Zen

one can enter a state of zen when there is no physical break between thought, action, and consequence.

there is a zen of pinball, when the paddles become direct extensions of your brain, and you no longer feel the little buttons on the side of the machine, nor the spring as you let loose another ball. there is a zen of music, although it is one of the hardest to reach. music takes so much concentration to maintain that it is hard to simply lose one's self. when you're not playing the music, it is possible, but then you are not actively creating. the zen of programming is truly strange. it requires that your fingers don't have to move a long way--any taint of physical thought takes you farther from perfection. this zen is when your program becomes a direct extension of your brain, and you know it all, in detail and in general. your fingers are no longer thought about. they are as quick and as accurate as the mercurial movement of masterful music, when no break exists between player and listener, nor between note and note.

the zen of love has all these qualities, but is far above them all. while all of these link a brain to an object, love links brain to brain, and what could be better? a musician cannot beam his notes to his audience; a programmer cannot write his code with a single thought; but a lover feels his beloved as himself, no break between the physical reality of a kiss and the mental blast of pure emotion that travels through it. a writer's words must be thought about, contemplated; though they may come quickly at times, the writer will always stumble at a phrase, and not be able to finish it. in love, "you will know your action. you are present there, not thinking of somewhere else you ought to be." your heart and that of yours are one. what can parallel this intensity? i say, nothing.

I was just sitting and thinking and I saw the Zen gardening kit Kaia bought me on one of her trips to the states and I thought, "What is Zen?"

I immediately thought of a few unsatisfactory answers, and I thought I'd pose the question to you, as you claim at times to be a Zen master (not because I think you are, by any means, but because I think you've probably read some of the literature and know a thing or two about it).

      Your confidence in me is overwhelming. I'm chokin' back the tears.

I first thought that maybe Zen is a complete elimination of passion, but then I remembered stuff I'd seen about rock gardens in Buddhist temples in Asia. You've got to have some sort of passion to make a huge-assed representation of the flowing of water, or the shadow of a tree in the morning. This one is out.

      Not to mention the times when Zen masters get angry....

      Bushido is sometimes compared to European Chivalry. This is inaccurate. Bushido is a Zen code.

      Once, a Samurai (I forget his name, it doesn't really matter) found that his master had been murdered. He became angry, and decided to exact revenge on the murderer.

      Finally, he confronted the murderer. But as he raised his sword to deal the death-blow, the murderer spat in the Samurai's face.

      The Samurai walked away, leaving the murderer unharmed.

      Why did the Samurai do this? The superficial answer would be that Zen is the renouncement of passion, and when the murderer spat in his face, the Samurai realised that he was angry, which was something he was supposed to renounce.

      But that would be the superficial answer. As near as I can reckon, the Samurai would go back, later, to finish off the murderer. Just because he halted in mid-butcher, it doesn't mean he won't finish the job. The Samurai would still be angry, and would still seek revenge.

      When the murderer spat in the Samurai's face, the Samurai became enraged. Before, he was angry, but just then he became ENRAGED.

      The Samurai had no problem acting on anger. And when he stopped himself, was that not on the basis of another emotion? Shame? Emotions come, emotions go. But Zen is a freedom doctrine. For the Samurai to act out of anger is noble, because his master was his friend, and for him to have no emotion at the murder of a friend would be reprehensible. But for the Samurai to be compelled by his anger -- well, that's another thing.

Then I thought that Zen mastery must come from a complete relegation of the passions to static things, like the gravel of a garden, or the whole "oneness with the universe" bit... but then I realized that this lends itself to an un-zenlike materialism and lack of concern with human relationships, which is counter to the traditional image of the zen master who is unconcerned with material things and is a cool guest at dinner parties.

      Once upon a time, there was a Zen monk who was living on the budget of a rich elderly matron. He devoted all his time to painting and calligraphy, in the Zen tradition.

      One day, after he had lived on her estate for two years, the matron decided to test the monk's progress in Zen. She hired a beautiful young girl to go to the Zen monk and try to convince him to forsake his arts.

      So the girl goes to the monk and she's all, "Oh, I love you, I'll love you forever, won't you marry me?"

      The monk remained unmoved. He said, "I am beyond such worldly concerns as love. My passion is devoted to art." And he went back to painting.

      So the girl returned to the matron and told her what had happened.

      The matron discontinued the monk's budget.

      Why? She felt that the monk had acted inappropriately. How so? In all his time working towards enlightenment, he had learned nothing. He hadn't even learned not to be a dickhead. See, he thought he had learned to control his passion, but he had no compassion. He had no common sense. He was cold and in a way, inhuman. Sure, he probably shouldn't have given up his art just for a girl, but he didn't even talk to her about it. He was just mean.

The opposite cannot be true though, the passions being devoted to the dynamic and changing forces, as this would lead to a zen master who runs the stock exchange and has a string of highschool style relationships... fucking everything that moves and trying to figure out what matters...

      There's nothing wrong with a Zen master who runs the stock exchange. And this might surprise you, being as you are a gaijin :) -- but there's nothing wrong with fucking. Even fucking a lot. Even fucking a lot of different people. It's not part of the Zen tradition, of course, which is tied to Buddhism and to asceticism in general by proxy.

      One day, a roshi (Zen teacher) and a Hindu guru are walking along the beach. In the distance they see an island, and on the island is an ice cream stand. Now, it's a hot day and they're hungry for a treat, so they decide they want to get some ice cream.

