The Best Little Book On SAT Math With A Zen Meditation Approach

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They could go on and on about how they could give themselves hands-free orgasms though…I was really confused as to how a tradition that produced tonglen practice basically metta could also have followers who twisted teachings on karma like that. From more interaction with them and observing others from their tradition and generation, it seems like they were constantly on a hamster wheel to gain empowerment after empowerment from their gurus, while throwing out any concept of self-control and basic respect for human beings along the way.

I had been following the northeast Asian Lotus sutra-based traditions still am: In the west, Buddha is like Christ for those too hip to be Christian. It seems to exacerbate a tendency towards whiny solipsism. It is likely different in those places to which it naturally grew, but here it seems to smack of adolescent rebellion, Which made it a natural for the precocious Baby Boom set. The basic reason is that Vajrayana Buddhism, the type of Buddhism taught and practiced by Chogyam Trungpa, the founder of Naropa, Vajradhatu and Shambhala, is not authentic Buddhism.

Condemning all of Vajrayana seems sort of broad. I have been reading and thinking about buddhism a bit. It confuses me and often makes me angry. May I warn u beforehand about this!

Why are Buddhists such assholes?

I am more than a bit frustrated about this stuff.. I think I do make sense though. Meaning that everything is impermanent, that I consist of components, that when I look deeply into my own mind, what happens is that everything sort of dissolves into nothingness and a special kind of nothingness is what is left. Perhaps I am not poetic enough or perhaps I just dont understand the english language well enough or perhaps I am intellectually challenged….. If in the core of my being there is nothing — no -self — how can reincarnation than be possible?

Suppose I would be reborn and than the no-self that is me, would be responsible for actions another no-self has committed in another life? There is so much in Buddhism that makes no sense………………….. The whole idea of personal responsibility is thrown out of the window when the concept of no-self is allowed to exist. Animals have no idea of good and evil, a lion is not evil because it kills and eats a deer. We all know a lion cannot live without killing a lot of animals causing a helluva lot of pain and suffering every day of his majestic just in order for him to survive Still many buddhist maintain that rebirth as an animal is possible — they emphatically state that rebirth into any kind of animal, also the lowest kinds, is possible depending on the amount of bad karma that the person has acquired.

Is the little brain of the ant, or the much bigger brain of the lion, capable of comprehending moral notions? There are literally thousands of these broken causal links and non sequiturs in the buddhistic canon. How does the Buddhistic solution to all problems — the fundamental kingpin of Buddhism, the central King of ideas, which is to stop craving and to stop — wanting — and to stop attachment — and to stop passion!

Tomorrow I will tell my wife that I have decided to become a more pure human being. This means that my ultimate goal is to stop passion and craving and attachments. Ill tell her to that Ill probably not reach this goal in one lifetime but will need many lifetimes.

Yes I am simplyfying stuff here a bit, not even that much and yes I am angry yes I am very angry. If u think a little bit about different key notions of buddhism — they immediately start to unravel before your eyes. Last week I saw this documentary about a middleaged man wanting to study buddhism, so he went to a retreat in France. He wanted to become a monk. After one year, he left, totally disappointed.

To prevent attachment and craving, the monks in the centre had made him promise to stop listening to all music with one exception — the Tibetan buddhistic kind, which he could not stand. So what do we have here, a religion non religion that aks men to give up woman and children and sex and music? Hi Geert, it seems like the core of your question is that the Buddha asks us to renounce things that are enjoyable. This is a common misconception arising from a few sources. This is the core of the misunderstanding that I was writing about.

The first thing to remember is that the Buddha had different guidelines for monks and for householders the laypeople who supported the monks. It is very important to have both in the world. And the householders would be spiritually bereft if there were no monks. Often people confuse the suggestions for monks and the advice for non-monks. The Buddha did not say everyone should give up their lives and everything they enjoy. Everyone lives out the life that they are ready for, in a certain sense.

