Don't allow yourself to fall into the trap of becoming another "Zen Asshole"

I've been a member of the Zen community for a few months now, and I am seeing some constant and troubling patterns of behavior from some of our treasured members. If nothing else, I can see at this point in my practice and understanding of Zen what we can call "skillful" and "unskillful" actions. It doesn't matter what side of the ongoing Zen debate you happen to fall into in the community, everyone's actions in Zen are either skillful or unskillful.

This is all an oversimplification of course, but people who are generally committed to skillful actions tend to try to learn from and even help other members, while those committed to unskillful actions try to start pointless arguments, seem not to care about learning, attack people's characters and generally don't seem to concern themselves with being decent people in general. Zen is not an excuse to be an asshole to people; if you think this way, you probably don't know a thing about living in accordance with Zen teachings. I've compiled a list below of certain characteristics of "Zen Assholes" below.

• The Zen Asshole waits until the right moment to strike, trying to find a weakness in the words of people in the community and undermine the person instead of teaching or sharing something helpful. They generally seem to learn Zen in an effort to put others down who seem to know less in Zen, which is highly unskillful in the end.

• The Zen Asshole uses the past behavior of the person they are attacking in an effort to harm their character in the present, instead of realizing that people can grow, change and learn. The Zen Asshole is usually concerned with the past as opposed to the present because they are not open-minded enough to adapt and learn.

• The Zen asshole wastes people time by not asking true questions in which they can learn from an answer. The question from a Zen Asshole is usually only asked in an underhanded effort to undermine the person who answers. If the person just so happens to give a skillful answer to the question, the Zen Asshole retreats immediately without conceding anything.

• The Zen Asshole complains about the actions of others instead of putting forth skillful efforts themselves. They don't really care about the community or helping people in most ways, and they try to go against and discredit the efforts of those who try to be an active and positive force in the Zen community. Notice that the majority of Zen Assholes don't post original threads as often or as helpful as skillful people.

• The Zen Asshole generally seems to think of themselves as "helpful" when they try to belittle, harm or undermine others. Unfortunately, the Zen Asshole may not see themselves as assholes at all. They act like assholes to others, and get upset when called out about it and tend to blame the victim for not being tough enough to take whatever comes their way. They tend to think that they are somehow above everyone else, which is not Zen, and are usually quite arrogant in their demeanor.

Submitted March 27, 2018 at 11:25PM by WanderingRonin77 https://ift.tt/2DZOJYn