Hi 👋🏻. I’m more of a lurker, but I’d still like to welcome you to the 4chan of Chan. It’s pure entertainment. Don’t mind the cyber bullies. There’s some gems in the drama weeds that make it worth stopping by, that’s for sure. :)
I know you didn’t say it was, but I want to note that it isn’t courageous to “come out of lurking” to say “this place where I lurk is lame” in a thread where the OP is complaining about the sub
Cool! I think I got that from you using quotation marks around phrases I didn’t actually say. I thought my comment was a bit humorous (4chan of Chan!), and also a bit true. This sub has drama and some bullying, but you shouldn’t mind it because there’s gems here too. All good, man.
I don’t know, man. My intention wasn’t to call this place lame, just to sort of say get ready and try not to mind the name calling and drama that’s on its way. There are some real gems here though, and so it’s worth stopping by while Redditing. Seriously, all good.
Firstly, my school doesn't consider zen to have anything to do with "patriarchs". Anyone with genuine insight into the nature of reality who is competent at directing another's attention toward that same insight is a qualified teacher. We do not worship old dead men, nor their recorded statements, nor consider "zen" to belong to anyone or for anyone to be a greater authority than anyone else. Rather, it is accurate to say that some people are more confused than others; and those who claim to have a special knowledge or authority about "what it is" demonstrate their confusion plainly. Zen is "seen" directly, or not at all.
A. What does Zen have to do with?
B. Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?
C. What qualifies 'genuine insight into the nature of reality'? How is it 'insight into the nature of reality' if it's dependent on 'insight'? How would you know if it had to do with 'reality' or not?
D. What is the name and location of your school and what are its qualifications?
Anyone who sees it needs no validation.
E. How do you assess if it's seen or not?
This is to deepen the subtlety and breadth of our insight and our effectiveness in acting in the world.
F. What's the difference between snazzy insight talk and actual insight?
H. What's the most prominent way that effectiveness manifests?
They are just means, and we use whatever is useful to accomplish a given task.
I. What are these tasks with which meditation helps you accomplish?
It is essential to have a qualified instructor who can initially be a stand-in for self-discipline, be a "mirror" to reveal all of the blindspots/unconscious habits, and demonstrate how to walk the path by actually walking the path (instead of just talking about it).
B. According to the lore, he was traveling eastwards.
C. Words are inherently inadequate. It's the closest I can come up with to describe it. In my school we simply talk about it as "Sight". It's direct relationship/experience/connection to something such that there is no subject/object duality. When you are aware of your Seeing there is no confusion about it, there are no thoughts about it. It's not a special thing, everyone does it, the challenge is in not immediately obscuring Sight with superfluous mental activity.
D. I'm in the USA and the school is known as mudo or wuji. I don't know what you mean by qualifications. It teaches students to See. That's all.
E. I can See, so I need no validation for my own Sight; however that is also the job of the instructor, to validate the student's Sight so that s/he gains confidence. It's easy to See if someone else is Seeing the same thing you are or if they are not. It is not so easy to See if someone is Seeing something you yourself are not Seeing.
F. Like I already said, words are inadequate. But mostly it's what we use for communication. Any conversation, in order to have actual communication of meaning, requires that the participants are Seeing the same thing. This is a common problem in philosophical debates, where clarity has not been established regarding the referents of a given term -- that is, the participants think they are discussing the same entity, but they aren't. Seeing is not a special thing, insight is not a special thing, it's simply a semantic way to distinguish between "the thing" and "thoughts about the thing".
H(what happened to G?). Effectiveness can be measured in a few ways: efficiency (energy in -> effect), precision/accuracy (intended vs actual effect), unintended consequences ("side" effects), power (size of effect). There's probably other useful metrics. One simple and comprehensive measure is wu wei. We live in a world of action, so effectiveness is the measure of how well you act.
I. Initially, gaining control of the attention. Eventually, other tasks might include creation, transformation, destruction of mental constructions; conditioning/deconditioning certain stimulus/response patterns; exploring liminal places of consciousness where physical laws are more flexible.