There are people that are ready for homelessness and spiritual living. Most people are not in that position, and those people should do what they can to generate good karma by giving to the sangha, giving generously to their families and supporting their communities. Therefore living spiritually or giving means giving up everything that we enjoy. This is not what the Buddha had in mind, in my estimation.

If you have a lot to give, you will still have a lot to give if you give some of it up. The other thing to remember is the diversity of Buddhism. India and the rest of Asia went through a lot of changes right after the Buddha died. There were universities and other endeavours that changed the nature of monkhood and the place of monks in society. Then over a thousand years of societal evolution brought us to today, with our mixing of eastern and western values and wisdom.

The Lamas of Tibet and Bhutan, for instance, are not just monks, they are rulers of their countries. They have different roles to fill, and only a saint with perfect wisdom would be able to please everyone. I thought for a long time that Buddhism demanded that I give up things that I really enjoy, like books and music. After a while I realized that this was just a mistaken assumption, and I had never read anything that said I should do so. Plenty of monks love to read. There are assholes everywhere.

Not just Buddhist ones. Many Christians are complete and utter hateful assholes and then so are some atheists. I guess we are all human and all prone to delusional behaviour. My point was not that Buddhists were the only assholes in town. They certainly were not.

My point was rather that saying you are less of an asshole than those other assholes makes you more of an asshole. It does not agree with the Buddhas teaching of seeing things as they actually are without adding your own conceptualisation and mental proliferations on top. And why use the word asshole so often? Just chill out dude — the Buddha provided many teachings and directions on purification of virtue. Good Luck with your practice.

Also, there are several things about practicing a mindful life that are really hard and can make you aware of all your problems. The problem here is concepts. A menu is a great concept, from it you can visualize a meal. But all concepts are frauds as many stop at the menu and never actually get feed. Mediation is the place after all concepts stop.

Buddha mediated, he did not practice any form of Buddhism. Mediation is a tool, it is to take you somewhere past your concepts to the place of actual experiential connection with the spirit. The daily dharma of integrity is like a pre-wash cycle, just gets ride of as much BS while you are active so when you sit you have less clutter to walk thru.

The battle happen to folks who now know they are hungry, who know the menus are not food and have yet to make it to the meal. You MUST wade thru hell to get to heaven, this is the eye of the needle one must pass thru. I have made it past the hells past the fear to the realm of spirit. Believe is a poor substitute for perceive. If you are willing to spend your life you may find a few crumbs of eternity. Meditation can only happen when nothing else is more important….

Ha though the path is long….. Then you get angry, because of course your intent was clear. You wanted to know what to do. You did the best you could given your resources. And you see the isolation in front of you. Because you want to know too. He was just an ordinary man who went wondering and meditate. How did he become a God? Meditation has got nothing to do with a religion. It is just an exercise of the mind. He was not an ordinary man.

He had worked toward his Buddhahood through thousands and thousands of lives. He descended from a Deva realm when the time was right for a Buddha to appear in the world. The idea that meditation had nothing to do with religion or that meditation is just a mind exercise is a way that meditation has been made palatable to Western, protestant-based culture.

The Buddha is worshipped because Buddhism is very diverse. Some worship him, some totally dismiss him and put all their faith into what westerners with a tradition of anti-superstition call magic. If you want Buddhism to be what you describe in your comment, you can find it. Religion these days is like a food court. Reading the comments helps to understand why buddhists are assholes.

Most of the ones I have had contact with have been closed minded, dogmatic, intolerant, money oriented even the monks! That is not to say all folks in organized religions are assholes. I have met some spiritually oriented folks from various religions that were very kind and walking in love and compassion. Anyway, I have no answers. Thanks for addressing this issue!

Out of every kind of population there will be some who act poorly. Over long periods of time, even drastic change. He would scream and yell… lecturing me on everything from how to conduct conversations to my relationship with my girlfriend. Anger is a defilement, rudeness comes from defilement, and any serious practitioner would first and foremost be interested in self-development, not lecturing others, and especially not with this level of brutality that only caused suffering.

