Speculative: Zazen Prayer-Meditation Suppresses Doubt

The /r/Zen Dispute:

It should come as no surprise to anybody familiar with /r/Zen that meditation is a contentious subject in this forum... here's some examples of where the contention started, 1500 years ago: http://ift.tt/2v2J3NX

The Meditation Regions:

Nevertheless, religious people come in here month after month from /r/Soto, /r/Buddhism, /r/meditation, and even /r/psychonauts, mistakenly imagining that Zen and/or dhyana /r/zen/wiki/dhyana means "meditation", involves meditaiton, requires a meditative practice, or stems from meditation, when there is no evidence of it.

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A recent example: One such poster recently cited wikipedia and Soto doctrine as justification for the claim that Zen=meditation, all without citing the texts written by Zen Masters, their tradition, or addressing any of the scholarship that disputes the religious claim. Elsewhere in the thread the poster explicitly stated that he could easily enter a "meditative trance without sitting" as if, somehow, meditative trances had something to do with Zen. Yet when this poster was asked about the texts written by Zen Masters, or the hundreds of years of written traditions preceding the written texts, the poster wasn't able to even respond to the question, "Why not read a book by a Zen Master?"

In fact, when the popular Soto priest Brad Warner did an AMA in this forum he admitted that the shortest text written by a Zen Master didn't have anything to do with his practice/beliefs/studies, etc.

So, why the allergy to books among mediators? More to the point, if someone told you that everything you had taken on faith was a lie and it was disproven, scientifically, with no religious undertone, in some history or non-fiction book, wouldn't your curiosity prompt you to at least flip through it? Wouldn't you have at least a shred of doubt?

Maybe Religious Meditation Suppresses Doubt?

Zen Masters write about doubt being useful, even an important part of Zen study or practice. Why isn't there enough doubt in these religious mediators to get them to crack open a book about the history of their religious beliefs, or even a book written by the very people these religious mediators claim to be following? Wouldn't enough doubt for basic curiosity to win them over be normal? Are these people naturally lacking in the ability to doubt? Or is doubt a skill? Or is doubt naturally occurring, only to be suppressed by some aspect of their religion?

Is it possible that religious meditation suppresses doubt, and perhaps even encourages a certain mental attitude of submission and subservience?

Submitted August 22, 2017 at 04:54PM by ewk http://ift.tt/2vlp0VX