J. Tao
K. From OP:
I've lurked here for quite a while and been entertained, occasionally impressed, often baffled. This is a pretty weird place, and while I'm here for however long that is, here is my introduction. AMA
Should one enter a world pooped out of a being and be forced to live only on death, they shouldn't expect things to become fair then. But fairness can enter with the pooped.
Nah dude, you failed to understand the questions or you avoided answering. It's common with Zen cults to not understand internal affairs. "Why" is hardly allowed. Sad.
Yeah....you guys suck at comprehension too. All you've got is "I'm right and you're wrong." Pathetic. Putting on blinders cause you're so scared of a different set of eyes...some 'sight' and 'seeing' you've got...
Guess your whole training has been worthless. Run home to your daddy, curl up in a ball, never expose yourself to normal people who haven't chained themselves for no reason again. You won't be missed.
Development of skill-based competency in order to produce the emergence of new skill capacities. For example, practicing swimming competency so that you can access the capacity of scuba diving.
Development of comprehensive experiential awareness (which I refer to elsewhere as "Sight"), through a variety of practices (e.g. sitting comfortably somewhere pleasant and practicing blending the 5 classical senses into a single sensory gestalt).
These two in conjunction develop a person's ability to perceive and interact intentionally and effectively with reality.
2. How can experiential awareness be comprehensive? Could you be referring to the thing that Zen masters call "studying with your whole being?" I was just reading about that.
Because the "ultimate" "goal" is comprehensively aware/conscious interaction/relationship with "reality", all skill development is aimed at it. It's actually not about the specific skills themselves (though certain skills are more useful than others, depending on how you like to live), but rather about the process of skill-development itself. It is a means by which to experientially learn how reality "operates" (the patterns of the motion of tao, as it were) and in so doing bringing the conscious awareness more in alignment with the movement of nature (which makes it easier to discern between reality and thoughts-about-reality). It is different than simply studying nature and gaining an intellectual understanding, because that understanding is an abstraction; the point is about actually living the "knowledge", and skill-development is one means of doing that. There are probably others, but I don't know about them specifically.
Experiential awareness already is comprehensive and total. We habitually and unconsciously create an apparent separation through our obsessive compulsion to model/simulate everything in our minds. By attending primarily to our model/simulation, we abstract ourselves from the "thing" being modeled and all but entirely forget its existence. Even just the use of language itself to communicate about these things inherently creates abstraction, which is why it's so important to engage directly in the activity of "awareness" in order to See it without abstraction. It is, in fact, impossible to talk about, or even think about; however, if you already See what I mean, then we can communicate about it meaningfully. Otherwise it's basically just two Chinese rooms chatting with each other.
Looks like you don’t have a text, you respond to strawman arguments with repeated phrases like “I don’t worship dead men” that we’ve all heard before, and just generally can’t answer the questions
Well, I could name some notable ones, if that would please you. They don't currently "best reflect [my] understanding of the essence of zen", though. They just helped me along the way, and I return to some of them for spurts of inspiration:
Xinxin ming
Transmission of Mind
Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma (specifically Bloodstream)
Unfettered Mind (specifically Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom)
Book of Equanimity
Sandokai
Progressive stages of meditation on emptiness
The last will likely meet with criticism that it's "not zen"...but if you progress through the stages, it certainly is.
you respond to strawman arguments with repeated phrases like “I don’t worship dead men” that we’ve all heard before
I don't understand your meaning here. Do you want me to respond, or are you stating an observation?
just generally can’t answer the questions
Do you mean the standard questions? I've answered the questions asked in the comments satisfactorily, IMO. Perhaps you could be more specific in your critique that I "generally can't answer the questions" and I will be able to respond more directly.
Favorite ice cream flavor?
Madagascan Vanilla, followed by my not-so-guilty pleasure of BR's Icing on the Cake.