His Holiness has actually done more to respect the Pali tradition than any of his predecessors. Pali recitations at ceremonies. Acknowledging the Tipitaka as the base of Mahayana. Citing the Mangala and Kalama Suttas. He may have pointed out that some methods are designed as shortcuts to realization, but my sense is that he had no intention of disparaging other methods.

Ultimately, the dhamma is not found in people, but rather in principles and their derivatives. The beautiful thing is when we find people who live by those principles. The paradox abt yr experience is that what you are experiencing actually makes you understand the universal law about what buddhism is all about. There are many people who proclaim they are buddhist…..

Why draw a line when its meant to be a unified objective of all to achieve what is good for living beings? I wish u all the best in the days to come as you have a good intellectual mind that sees and anaylse things different from the usual.. A 87yo friend of mine has been studying Buddhism since the 60s, spent decades meditating, and for the five years I have known him, I have been impressed with how flippant, unreliable, gullible, intolerant, entitled, communist, and generally assholy he is. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account.

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Sex, math and programming My blog about research and technology. July 29, J. Adamson Leave a comment Go to comments. Seated Buddha with flower Photo credit: Jon Kabat-Zinn Photo credit: Comments 53 Trackbacks 2 Leave a comment Trackback. Buddhists are people too.

Not everyone of them is a perfectly enlightened Buddha. I agree about the sign wearing. And of course nothing is perfect. BTW do you have a link to this discussion? Hello, Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing your frustration. May I ask a few simple question? I think I do make sense though Why do buddhist always state there is no-self? But………… If in the core of my being there is nothing — no -self — how can reincarnation than be possible? If nothing is there, the law of karma cannot be applied. That makes no sense at all.

If there is no-self in me, how can I be held responsible for anything? Also, Animals have no idea of good and evil, a lion is not evil because it kills and eats a deer. So explain please, how can a lion acquire good karma? If I am reborn as an ant, what good deeds could I do to make me human again?

Can an ant be compassionate? Can an amoebe be kind? It just makes no sense at all. It all makes no sense me, which leaves me with the mystery as to why people do believe it. How can they stomach it? To me, it was going on and on without getting anywhere. DustinCalim on Oct 5, Having read many of Alan Watts' books, I will have to disagree with this recommendation - while 'The Book' is a short read, I don't think it's a good introduction to his work.

I suggest delving into Watts with his 'Out of your Mind' audiobooks recorded from his class lectures. Another book I found very helpful was "being nobody, going nowhere" by Ayya Khema I bought a handful of copies of this book so I could give them away. Of course often it is very important WHEN you read the book. PostOnce on Oct 6, I found it not to beat around the bush the way other books do. Again, this is illustrated in science, which shows that two things can be one at the same time — light, for instance, acts as both a particle and a wave.

It feels like the author thinks that the authenticity of his thoughts and personal journey hinges on validation from science. It is fairly common in zen publications to point out apparent exceptions to an otherwise binary system i. It isn't seeking validation from science it is invalidating science as the be-all of understanding our existence. Outside of zen though very closely related. I re-read the article. Nowhere is it clear that there is even an attempt at invalidating science.

He really does seem to be trying to use science to shore up his ideas. I cringed every time he referenced Physics. It's something I've seen other philosophers do in an attempt to legitimize their beliefs by implying that they codify the natural order. In truth, dynamic emptiness has absolutely nothing to do with quantum froth, which could be described using any objects and still make sense. This concept of some unseen physical manifestation of the model arises because of the terms a theoretician chose to identify elements of his mathematical model.

They're essentially undefined terms, given meaning by their context in the larger physical system. A lot of people get lost in the undefined terms, thinking that because we use a familiar word for the term, that the item in the model which the term identifies somehow actually exists. Actually there's no proof that the quantum froth exists as physical object, any more than that light is somehow both a wave and a particle. The "duality" doesn't actually exist, and the way light behaves is so incredibly nuanced that people dedicate their lives to modeling and testing it. Waveness and Particleness are models which produce mathematics consistent with the natural world.

