Latest Stuff on Zen Buddhism

Originally posted by @black-beetle
Your Master is in Buddhism, but I see that both Zen and the Middle Way are Greek to you. Why is that? And on what Buddhist tradition is your Master based?
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My thesis was on Engaged Buddhism.

... I do not know why you would make such a statement. Care to explain what I am failing to understand?

Originally posted by @ghost-of-a-duke
I think you befuddle Buddhism with being a Jedi.

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Originally posted by @sonship
Here's the deal. Something like Zen will always be more attractive to some people than the Christian faith. It will always be more desireable....

I have to figure out why Krishna is preferable to Jesus.

You sound to me like you are trying to convince yourself more than anyone else.

Originally posted by @philokalia
My thesis was on Engaged Buddhism.

... I do not know why you would make such a statement. Care to explain what I am failing to understand?

Oh, Engaged Buddhism! Very well, but this is just a movement of social activism by Buddhists, not a Buddhist tradition per se.

That being said, I think the problem is the following: Since all the Buddhist schools propagate the very same teaching through different means in order to be understood at every level of awareness, a person that meditates deeply in the realm of a specific tradition (say, Zen/ Ch'an of the linage of Bodhidharma) understands, for example, Sunyata and the Two Truths, etc., etc., does not negate reality and is well balanced on the mental approach of all the dharmas. A koan is merely a specific way to ease specific practitioners to refrain from all the speculative theses definable in terms of dualist conceptual thinking polarized into binary or quaternary sets of constructs and from postulating any absolutely real entity (bhava) in terms of these positions.

So, when you say at the second page of this thread that “For instance, the famous "Sound of one hand clapping"'s actual right answer only simply has to divulge that it represents non-duality, or the total absence of self, thus interpenetration”, you are wrong. The koan does not represent non-duality. The answer of the koan is related to a specific point of attention of the mind of the practitioner, a point that is not yet perceived by this person due to specific reasons acknowledged by his teacher. The koan, as is the case with all of them, points to somewhere, just as a finger could point to somewhere. It does not point to the total absence of the self, for the practitioner knows already well that his self neither exists, nor does not exist, nor both, nor neither. The koan is an advanced exercise beyond conceptualization for trained monks of a certain order, not a riddle for a person who knows next to nothing about a specific Buddhist tradition. To see Zen, one must first pass from Madhyamaka.
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Originally posted by @philokalia
There's also the question of Buddhism asking you to totally sacrifice the individuality that you have and become non-dual.

A Christian has a soul; a Christian is distinguished; a Christian, in Heaven, is rejoined with God and the Saints. To a Christian, Theosis means becomign like God, but it implies retaining the aspects of ourselves that are indivi ...[text shortened]... wn and loved by God.

In Buddhism... "Soullessness" is one of the most fundamental teachings.

No. You simply do not understand the Middle Way.
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Originally posted by @black-beetle
Oh, Engaged Buddhism! Very well, but this is just a movement of social activism by Buddhists, not a Buddhist tradition per se.

That being said, I think the problem is the following: Since all the Buddhist schools propagate the very same teaching through different means in order to be understood at every level of awareness, a person that meditates de ...[text shortened]... othing about a specific Buddhist tradition. To see Zen, one must first pass from Madhyamaka.
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Thanks for that explanation.

How would you explain why there arose the need to "pass from Madhyamaka" to begin with?

Is "Madhyamaka" that something I got trapped in somehow, but should not have?

Originally posted by @philokalia
This would go back to the idea that Chrsitians believe that man is fundamentally differentiated from God and were created by Him. Since we are creatures, and we are individuals that are separate from Him, our theosis and process of becoming more Godlike involves merely partaking in the divine nature of God (as God partook in the nature of man).

The i ...[text shortened]... d more about theosis because this is a massive and fascinating topic that isn't explored enough.

No.
Nirvana and all dharmas pertaining to Samsara are sunya, so there is no differentiating point between Samsara and Nirvana. You are not talking about Buddhism, but about whatever you imagine as Buddhism;
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Originally posted by @sonship
Thanks for that explanation.

How would you explain why there arose the need to "pass from Madhyamaka" to begin with?

Is "Madhyamaka" that something I got trapped in somehow, but should not have?