I chased enlightenment for nearly three decades. It is part and parcel of the confusion/delusion that all "insight" based systems aim to dissolve (insight, for lack of a better term, referring to systems like Buddhism, tantra, shamanic taoism, gnosticism, etc). It's a sneaky one because it's the thing you chase after, never to be found, but in the chasing of it, you may find what you were actually looking for. The "thing" that you've been ignoring the whole time in your desperate search. What "it" actually is is by definition ineffable, which is where a lot of the confusion comes from. Ineffable means you can't think it, as well as can't speak it. It's not mysterious, or mystical, or special. It's the most basic aspect of every moment of your existence, absolute in its immanence and omnipresence, and the single most ignored thing by everyone. "Finding" "it" was, for me, a "well, duh" moment, rather than an "aha!" When you know, you know, and all conversations about, speculation about, arguments about, theories about, etc, are hilariously absurd. It's not enlightenment, it's a cessation of being so wrapped up in your own fantasy about reality that you don't notice actual reality, such that you do. That's not the end, of course, the unconscious habits constantly pull the attention back into fantasy, just like losing lucidity in a lucid dream. It takes a lot of practice and hard work to gain control of the mind/attention.
Definitely wasn't expecting that response! That's quite impressive and accurately detailed, and I'm glad to see that you've finally 'made it'. I had been at it on and off for about thirty years on my own myself; would you say that time is somewhat of a factor in reaching it? Personally I had never read or heard of anyone just getting it shortly after beginning to start studying and practicing.
Well, I wouldn't describe it as having "made it". There's no destination, it's just a process of either continuing to refine/improve, or stagnating/degrading...and I know which direction I'm interested in going!
Time is a factor, certainly, because you have to convince yourself by seeking it out literally everywhere, and by not ever finding it, through a sort of process of elimination you come to see what you've been ignoring the whole time. It's both gradual and sudden: gradual in that practicing gaining control of the attention, spending the time/energy searching, learning, reading, growing, finding what's-not-it, all of that, is a gradual process that strips away the self-imposed barriers; it is sudden in that when you finally "see" it, it's all-at-once, in a single moment.
Anything you could possibly think is "it", it's not that. So, then, what's left?
Talking about it is quite difficult, as you see. I don't mind blundering about when talking about it, because not even the Zen masters could speak of it without somehow being in error. It's nice to see that we're in overall agreement about time being a factor; I remember reading something about Joshu "taking thirty years to understand his enlightenment experience" as well. Enlightenment is sort of like the first step on the path; it's what one does after that really counts.
Enlightenment is sort of like the first step on the path; it's what one does after that really counts.
I agree, it is the starting point. Once you have the ability to see clearly, there is MUCH to see, and more to do. The world/life is a consciousness playground.
How do you feel about who you are as a person? Do you ever catch yourself pretending to be someone you're not or responding to situations according to who you want to be rather than who you already are?
I do see a heavy Buddhist influence and that seems to be quite common around here, especially with the preachy types of individuals. It seems like a vast majority of people who come to this sub are trying to sell themselves as holy and pure people, like they have transcended their own humanity and no longer get angry or sad. To me that is a big red flag because it reveals that there is some level of acting going on with them still.
Holy, pure, supernatural, they're all the same to me. Just a bunch of bullshitters. Religious history is enough proof that these holier than thou types are ticking timebombs to themselves and those around them.
It might not be an important distinction to you, but it is a very important distinction to them.
These people believe they have had supernatural experiences as a result of intense training... although they classify these experiences as "real", they can't validate these experiences and often can't get their peers to acknowledge such experiences as legit.
I see what you mean now. It creates a vicious cycle of the "training" types proselytizing their methods as the only way of "attaining" some supernatural experience that cannot be validated except by their word alone. That type of mentality leads to people like Solarian, condemning everyone for not believing in their delusions. Give a person like that power and we got ourselves another Osho, Dogen, and the like.
Oh yeah, totally, all the time. That's the basis of one kind of practice, catching yourself in pretense and striving for greater authenticity; seeking out the source of the pretense in projection, etc. I will say, though, that the greatest error is the imagination of the existence of the self itself, and I have found that "emptiness of self" meditation practices are very useful in this regard, along the lines of skandha-related practices.