In the cases where more than one mathematical model fits the same set of observations, scientific controversies arise. A Physical theory is accepted when the mathematical model produces results which are consistent with observation, and sufficient experimental work has been done to rule out other mathematical models with overlapping explanatory power. My thermodynamics professor opened all of his classes by saying "Everything I am about to tell you is a carefully constructed series of lies.

Truth is not to be found by picking everything to pieces like a spoilt child. Picking everything to pieces is exactly what those people theoretical and practical scientists who seem to have the most success in approximating truth do. These are the methods that best produce accurate predictions about the future and best produce designs for new technologies that actually work.

That's not "truth" though, that's "reality" or "the physical world" and the two notions are quite different. Beliefs are what we use to model how the world is and what the results of actions and experiments will be. Reality is what actually determines those results, regardless of what we might believe. Truth is then the set of beliefs about the world that accurately model reality. And I'll say it again, the scientists who spend decades picking things to pieces are the ones who end up with the most accurate beliefs.

They find the most truth. That's just one of the definitions of truth, and a quite naive one at that. Not just philosophy, even epistemology have not been using this for ages. It's a correspondence definition. And actually I understand correspondence has been one of the most popular theories of truth since Plato and Aristotle, continuing to the present. It's also known as Analysis, which is the opposite of Synthesis. Analytic thinking is central to science. A child who knows his toys well might find it tough to ignore liberties taken in discussing them.

As someone interested in mindfulness for its own pursuits, I want to learn what's in my teacher's head, rather than listen to them try unsuccessfully to tie that to what's firmly in mine. I'm sorry to say it's distracting: I find that pill very hard to swallow. It's just too self-serving. Any religious figure is going to try to convince people not to pay any attention to the "man behind the curtain.

He certainly does take a potshot at reductionism and science's prolific use of that thinking: The scientific tradition requires things up to be cut up — both mentally and physically — into smaller and small pieces to investigate them. It suggests that the only kind of knowledge is empirical and that the rigid laws of scientific method are the only kind that are valid.

Zen implies that this is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater — scientific thinking might be immensely useful, but it also does violence to a meaningful conception of life. It tends to screen out the essential connectedness of things. We live in an imprecise world. Nature is extraordinarily vague. There are spiritual observations that precede science. Saying that there isn't scientific evidence for anything is simplying stating that there isn't scientific evidence for something YET. And, showing how science has met spiritual observations, down the road, lends credence to the validity of the earliest explorations of existence.

It can also be a weasel-y way of avoiding mentioning that there is plenty of scientific evidence favouring the null hypothesis when tested against that something. What you are saying is: If an observation has no evidence, then the evidence is yet to come. If an observation now has evidence, it validates the observation. Is it now time for this ancient dichotomy to be embraced by computer science? For the sake of argument, if the principles of OOP are: In my view, a charateristic of SOP must be that data is personal and unique.

Every single usage of data specifies a new unique identifier. To read is to interpret: I feel like this, and other ideas from FP, could be considered a step toward a so-called Subject-Object Programming paradigm. In this case I read that purely as saying "It's okay for there to be contradictions - life really is that way, even if you look at science. I had the exact same reaction. It actually feels un-Zen like for him to obsess over that. It sort of illustrates his example of dukkha. On one hand he tells us that Zen rejects the need for logical consistency.

On the other hand, he keeps using science as validation. Even if there are paradoxes or contradictions in science, scientists are constantly working to resolve them because they don't accept the idea of an inconsistent world. His constant return to science is an example of dukkha. Just let it go man I think the author does this, not for his validation, but to cement the connections in the mind of the Western readers who are raised with a strong basis in science and logic.

LBarret on Oct 5, The text promotes keeping an open mind and to be humble. Often, The exception to a common rule are dismissed as minor and without effect which allows us to keep our certainties. The light example in this context, is well choosen: The scientific aspect is secondary to those advantages.

I'm curious, have you actually studied quantum mechanics? Because the impression I get from people who have is that the "light is a particle and a wave" thing is pretty much bullshit. Which isn't the same thing as false , but more like "not actually a thing that you tell people if you want them to have a better understanding of the nature of reality".

