Debunking Ewk's views on meditation

Confusion has been spreading on this forum as to what is the relationship between Zen and meditation because of some users. The claim is that meditation has been denounced times and times over by Zen master through the ages as something that was incoherent with Zen practice.

This view is completely contrary to the facts. Boddhidharma, a buddhist monk considered as the first chinese patriarch, is said to have spent nine years in a cave, facing a wall, not speaking the entire time.

In the Two Entrances and Four Acts, traditionally attributed to Bodhidharma, the term "wall-gazing" is given as follows:

Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls, the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved even by scriptures are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason"

Ewk remains silent on that point for a good reason: He sees meditation as an active practice and often denounces proponents of it as religious trolls. I do not know what he thinks meditation is about when he says such things, but he is clearly misguided.

It is easy to make the mistake of believing that meditation has an object other than presence, in other words, that it aims at concentration upon something through efforts of the will. Meditation is observation, and sitting in quitness is a good way to get acquainted with what the mind produces without stimulations that could be attributed to the outside world.

Successful meditation is not meditation, and in that way, to achieve the meditative state is much like solving a koan. You must cease effort without intending to do so, you must achieve presence without thinking about it. This does not require sitting meditation, just as enlightenment does not necessarily entails thorough koan practice, but it can help.

This is why many people turn away from meditation, because they just end up being stuck in a loop of thinking "I must think about nothing", or "I am present". This "I am present is often referred to by the popular saying "If you meet a Buddha on the road, kill him".

Ewk's Zensangha wiki page

Ewk views are documented here, so you can see for yourself that I am not attacking a strawman.

Ewk documents many instances of Zen masters talking about meditation. Here are some:

Huineng

Huineng: "To concentrate the mind on quietness is a disease of the mind, and not Zen at all. What an idea, restricting the body to sitting all the time! That is useless."

Ewk's interpretation, that he passes as fact, is that Huineng thus condemns all meditation. In reality, in section 57 of the Platform Sutra, Huineng recommends meditation to his students and passes away in sitting in meditation Ewk's confusion comes from the fact that he misinterpret's huineng when it is said that to him, Samadhi and Prajna (concentration and wisdom) are not two separate things.

Mazu

If you try to sit like buddha you are just killing Buddha. (p. 60)

The important word here is try. This is in no way an indictment of meditation.

Meditation is neither sitting or lying.

Meditation is not an act, to sit is not necessarily meditation.

You should simply step back and study through total experience. How do you step back? I am not telling you to sit on a bench with your eyes closed, rigidly suppressing body and mind, like earth or wood. That will never have any usefulness, even in a million years.

There is a way to sit and to try to achieve a state when there is nothing to attain. This is not meditation. There is no supression of body and mind in meditation, just observance.

On Ewk's behavior generally

Those who know me may know that I strongly disapprove of Ewk's toxic behavior on this forum. People that disagree with you are not liars and trolls, they hold different views. There is a great difference between having different perspectives and lying, and accusations of the sort are just making this place toxic.

Some more stuff on what I think of Ewk

Torooblog

Saturday, 1 June 2019