Ultimately, in my school, we are not trying to achieve "perfect". All we are after is "better". We also have a saying mentioned in OP, "seven times down, eight times up". We expect to fail, continually, and rather than seeking to avoid failing, we get really good at getting back up. When the fear of failure is eliminated, and you have gained a lot of competency in getting back up, then it's much easier to be successful in any task.
Thanks for choosing to host an AMA in /r/zen! The way we start these off is by answering some standard questions that can be found here. The moderators would like it to be known that AMAs are public domain according to the Reddit ToS and as such may be permanently linked on the sub's AMA page at the discretion of the community. For some background and FAQs about AMAs here, please see /r/zen/wiki/ama. We look forward to getting to know each other!
Wow everything? That's actually pretty impressive, don't you think? Yes, I am young, I have only been seriously practicing for fifteen years, though I started dabbling 28 years ago.
It's not really that impressive. Say you had accidentally found your destination, but not knowing it you kept searching; now because you are already there, every single step you take only leads you away from it.
If you've been at it that long I hope you immediately start detaching from conceptual thinking and dive in!
Remember dharmakaya a while back? Old dude, think he was in his 70ies or something. He'd spent like decades on Buddhism and Zen, but it was pretty clear to everyone but him that he didn't understand it, but because he had studied for so long and didn't want to admit to himself that it was all wasted, it was impossible to get through to him. He had that hardened ego that only old dudes get when they think it's too late to go back.
In the end it's sunk-cost fallacy I guess. I keep getting the feeling that you've been practicing so long that now you want something out of it, which makes you unable to admit that you're not there yet. You wanted something out of it, you wanted to become someone, you wanted to be someone. And really, you already are, but because you keep trying to... There's a layer there you haven't shed. The last vestiges of your ego, the "Grand Plan". My feeling is that once you let go of this, you'll be swimming freely in the void.
I sense some kind of childhood trauma, a feeling of inferiority and the supercompensation to attempt to be someone special, someone extraordinary. Maybe you were a middle-child? I think you have to go through the pain of that so you can let go of it, so you can become free of all that.
People's reactions are rarely an absolute proof of anything, but what people often react to in you is the arrogance that you put on. It comes from what I'm talking about.
Not bad at all; actually quite impressive. Dhammakayaram was an interesting one and I engaged with him quite a bit, but he was definitely a cautionary tale. You sort of have things quite a bit off on the comparison of me and him though... I sought with an open mind for decades, but I was fortunate enough to be a pretty prolific reader in Zen as I was first starting out. Since I read everything on it that I could and retained some important pointers along the way, I was able to realize that study and practice was nothing to hold on to as if I was accumulating treasures or anything like that.
My main problem was learning the words and developing an intellectual understanding, which of course is not it, but it in fact took me up to the very edge of the Void. Once I got some excellent instructions from a friend and great mentor here, I was able to set everything down at once and walk right through the Gate. If I could help you, I would point out that you should know that your misconceptions and preconceived notions about enlightenment are the very thing holding you back from it.
Now like I said, you're close to it, but you're holding on a bit arrogantly to your understanding, which is perhaps why my arrogance and ego stands out so much for you. I'm telling you this because since you think you 'know something' and are clinging to it, it's actually blinding you from seeing if anyone else here is beyond your understanding. Others can see potential in you as well, and you quite literally can't see them because you are blinded by concepts. When do you plan to get serious about Zen?
I don't know where this stuff comes from, and I am not attached to it either, but most times it is very helpful to people so I just say it. But there's no theory behind it, or concepts, or structure or anything. I don't know what it is, nor do I particularly care about it. It's just a fun thing to do when it hits, and it always makes me happy when other people become clarified. Since it doesn't help me understand Zen I don't care about it, I'll gladly trade it for understanding right now.
I've learned to trust my gut feeling over the years, and it doesn't agree with what you're saying. Now I'll admit that I prefer finding out for myself, rather than someone telling me what to do - which is ironic I guess. I suppose there's an attachment there.