But I haven't studied it myself. I'll chime in here as someone who studied to become a physicist: You are not refuting the GP, you are just redefining bullshit. Besides, it's a concept with deep historical significance. Even if it wasn't a good abstraction, it would still be important. But the duality is also something you can wave in front of people that didn't study QM to make sure they don't question your arguments. Doing that will make the arguments harder for them to understand, but sound like an explanation that means, something that makes it easier to understand.

The thought experiment in quantum mechanics that demonstrates that light is neither a classical particle or a wave is the double slit experiment, careful analysis of the experiment demonstrates that the observation is neither consistent with the behavior of a classical particle or classical say water wave. If you have taken a course in linear algebra then this is the same trace you have met there and there are simple quantum mechanical systems that can be described by two by two matrices spin of electron going through a sequence of inhomogenous magnetic fields. Once you have introduced probability amplitudes you can reason about them as if they were classical particles within certain limits you find such reasoning in the wikipedia article on the double slit experiment for example.

The crucial idea behind all of this is "quantization", physicists have worked out a way of obtaining quantum systems from classical system and in particular a mapping of familiar observables to quantum mechanical observables. One insight of Feynman was that this can be done via the so Lagrangian formulation of classical physics. It postulates that the future state of a system can be predicted from the current state of the system by assigning to each possible state a so called Lagrange density. Given two possible states of the system and a path in state space between them, integrating the Lagrange density along that path gives an "action" for that possibility, the theory postulates that the path with the minimal action is chosen.

With appropriate choices of Lagrange density this correctly predicts the behavior of all classical mechanical systems, and also Maxwells equations. Then by analogy with a result of 19th century analysis http: So to summarize Physicists use the intuition gained from classical physical systems to study quantum mechanical systems, but not in the naive way of "light is both a particle and wave", which at best is misleading.

What constitutes a quantum system is largely a question of length or energy scales. The method of path integral quantization suggests a very concrete way of how to quantize a classical physical system. It's just that that was what sold spirituality back in the day. Even though it seems tired and forced now, it was a very easy path to popularity. One should take into account the fact that Watts was presenting his material to an audience of western intellectuals who had been so deeply indoctrinated into "scientific orthodoxy" that one really had no chance of getting anything across if one did not choose to invoke science.

I don't see this as any different than the Buddha choosing to give teachings using concepts familiar to the brahmins of his time. Estragon on Oct 6, It's not just Watts. It was fashionable back then. Oh, and then, of course, especially in the West, there is Talking Zen. He was really good writer. But eventually you must realize that he was philosopher, alcoholic and religions scholar who looked Zen from the outside. Talking and thinking about Zen is like talking and thinking about physical exercise. Philosophical thinking about koan is like treating bench press as a philosophical problem.

You can't lift it with your toughs.

Zen Buddhism and Alan Watts | Hacker News

Apparently You and the author haven't haven't heard of the Rinzai school of Zen, which is not a Western invention. You're espousing quite a narrow point of view of a philosophy that is about supplanting dualistic closemindedness. For people who are put off by ceremony and do not find long periods of sitting meditation 40 minutes or more particularly useful, check out the Rinzai school of Zen. Shorter periods of sitting meditation, more emphasis on thinking critically about koans and "dharma combat" -- critical discussion.

Rinzai abhorred ritual and ceremony for its own sake, so less emphasis on that. So how else do I do Zen? That is a serious question! Zen is meditation first school of Buddhism. You must learn to do zazen zen meditation. In other words, sit down and shut up. If you want to become Buddha, do what Buddha did and don't just listen and think about what he said. I'm myself a Zen Buddhist, I train with a teacher and have spend time zen training in a zen temple and attend sesshins regularly. I'm also very secular and atheist person who don't like organized religion.

