Found Bodhidharma and a couple of his buddies at Chipotle

http://ift.tt/2aIAxJ0

Submitted August 02, 2016 at 05:05AM by Deuce2High http://ift.tt/2avbdCZ

Meditation for Positive Energy: Happiness Vibrations Meditation with Binaural Beats | Become Happy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vob-R6wZ1hs

Submitted August 02, 2016 at 04:21AM by OceanicPiano http://ift.tt/2atbjxK

Review: Schlitter's How Zen Became Zen, Introduction

Notable quotes:

"We cannot understand [the dispute between Caodong and Linji schools without the] context of a complex web of secular political, social, and economic forces.

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"[Many scholars believe] the Song period to be unworthy of serious study."

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First quote in the introduction: Guifeng Zongmi, a Buddhist apologist, not a Zen Master. No Zen Masters quoted in introduction.

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"Most Zen Masters would seem to have been caught in the middle, unable to deny that most beings are far from enlightenment but also reluctant to discuss practical steps to be taken to bring and end to delusion and usher in enlightenment."

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"Silent illumination [as later taught by Dogen] emphasized the wonderful world of inherent enlightenment that is present as soon as we sit down in nondualistic meditation and become aware of it, while [Linji] Chan insisted that until we have seen our own enlightened nature in a a shattering breakthrough even all talk of inherent enlightenment is just empty words."

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"There are many stories of famous Chan masters meeting and subduing ghosts or enlisting the help of gods."

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"This book seeks to understand developments in Chan Buddhism by interrogating a plethora of voices in Song literature from across the spectrum of Song elite society."

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"The irony of the Song Chan school's claim to embody "a separate transmission outside the teachings, not setting up owrds" was no lost on contemporaries, including the bibliophile Chen Zhensun, who pointed out that four of the Chan transmission histories together consisted of 120 fascicles comprising several tens of millions of characters, and who mockingly twisted the Chan school's self-description as "not relying on words" to read its homophonic, "never separated from words".

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"Perhaps because of Chan's own seductive rhetoric and dramatic pseudo-historical narratives, much about the Chan tradition is still commonly misunderstood."

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"Only as an abbot at a public monastery could a Chan master give transmission to his students."

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Silent illumination [as taught by Dogen] was developed by Furong Daokai.

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Based on the introduction it is clear that Schlutter is a religious Soto apologist, and his "scholarship" has to be given the same credibility as evangelical Christian scholarship on, for example, the historical accuracy of the Noah's Ark story. His status as a professor at Yale suggests a broad bias in scholarship generally, while he acknowledges that he wrote the book while attending Komazawa University(formerly Soto-shu University), a Soto church school, funded by a fellowship from another evangelical Japanese Buddhist organization.

Given this it will be interesting to see if he can quote Zen Masters at all in his book about how Zen became Zen.

Submitted August 02, 2016 at 02:54AM by ewk http://ift.tt/2adraRX

How does one avoid understanding intellectually?

I read a lot - I consume information. I like books.

rational understanding is great for certain things - but we try not to in Zen.

Why is this? What do we do instead?

Submitted August 02, 2016 at 01:58AM by tonyred513 http://ift.tt/2apSfwo

What do the zen masters say about this?

In this thread, the op asked questions about zen, enlightenment, and the sense of being a doer/decision maker.

I responded by saying this:

Enlightenment is the realization that the self/doer is only an appearance in awareness, and is not separate or distinct from all other objects in consciousness.

Now, with that realization, or dissolving of the false assumption of identification with a separate-self, the problems of the individual still exist as objects in consciousness, but they aren't attached and cannot affect the awareness, cognizing emptiness, the sense of presence that's knowing the objects in consciousness.

So it's not as though the habits and conditioning suddenly cease upon enlightenment, or that behaviour of the mind/body is radically altered (although it can be), it's that the perspective and belief in being the volitional entity responsible for the relative problems of the mind/body is recognized as false.

After saying such, a few posters commented that what I said was bs, and dishonest, and other things, but didn't say how or why, only that it was.

So I'm curious if it is in fact contradicted by zen teachings, and if so, what the contradiction is.

Thanks!

Submitted August 02, 2016 at 02:30AM by thatness http://ift.tt/2apTEmS