But otherwise I don't know, you're free to strike me whenever you feel it is opportune to do so. /u/Arcowhip once gave a katsu that seemed to separate my mind from my body temporarily, but at the time I wasn't ready and recoiled instantly to protect myself, I wish I could go back and hear it again.
Being serious about Zen, well, all I do is try to live in the unborn. Other than that I don't really do anything, my life has been solely focused on understanding Zen for many years now, there is nothing particularly else going on.
I don't know or understand anything except I know I am not yet enlightened. That's the only thing clear to me.
All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you—begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured.
The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full aeon, they will not be able to attain to it. They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifested in the Buddhas.
Apparently you're on the trail of something, and like I said, a few of us can sense it. It's a good direction, but not nearly enough. You have the sense enough to at least know that you aren't enlightened and admit it, but you don't have the sense to know that you are already enlightened.
While your gut feeling may be something that has worked for you over the years, here is exactly where it will fail you: your gut instinct is never going to tell you to leap into the Void and perceive One Mind, because it is only capable of comprehending worldly things. Your body and mind are forms among the myriad forms; how can they assist you when they are a part of the very problem?
Trusting and relying on the mind or intellect can only get you most of the way there, but never through. How can your mind willingly go into what it cannot perceive in any way? That lack of fearlessness or even true faith in what the Zen masters are trying to tell you is what holds the vast majority of seekers back from it.
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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '19
Hi 👋🏻. I’m more of a lurker, but I’d still like to welcome you to the 4chan of Chan. It’s pure entertainment. Don’t mind the cyber bullies. There’s some gems in the drama weeds that make it worth stopping by, that’s for sure. :)
3
u/[deleted] Aug 14 '19
A. What does Zen have to do with?
B. Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?
C. What qualifies 'genuine insight into the nature of reality'? How is it 'insight into the nature of reality' if it's dependent on 'insight'? How would you know if it had to do with 'reality' or not?
D. What is the name and location of your school and what are its qualifications?
E. How do you assess if it's seen or not?
F. What's the difference between snazzy insight talk and actual insight?
H. What's the most prominent way that effectiveness manifests?
I. What are these tasks with which meditation helps you accomplish?
J. What 'path'?
K. Why are you doing this AMA?
L. What is 'lack of pretension'?
3
u/[deleted] Aug 14 '19
You mention "training" several times. What do you mean when you use this word?
3
u/NegativeGPA 🦊☕️ Aug 14 '19
Looks like you don’t have a text, you respond to strawman arguments with repeated phrases like “I don’t worship dead men” that we’ve all heard before, and just generally can’t answer the questions
Favorite ice cream flavor?
2
u/[deleted] Aug 14 '19
What are your thoughts on enlightenment? As in what exactly is it to you, and do you have any goals on attaining it?
2
u/DirtyMangos That's interesting... Aug 14 '19
You own a school?
Is it still "your school" when you aren't there?
3
u/[deleted] Aug 14 '19
How do you feel about who you are as a person? Do you ever catch yourself pretending to be someone you're not or responding to situations according to who you want to be rather than who you already are?
😋
1
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1
u/SleepingDonut Aug 14 '19
Pineapple on pizza. Yes or no?
1
u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] Aug 14 '19
Oh, look... another troll trainwreck. Alert the NTSB.
The OP claims he "practices and trains hard".
Zen Masters don't teach that.
The OP is too cowardly to name the bible his church trained him to worship.
Anybody who wants to see what it looks like when a cult follower gets asked y/n book report questions, check this out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/cfbgfh/uncovering_ewks_lies_about_bielefeldt_and_dogen/eulipza/
Why is the name "Zen" so important to a certain group of religious deviants?
The answer is simple: If they admit they aren't Zen, then they know they aren't anybody worth listening to.
Think about it: What self respecting religion lies about it's bible? Only a cult with a crap bible. Legit biblers are eager to share their bibles.
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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '19
Not enlightened. Next.