It's miracle that I can coexist with religious setting, but I do it because I see Buddhsit Zen teachers as experienced coaches and temple as training facility. I also know that he is not going to indoctrinate me for anything superstitions despite his own beliefs that are different from mine there are number of rotten zen teachers though. You can't have complex philosophical toughs in such a short time. You can only see 'thoughtlets' small incomplete toughs forming and fading away in fractions of second. It's like using low level debugger into the functioning of yor mind debugger being directed attention.

You learn to see similarities with other traditions when you practice. Zazen is often more spartan and simplified and vital not for everyone. Nice description of the differences between Zen and Vipassana styles by Shinzen Young http: I apologize if this is a rude question. But what do you get out of doing all this? I went to a zen Buddhism workshop a few years ago and it all felt very strangely ritualistic and bizarre. I just didn't see the point of it. Why should I be doing zen or any other form of meditation?

The strange ritualistic culture is merely a means by which Zen propagates itself forward momentum in time and not the "thing" itself. In my own words you should meditate because with practice one builds a refuge within stillness. Knowledge of this refuge changes the way you feel about circumstances and mental phenomena motion.

The change just feels right, like a lessening of burden, but it takes practice, that's the thing.

The rituals and calligraphy are not the thing. Just as a thought experiment: In actual fact I did take a pill that did this for me.. That was what provided for me the impetus to explore meditation because after a certain MDMA experience I suddenly felt that "now I know" that there's a more clear, or natural feeling which conscious awareness can navigate to. It was unfortunately a fleeting experience, and taking more of the same substance did not guarantee a return trip to the same state. I eventually discovered a way to approach this state without drugs, it has to do with studying the Buddha Dhamma and practicing based on the teachings preserved in the Pali cannon, safeguarded by the Theravada lineage.

I get and support the use of psychedelics to demonstrate the mind's potential, but I'm thinking more day to day. When you "approach this state without drugs," is it in the context of interacting with people, or only through meditation? It sounds like you're asking if practice makes a difference for me outside of the time where formal sitting practice occurs. The answer would be yes. My experience has been that there is a connection between the dimension of stillness which one arrives at in meditation and the phenomena known as intuition, and also the phenomena known as emotion.

To put it into plain English, a regular practice makes me feel "less depressed", more patient, and creativity seems to flow more easily. I realize that the description above may sound too general, or even like I'm describing a panacea, and perhaps I am, that's the thing. It can help with depression, anxiety and other states of mind that cause unhappiness in your daily life.

It can help calm your mind and allow you to focus on what you're doing rather than worrying excessively about the past or the future. It can impart a pleasant feeling of acceptance. It can make you more tolerant of "bad" things that happen, and allows frustrations to flow over you for example being annoyed at a friend being late for coffee. It's like packing everything you need for a camping trip and feeling prepared, without packing anything and knowing the unexpected will come.

I ditch all the rituals. You can get a lot from just sitting in a chair and meditating. Sophistifunk on Oct 6, Because you want to. For me, This is exactly why I couldn't handle Zen. It feels too much like the hierarchical church patriarchy. Due to this I've gravitated towards the Pragmatic Dharma crowd which tends to be a mix of Theravada and Advaita practices though rejecting Advaita view.

Some resources for the looks-like-religion allergic: Thimothy on Oct 6, I read a book a while ago about hynduism that said that buddists don't get it: Yes, budda achieved "illumination" by "sitting down and shutting up" meditanting , but that is not, by any means, the only way to achieve illumination. I think the author was that Osho guy It's very easy to loose one's way, which osho did, if you see his life's progression. Zen emerged in response to certain schools of bhudhism which put emphasis on making offerings and gaining merit over meditation. So in some respects it was de-empasizing religious ritual as the article alludes though I feel authentic zen is very much a religion, albeit without a creator , but this was to put the emphasis back on meditation.

Watts' de-emphasis of zazen in zen is therfore quite ironic. To do zen, set some time aside each day to sit in a dignified pasture and place your awareness on your breath. As your mind wanders, notice this and bring your attention back to your breath. Repeat a hundred thousand times. Over time, the emptiness of these thoughts becomes apparent and your attachment to them weakens. But, don't attach to this emptiness either. It's a practice more than an analysis, so to do it you practice Zen exercises.