Zen is grounded on the Madhyamaka tradition. If you ignore Madhyamaka, you cannot proceed with Zen😵

Originally posted by @black-beetle
Zen is grounded on the Madhyamaka tradition. If you ignore Madhyamaka, you cannot proceed with Zen😵

I see. Thanks.

Originally posted by @black-beetle
Oh, Engaged Buddhism! Very well, but this is just a movement of social activism by Buddhists, not a Buddhist tradition per se.

That being said, I think the problem is the following: Since all the Buddhist schools propagate the very same teaching through different means in order to be understood at every level of awareness, a person that meditates de ...[text shortened]... othing about a specific Buddhist tradition. To see Zen, one must first pass from Madhyamaka.
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(1) It is relatively new and is an extremely important part of Buddhism.

(2) SO a Koan is some form of skillful means for introducing an idea. I do not believe I contradicted that at all but rather affirmed it.

(3) These sorts of Zen koans are also given to laypersons who are scarcely initiates.

(4) I do not really get the passive aggression you are putting forward here where you are dismissing what I had explained and then going off into something about how I must truly understand the madhyamaka, etc., to understand Zen; this is just a lot of posturing and I do not really even know how to respond since we are not greatly in conflict and you are merely asserting things.

(5) Here is a link that basically explains the koan in a similar way to how I did:
http://taosangha-na.com/blog/the-sound-of-one-hand-clapping/

Originally posted by @black-beetle
Zen is grounded on the Madhyamaka tradition. If you ignore Madhyamaka, you cannot proceed with Zen😵

Saying that this is the total foundation of it is off:

The teachings of Zen include various sources of Mahayana thought, especially Yogachara, the Tathāgatagarbha sūtras and the Huayan school, with their emphasis on Buddha-nature, totality, and the Bodhisattva-ideal.[8][9] The Prajñāpāramitā literature[10] and, to a lesser extent, Madhyamaka have also been influential in the shaping of the "paradoxical language" of the Zen-tradition.

There would even be some argumentation that there is a foundation within this that is a bit contrary to madhyamaka thought:

According to Tibetan sources, this school was in protracted dialectic with the Madhyamaka. However, there is disagreement among contemporary Western and traditional Buddhist scholars about the degree to which they were opposed, if at all.[13] To summarize the main difference: while the Madhyamaka held that asserting the existence or non-existence of any ultimately real thing was inappropriate, some later exponents of Yogācāra asserted that the mind (or in the more sophisticated variations, primordial wisdom) and only the mind is ultimately real. This is, however, a later interpretation of Yogācāra, and Vasubandhu and Asaṅga in particular did not assert that mind was truly inherently existent. According to some interpretations, .[14]

The position that Yogācāra and Madhyamaka were in dialectic was expounded by Xuanzang in the 7th century. After a suite of debates with exponents of the Madhyamaka school in India, Xuanzang composed in Sanskrit the no longer extant three-thousand verse treatise The Non-difference of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra.[15]

Some later Yogācāra exponents also synthesized the two views, particularly Śāntarakṣita in the 8th century, whose view was later called "Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Madhyamaka" by the Tibetan tradition. In his view the Mādhyamika position is ultimately true and at the same time the mind-only view is a useful way to relate to conventionalities and progress students more skillfully toward the ultimate.[16] This synthesized view between the two positions, which also incorporated views of valid cognition from Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, was one of the last developments of Indian Buddhism before it was extinguished in the 11th century during the Muslim incursion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogachara

Originally posted by @divegeester
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The jedi analogy is close to the mark actually


I can read most of you a mile away

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Originally posted by @black-beetle
Oh, Engaged Buddhism! Very well, but this is just a movement of social activism by Buddhists, not a Buddhist tradition per se.

That being said, I think the problem is the following: Since all the Buddhist schools propagate the very same teaching through different means in order to be understood at every level of awareness, a person that meditates de ...[text shortened]... othing about a specific Buddhist tradition. To see Zen, one must first pass from Madhyamaka.
😵

Do not mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself, indeed

Cheers bro

Life is good for the righteous and attentive

They absorb the lessons and make them their own

I'm so happy , no , I'm estatic!

Originally posted by @karoly-aczel
Life is good for the righteous and attentive

They absorb the lessons and make them their own

I'm so happy , no , I'm estatic!

Just not Zen.

(Life is an illusion).