There are lots of ways to look at the question of how Zen practice, the study of and engagement with the Dharma of Buddha, is very different than Zazen prayer-meditation, which is a theory that, no matter how much anyone tries to practice it, never engages.
After all, Zen has been in the West less than 20 years, Zazen prayer-meditation has been in the West for sixty years... maybe there hasn't been time for comparison?
But we know what Zazen prayer-meditation produces: sex predators, books by and for illiterates, some perpetuation of racism and religious bigotry, But Zazen prayer-meditation wasn't trying to produce that. Zazen prayer-meditation is supposed to produce enlightened people... and given what they have produced with all their retreats, churches, and youtube videos, they are spectacularly failing. The theory doesn't pan out... Zazen prayer-meditation is essential all theory, not practical or real at all.
Whereas Zen Masters' wrote books of instruction and when people read one, the conversation starts immediately. And that conversation is the essence of the practice, it is pure engagement.
Wansong's Book of Serenity, the Soto Zen masterpiece of instruction that I call the modern Zen Bible, is all about engagement and forces that engagement on the reader. There are four questions on the first page alone, four questions that immediately engage the serious student. Answer them, and you are engaged. Refuse to answer, and you are immediately aware that you aren't engaged in the practice of Zen.
Zen is immediately practical, never theoretical. And what does Zen promise it will produce, beyond conversation?
Submitted April 05, 2023 at 05:33AM by ewk https://ift.tt/LRXFukG
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