enlightenment?
The problem lies in the fact that enlightenment is not something that is added, but is the state that remains when non-enlightenment falls of or is dropped. What remains after you move all the furniture out of your room? Right! Space, emptiness, which is needed in order to place furniture. Where was this space? The space was always already present in the room: with or without furniture, the space and emptiness are always there. But, we only notice the space when the furniture is removed. Something like that happens with enlightenment. Enlightenment is always there, it is the background, the space, the emptiness, that we are and from which we witness the non-empty. Nothing can be said about emptiness: it has no dimensions, you can't take hold of it, you can't understand it, or contain it, it has no properties, doesn't weigh anything, there is absolutely no way to perceive it. But nevertheless, it is a necessary condition for creating objects in the emptiness, if we want to perceive anything at all. Manifested objects are of an infinite variety. Anything that can be perceived against the background of emptiness is an object, also the thoughts that flutter by like clouds in the sky. What is there between two thoughts? Nothing, emptiness, the background from which we perceive, perception itself. All thoughts taken together, form in another object that we call the body, an ego. So, that ego is made of a series of thoughts, reactions to thoughts, that are thoughts themselves in their turn, preferences (nothing other than a thought that some perception is better, preferable to some other perception), rejections, wishes and longings. All these thoughts arise out of the emptiness, in the emptiness, and there is one more thought added namely that we are that complex of thoughts. That is called identification. We forget that we perceive out of the emptiness, that yes, we are the emptiness. That is silence, because there is nothing more to think or to talk about. But, we think we are that one who is perceived, instead of the perceiving itself. That is where the confusion, the pain and the big problem arise. Because then, who seeks when we go seeking for enlightenment? Certainly not the silence and the emptiness, because these are silent and still. Thus it is the complex of thoughts, the ego, that proceeds with thinking and longs not to think anymore. But that is a thought in itself, it is a mirror-like tunnel of infinite regression that has no end. Because longings are thoughts and thus you can not long to have no more thoughts; because after all as soon as you long for that you are thinking.
But what then is enlightenment? Once again: the emptiness, the silence about which there is nothing to say. Actually the giving of a name (in this case silence and emptiness) is already saying too much. But that stillness and emptiness is there all the time, has never been away and is in everyone. As an experience for reference you could some time look very carefully at what happens in the space of time between two thoughts. Then you experience the silence. You are not unconscious, but there are no thoughts, only clear presence. That does not mean that you know what the state of attention is, the silence, but you can experience it. So what enlightenment comes down to is not the adding of a quality, but just the other way around the falling away of a quality; the continuous, uninterrupted continuity of the stream of thoughts. What remains when that falls away is the state of enlightenment. And that is thus there always as a background for everyone, it has never not been. As soon as the ego falls away enlightenment is what remains. But watch out: longing for enlightenment makes the ego stronger and makes it seem as if it is further away. Seems, because it is always just always available as background. The state of enlightenment is thus not reachable by the wish for it.
It is a changed stated of witnessing in which identification with the witnessing takes place instead of with the witnessed. The difference between 'enlightened' and 'not-enlightened' is in whether there is identification with the silence, the emptiness, the background, the perceiving itself, or identification with the perceived objects such as ego, job, my boss, colleagues, relations, a new car, bank account, etc. Enlightenment is the falling away of the 'wrong and troublesome' identification.
If the ego falls away, then that 'thing' that actually only chatters in terms of good, bad, desirable, undesirable, what is nice and what isn't, pleasant and unpleasant, etc., falls away. Check it out; go to a terrace and follow the various conversations from a distance. An estimate is that 90% of the conversations consist of communications about what went wrong, how dumb my boss was, what a sourpuss my colleague is or how mean, how smart Pete himself is, how stupid Jan is, how my daughter just complained, how my father had no attention for me, what a dumb plan the municipality has again, the horribly high taxes, the much too low benefits, too warm, too cold, too wet or too dry and so forth, and so forth. Imagine that this chattering falls away, isn't it then also not so that the preferences and judgments fall away? And if there is no for or against, no judgments, would we not be able to consider that to be a state of neutrality? What then remains is emptiness, silence, a clear, alert state of perceiving that is not disturbed by the claiming of thoughts. A state in which What-is is accepted, without rejecting or accepting, without preferences. Actions still take place, but these are witnessed as are all other manifestations without identifications with them. That is enlightenment. Before the ego falls away you do the dishes. After the ego falls away you still do the dishes. Enlightenment is that close. But there is one solid difference: without enlightenment there is resistance, there are opinions and opinions unavoidably give pain. After, there are no opinions, no resistance and thus also no pain.
But how you can let the ego fall away? There is the trap again: this question is a thought that can be perceived and is part of the ego. If the ego keeps itself busy with discontinuing itself, it is like squeezing a balloon. The air does indeed disappear from the spot where you squeeze, but a bigger bubble appears somewhere else. What can we do then? Only if the insight is there that there is nothing that can be done, can the identification with objects (thus also thoughts) dissolve. The actual question that matters is; am I the perceiver of objects/thoughts or do I identify myself with objects/thoughts? As soon as there is identification, then there is a relation of pain/pleasure bound together, just as the head and the tail are the two sides of a coin. Identification arises because we think that we can have pleasure without its opposite pole, pain. If you consider that deeply you will see that it is not possible. Moreover our searching for enlightenment comes out of that: we want only pleasure without pain. But that can never happen, that is a myth, it is even a lie! Enlightenment arises when the longing for pleasure (and with that pain) is solved without any action of the will and acceptance of What-is replaces it. Acceptance of What-is, without resistance, without opposition, without opinion. That is enlightenment and lasting happiness.
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I want to emphasize here that the mind is not "evil" -- it is just a tool! It is actually our best friend and most trustworthy "companion" -- without the mind, we cannot live. How could we possibly survive if we couldn't reason about the world around us, if we couldn't communicate with each other, etc? That is the only purpose of the mind.
The problem is that we get associated with the mind and we think we ARE the mind. But when we realize that we are NOT, then it is dangerous to fall into another trap: thinking that the mind is BAD and something that should be killed or gotten rid of, which is totally ridiculous and insane.
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3. What about other apscets of Zen like the question of the real existance of things. Is a tree really a tree? etc. Cause I've heared thing slike that coming from the Zen direction :p I've also heared that the spoon scene in Matrix 1 was based on Zen....could you please explain? |
Yes, the tree is real, but you can never experience it. This is an underlying tenet of cognitive science and also of psychology (I think -- I'm no psychologist). You only perceive reality through your mental representations. How can it even be otherwise? When you plan for your trip during the summer, for example, you have to have mental representations for all the necessary components so that you can plan and reason, etc. These are basically data structures -- you have the concept of TRIP, of your DESTINATION, the BEACH, your method of transportation, an AIRPLANE, etc. etc. You can't actually grasp a beach directly. It's impossible! You can only think and reason about it if you can create something in your mind, a point, a structure, that represents the beach. There are a lot of different theories about how this is done in the brain, e.g. frames, scripts, neural networks (connectionist theory), and a lot more, but psychology and cog.sci. is in the piddling stages of infancy as far as this is concerned.
EDIT: Oops, forgot to finish up this paragraph. That is why zen says that the tree is "not real". What it really means is that what YOU perceive as a tree is not real -- your mental representation of the tree is not real.
As for the zen in the Matrix, I don't remember anything about it but I know it's really cliched. Except for the scene when Neo talks to that kid about the spoon/no-spoon. That was really good. :D
Oh and I'm not even mentioning Matrix 2 because it sucked. :toothless |
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