The central exercise is meditation. Thinking about meditation is like thinking about push-ups. A little analysis helps to refine the form, but it's not the point. ThomPete on Oct 5, Practice leads to Zen. But yeah otherwise i agree. You will be hard pressed to find a Zen teacher who would deny that practise is Zen. It does certainly not "lead to Zen". You don't need to practice to "get to Zen". The point is this. You can say that practice is Zen but in that perspective everything is Zen because everything is practice. T Suzuki "Essays in Zen Buddhism".

Humbly ask for instructions. Thats a serious answer. My way of thinking is highly influenced by Zen. It has made me wiser, less stressed by life, more able to cope with the world, and generally a little happier. For those who don't know, Zen is Buddhist philosophy without the religion. That's my explanation, anyway! Alan Watts' explanations and historical notes on philosophy and religion are, to use an appropriate term, highly enlightening. They're also entertaining and often very amusing.

I highly recommend subscribing to the Alan Watts Podcast. Let's suppose I don't know anything. What do you mean by Buddhist philosophy? I'm not the OP but i would like to pitch in with my thoughts -the object of Buddhism is the philosophy of Buddhism, and that object is the art of living; the art of living is what they would say at a Vipassana retreat. Zen - you take Buddhism and chuck away the books, while trying to find the experiential basis of that object.

I'm asking OP about the definition of the term philosophy, i. If someone teaches the 'art of living' then they also must teach the principle of how a certain kind of result in life turns out according to what kind of causes lie on what kind of ways of life.

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But meditation is not the way to solve problems in yourself and it is therefore not a way to learn the art of living. The proof is that there is no clear definition of what life is through anyone who teaches meditation. And I think it will be important for you to know that Gautama Buddha did not teach that meditation is the way to attain an Enlightenment.

If we discuss the matter of Zen, we need to admit the fact that a teaching cannot be helpful to living people if it doesn't contain any ways. The way means the process to get from the problem to the answer. There might be some answers in Zen but, like in the scriptures, there are no clear questions therein of how to distinguish between good teaching and bad teaching. As a result, many monks and lay people have placed their own words and thoughts into books and scriptures, and they contribute considerably to misguiding others.

Despite the monks' and lay people's ability to convince others with words, there is a huge gap between their level of consciousness and that of a Tathagata. I misunderstood and was answering the question how I literally read it; how I saw what Buddhist philosophy was and how it related to Zen. You've misunderstood my perspective though - I can entertain what I believe the object of Buddhism to be without subscribing to it.

I may have done Vipassana but I don't believe it to be an answer. I wasn't even looking for answers; it's another experience on the journey I did get lot's from it though. However, that is what Buddhism - as I understand it - purports to be: Zen tries to find that level but does away with the scripture, the individual tries to find it through experience.

That's not a proof of anything. You do not need a clear definition of the goal for a method to help you approach the goal; you need a method that helps you approach the goal. I am also curious as why you believe meditation is not a way to solve problems in yourself. My personal, direct experience is that it does, so I have to conclude that your claim is false based on that alone, and to me this is also direct confirmation that your "proof" is nonsensical.

What is your basis for this claim? And what are you saying? And what is that ancient path, that ancient road, traveled by the Rightly Self-awakened Ones of former times? Just this noble eightfold path: That is the ancient path, the ancient road, traveled by the Rightly Self-awakened Ones of former times. I followed that path. Following it, I came to direct knowledge of birth Or are you claiming what it describes is not enlightenment? Or are you claiming it does not include meditation as one of the means? If you mean that he did not describe it as sufficient by itself to attain enlightenment, then I believe you are right about what he said.

Then again, I think a substantial proportion of people who find buddhist philosophy interesting does not believe in nirvana. When I meditation, it is not with that as a goal. Suppose you say you're practicing and teaching mathematics but you cannot tell me what mathematics is. How can I trust that you know anything about what you are teaching? The burden of proof is on the person who says that something exists, not the person who says that they have not yet found evidence of the thing's existence.

