Zazen prayer-mediation fraud vs Nanquan's Cat Chopping Fact

Background for new people:

Zazen prayer meditation is not Soto Zen it's Dogenism

For years now I've been explaining to people that Zazen meditation is a kind of prayer invented in Japan by a messianic cult leader named Dogen that it has no historical or doctrinal connection to Zen.

Recently a significant part of this was confirmed by a famous Buddhist scholar:

The [Dogenism] school holds that shikantaza [Zazen] originated in China and was transmitted to the founder of [Dogenism], Dōgen Kigen 道元希玄 (1200–1253), by his Chinese teacher Tiantong Rujing 天童如淨 (1163–1228). However, the term shikantaza does not appear in surviving Chinese documents, and most nonsectarian scholars now approach [Zazen] “simply sitting” as a Japanese innovation... (Sharf, Mindfulness and Mindlessness in Early Chan, 2014)

Nanquan, a real Zen Master, chopped up a cat

https://www.reddit.com//r/zen/wiki/famous_cases#wiki_nanquan.27s_cat_chopping

Dogenism has cult leadership history

/r/zen/wiki/sexpredators

Note that the remedy to this within the church is to make more rules about who can teach, not to decertify anybody.

Leadership of Zen communities

Sex predators, fraudulent practices, and cat murder all violate the 5 Lay Precepts, which are the foundation of all Zen communities, ever. What makes Nanquan's cat chopping "Zen", and Dogen's fraudulent Zazen prayer-meditation practice "not Zen"?

1. Nanquan chopped the cat because the community was failing... Dogen's Zazen fraud was used to create a community that would later fail.
2. Nanquan kept the precepts his whole life... Dogen's Zazen was not the first or last fraud Dogen committed in his lifetime.
3. Nanquan's cat chopping didn't lead to the failure of multiple Zen communities... Dogen's Zazen fraud created a religious practice that would fail to help generation after generation of followers.

Submitted July 17, 2022 at 10:11AM by ewk https://ift.tt/TUj9m20