Why remain trapped in a dark doctrine of nihilism, hatred, and ignorance - when you can follow the enlightened Zen teachings of meaning, wisdom, and kindness?

Good friends, having taken refuge in the three-bodied buddha, let us now make Four Boundless Vows. Good friends, recite after me:

‘I vow to save all beings, no matter how numberless. I vow to end all afflictions, no matter how countless. I vow to master all teachings, no matter how limitless. I vow to attain buddhahood, no matter how transcendent.’

-- The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Zen Patriarch, section 21

These are the real teachings of Zen:

1. Kindness
2. Enlightenment
3. Liberation
4. Wisdom
5. Effort towards a meaningful goal

Go ahead and read the whole Sutra, so no doubt will remain in your mind as to what Zen actually teaches.

The light of Zen teachings should banish the darkness of ignorance, hatred, and nihilism that unfortunately so often afflicts this forum.

There are those who are trapped in their small-minded prisons of suffering. Hopeless and paralyzed by fear, they cling to the bars of their prison, terrified of being torn away into the light, ever hateful, ever envious of those who might break out of their own prisons of mind.

These people come here to flood us all with their hatred, their fear, their willful ignorance. They post short ambiguous fragments, intentionally deny you and themselves the teachings that would give them any meaning, and then tell you that it is all nothing, there are no teachings, there is no practice, no enlightenment, no hope.

That all there is is this endless attachment to views, to what "Zen" is (nihilism), to arguing by authority over what this or that "Zen Master" said, who is a "Zen Master" and who is a fraud. People who spend their whole day, every day, attacking everyone disputing their precious views with blatant verbal abuse and vicious slander.

Is that the path you wish to follow? Is that your goal in your practice, to become an obsessive, hateful internet troll?

Because if all this nihilism, hate, and ignorance actually was Zen, then what healthy person would study it?

Fortunately, Zen was never about that at all. Read the Platform Sutra. Read the texts recommended in the guide. Then read the teachings of Bodhidharma, Huang-bo, and Linji - you now have the tools to understand them. And practice accordingly.

Would you like to be vicious, obsessive Internet trolls? Is that why you came to r/Zen? No? So do the opposite of what these nihilists tell you to do. Do not be content with tiny vague fragments, that the trolls tell you are utterly meaningless. Educate your own selves, read the introductions they are so frantic to prevent you from reading.

For who can bear the calamity through endless kalpas?

Submitted December 04, 2017 at 03:25AM by SilaSamadhi http://ift.tt/2kkJwq8