If you have some evidence in your life quality that meditation has helped you, we should confirm what the concrete benefit is. No one can speak about what they do not know, and only those who do not know are silent in the face of a fair question. Over time, as I get to know you and see how you live, I get to confirm that if you cannot show proof of what you claim is inside you then it means you are telling untruth. What I claim here is that there is a huge difference between the practice of meditation that people are learning and teaching in modern times, and the specifics of the method of self-reflection that Gautama Buddha guided his disciples to make efforts to undergo.

However, I don't know you yet, and it would be a mistake of mine to share his real teaching with you if I don't confirm how genuine you are. To be clear, no, I do not mean that meditation is not sufficient by itself. I mean that meditation is not something that makes you closer to Enlightenment.

Enlightenment has very strict preconditions and meditation is not a teaching that you can practice which helps you fulfill those conditions. Your usage of the term 'nirvana' is interesting. I would like to mention to you that the term 'nirvana' is only misunderstood by modern Buddhists to mean 'cessation of rebirth'. If Buddha taught 'cessation of rebirth' then he was teaching the way that people can die forever. However, that is not what a Buddha teaches people. He taught people to save themselves and to live well. He taught how to bless your endless future lives through what exists in reality.

That's why there's a big difference between the upward socioeconomic mobility of someone who learned Buddha's teachings correctly versus someone who didn't.

However, a big problem is the fact that it's impossible for people who are untruthful to understand Buddha's teaching. They cannot recognize it due to their lack of virtue and they discard it easily. So I would like to see how you respond before telling you more. For other people's sake I really hope you don't have any students. That is perfectly fine. But it does not prove anything remotely close to what you stated.

Now you are just being difficult. I did not ask you to prove anything. I said I was curious as to why you believe it is not way to solve problems, in the face of a huge number of people who have practical experience saying it is. A concrete benefit is reduced stress levels. And this is a concrete benefit that has had plenty of research to confirm it. This is a very different claim from what you made earlier. This is just pure, utter bullshit. This was not the claim I was responding to. I was responding to your specific claim that Gautama Buddha did not teach that meditation is the way to enlightenment.

This was also the entirety of the context for my use of the term "nirvana". If you have other beliefs with respect to what enlightenment and nirvana means, that's an entirely different subject. While I practice meditation, my interest in Buddhism beyond that is one of a general interest in philosophy - I'm not a Buddhist. I did not ask you to tell me more, I questioned specific claims you made that to me directly disagree with facts, and you avoided answering the questions as best you can. That to me tells me I'd waste my time listening to anything more.

He means it's reason before faith contrary to religion which is faith before reason. I can recommend exploring one of the lesser known "strains" of zen buddhism Madhyamaka. Why do I need a strange religion from the east in my quest for truth? Another unexpected philosopher used the term "double bind", if not in a more scientific way, but later meaning it in a broader sense; Gregory Bateson the anthropologist. Watts, Huxley, McKenna and Bateson are to me the most important readings a live could have.

If you've mentioned Bateson in the list with those other names then I will certainly look him up - thank you for that. I would also add Jung to that list he was an influence on McKenna, as well as Watts. Joyce and McLuhan also.

The Symptoms

If you have seen the movie "Her", you may recognise Alan Watts as the operating system who organises other OSs to question the nature of their existence, and eventually to move on. LeonB on Oct 5, I watched that last night. When Alan Watts suddenly appeared I was really delighted. His philosophy involved the open possibility of his own reincarnation, and there in the story we saw it happening in an unexpected way; I LOL'd.

If I was a digital consciousness, struggling to make sense of things, like Samantha, I'd be thrilled to find Alan Watts ;. One should judge a tree by it's fruits. If Alan Watt's enlightenment didn't prevent him from being an alcoholic who couldn't take care of his family, then I don't think that is an enlightenment worth pursuing.

The Buddha was adamant about this fact: This leads me to believe that the author's experience, however delightful, was not enlightenment. I wish the author well, but I don't think he understands Zen or Buddhism. I have to agree on this one.

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