      The guru says, "I spent twenty years in isolation, meditating. I fasted regularly, eating only enough to sustain me, forcing myself through extreme pain. I read and memorised Scripture. Finally, after twenty years, I have learned to walk on water. So I'll walk on water to the island, and meet you there."

      The roshi is flabbergasted. "Why the fuck would you do all that? The ferry only costs ten bucks. In twenty years, I could have gone across and back hundreds of times, and had hundreds of bowls of ice cream. You must be some kind of retard."

any ideas...? I'm out...

      First off, let me just say that Zen has nothing to do with the Matrix. Zen is an ethical and practical, not metaphysical, experience.

      Zen Buddhism is Taoism, hiding behind Buddhism because Buddhism, once upon a time, was a new, popular thing.

      Taoism is the religion everyone adopts when they are asleep. Taoism is the religion shared by all animals except humans.

      "Zen" is a Nippongoisation of "dhyana," Sanscrit for meditation.

      When you say "Zen master," of course, I assume you're talking about someone who's achieved mushin, or wu wei, or anoesis, or no-mind, or whatever you want to call it. An instance of mushin is called a satori. I've had satoris.

      Satoris are enlightenment. Sometimes enlightenment comes all at once, in a flash. Sometimes it comes gradually, like the break of dawn. I've had both kinds of satori.

      My biggest "flash" ones came this summer, all grouped together. One day I was hanging out with Steve, and we were trying to muddle through my latest philosophical problem. You see, I was trying to figure out how people could be completely self-contained, and yet not immediately happy. How the power for happiness was innate, but that it had to be brought out in education. My Taoist readings had alerted me to the limits of booklearning. Combine that for my Nietzsche readings, which taught me to be wary of any explanation which does absolutely nothing but comfort, and I was a downright menace to society. Still am.

      So anyway, every time I would try to come up with some train of thought, I would have to stop myself and say, "No, that's a myth." I waded through myth after myth, and each one I ditched. All, throughout history, have been good enough for somebody -- but none, now, were good enough for me. My perception of failings had become so acute, but at the same time my intellectual standards had become so exacting, that no dogma, no story, no narrative, no theory, no explanation, no idea could pass my scrutiny. For the first time in my life, I looked at them all. They were all lies.

      Finally, I came to Zen. I looked at Zen, and I said, "No, that's a myth. That's a lie." And I realised that I had exhausted the myths. But lo and behold, I was still alive. And I was still happy. So I promptly forgot about it.

      That was not the satori. The satori came two days later. I was making some spaghetti. Then, I realised (and I think I even shouted it out) "Holy shit! That was Zen!" Then I ate the spaghetti. Then I cleaned the dishes.

      Another satori came later that week. I was feeling a little down, and I thought to myself, "Fuck, I had a satori this week and I'm still not happy." But then I really thought about it, and I realised, "Hey, satoris aren't supposed to make you happy." Then I had another satori.

      Lately, I've been feeling better and better about a "dawn"-type satori I think is growing on me. See, for the past couple of months I was pretty depressed because I'm lonely. But then, I realised that it's completely within my power not to be lonely, but I still want to be lonely because I'm proud of my high standards when it comes to women. But furthermore, my being alone is making me more independent. Being alone isn't making me lonely anymore. And with this independence is coming a satori.

      I don't know if everyone has satoris. I doubt it, knowing some people. Also, mushin is not a permanent, perpetual state. Zen is not impossible to understand. It's not even particularly difficult to understand, once you divorce yourself of traditional ways of looking at things. THAT INCLUDES THE TRADITIONAL WAY OF LOOKING AT ZEN IN THE WEST! Zen is too popular not to attract a bunch of ignorant idiots.

      A good book is "The Tao of Zen" by Ray Grigg.

Two monks were walking down the street after a heavy rain that left the streets quite muddy. They came upon a a lady of very easy virtue vainly attempting to find a dry path across the road without soiling her kimono.

One monk, more compassionate than the other, picked up the woman and carried her across the street, setting her down on the other side of the road. He returned to his companion and they continued down the road for some minutes until the second monk chided the first with the remark, "You really shouldn't have done that."

"Done what?"

"Why, you contaminated yourself by touching that impure woman."

"Oh, are you still carrying her? I put her down on the other side of the street."

One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. ... It might seem, then, that all efforts to explain Zen are complete wastes of time. But that is not the attitude of Zen masters and students. For instance, Zen koans are a central part of Zen study, verbal though they are. Koans are supposed to be "triggers" which, though they do not contain enough information in themselves to impart enlightenment, may possibly be sufficient to unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that lead to enlightenment. But in general, the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth.

...

Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism. Now what is dualism? Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories. ... By prefixing the word "division" by the word "conceptual", I may have made it seem that this is an intellectual or conscious effort, and perhaps thereby given the impression that dualism could be overcome simply by suppressing thought (as if to suppress thinking actually were simple!). But the breaking of the world into categories takes place far below the upper strata of thought; in fact, dualism is just as much a perceptual division of the world into categories as it is a conceptual division. In other words, human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon--which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least.

At the core of dualism, according to Zen, are words--just plain words. The use of words is inherently dualistic, since each word represents, quite obviously, a conceptual category. Therefore, a major part of Zen is the fight against reliance on words. To combat the use of words, one of the best devices is the koan, where words are so deeply abused that one's mind is practically left reeling, if one takes the koan seriously. Therefore it is perhaps wrong to say that the enemy of enlightenment is logic; rather, it is dualistic, verbal thinking. In fact, it is even more basic than that: it is