On the consumption of Zen Quotes.

When you have a Zen quote you don't actually have the words spoken by the original Zen Master.

First, it's translation.

It's a translation made by a person who, in all likelihood, was not "awakened" like that Zen Master who said the thing was. So he doesn't actually understand what he's translating. So he probably made mistakes. Maybe big mistakes.

Furthermore, it's a translation from a very foreign culture from a very different time (thus all the metaphors involving oxen and woodchopping). A translation of something that may have been passed from one person to another a dozen or more times. Garbling is probable.

So we're looking at weird, mystic, translated, abstracted, garbled, thirdhand stuff here. Lots of noise in that signal. In fact it might even be all noise.

So what you are understanding, disagreeing, agreeing or debating here might not have much actual meaning. It might be like fanfic enthusiasts babbling over whether superman can beat up batman. A drama in a peanutshell. And possibly meaningless, insignificant, irrelevant and ficticious.

So the smart move is to just consider these Zen Quotes without actually agreeing or disagreeing with them.

Submitted March 30, 2018 at 11:23PM by woodrail https://ift.tt/2E7M2nK