Japanese Zen Buddhist Philosophy

Zen aims at the perfection of personhood. To this end, sitting meditation called “za-zen” is employed as a foundational method of prāxis across the different schools of this Buddha-Way—which is not an ideology, but a way of living. Through za-zen the Zen practitioner attempts to embody non-discriminatory wisdom vis-à-vis the meditational experience known as “satori” (enlightenment). A process of discovering wisdom culminates, among other things, in the experiential apprehension of the equality of all thing-events.

Japanese Zen Buddhist Philosophy

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Navigating My Interfaith Journey

I sometimes think about how I am navigating my participation in the local faith community. I realize that I don't feel a conflict between my faith and my participation in the faith community though I think about it during Sunday morning services. As I listen more and more to the wisdom of Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, in particular Ordinary Mind, it seems that modern Buddhists do not have to reject the essential teachings of Buddhism but refine and do discard some of the unessential trappings. There has been a successful progression up until the modern era. I just don't get that feeling about Christianity. We have this odd collection of books that we treat all the same rather than quoting them in context and with understanding. There seems little agreement on distilling the essential truths or continuing to agree on additional spiritual writings that are worth reading. Faith also became to emphasize believing certain things. Early Christians lived in community and shared all things. They were trying to follow what Jesus had taught them. Gradually Christianity became more organized, hierarchical and institutionalized. Over the years, various groups, monks and nuns especially ,have tried to live out the Christian life that Jesus taught. I haven't found much satisfaction in modern, progressive Christianity in that it seemed they had to really strain to find acceptable elements to form a cohesive religion. I liked what they said but I didn't find a firm foundation. The writers I enjoy the most are the ones that quote Thich Nhat Hanh and other Buddhists or quote some of my favorites Christian authors like Thomas Merton (who had a relationship with Zen Buddhism). So I really don't have a close friend on the same path that I can talk to. It doesn't come up at church either. I've said elsewhere, I'm able to navigate helping people spiritually in the Christian community while actually having quite different fundamental beliefs. I don't want to create doubt for anyone but help people on their spiritual journey. I guess, like some of the Christian writers that I enjoy, one can use the practices of Buddhism to help people. I also like that the Dalai Lama says, "I always recommend that it’s best to keep the religion you were born into." I jokingly think about being on my deathbed and when being assured that I'm going to heaven, replying "I'm not going anywhere." Then trying to explain the zen concepts such as no fixed self.

Suffering and the Personal Need for Religion

In the Buddhist tradition there's this idea that it's important to understand that life is fundamentally about suffering. And once you accept that core truth about life, it opens up the possibility for you to attain specific virtues, like compassion that would enable you to lead a good life. Similarly, in the Christian tradition, one lesson that suffering can provide us is that we are vulnerable creatures, that we need other people, that we're fundamentally interdependent. That insight is a valuable lesson that suffering can teach you.

Healing 2.0: What We Gain from Pain - Hidden Brain 

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But as I read some of the criticism, it struck me that the Hirsi Ali path as she described it is actually unusually legible to atheists, in the sense that it matches well with how a lot of smart secular analysts assume that religions take shape and sustain themselves.

In these assumptions, the personal need for religion reflects the fear of death or the desire for cosmic meaning, while the rise of organized religion mostly reflects the societal need for a unifying moral-metaphysical structure, a shared narrative, a glue to bind a complex society together. 

Where Does Religion Come From? 

By Ross Douthat

New York Times, Nov. 15, 2023

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From its 18th- and 19th-century origins, the project of skeptically deconstructing the New Testament, in search of a “Historical Jesus” distinct from the Christ of faith, has often combined two distinct arguments. First, it has attacked the pious assumption that the Gospels must be factually inerrant, perfectly historical, accurate in every detail and pellucid in the doctrines they imply. Second, it has moved from identifying specific problems in the texts, tensions and apparent contradictions and arguable mistakes, to arguing that all the problems are evidence that the Gospels must have been mostly composed long after the fact, as theological texts rather than historical records, with relatively thin connections to the events that they describe.

A Naïve Reading of the Gospels May Be Just What Christianity Needs

By Ross Douthat

New York Times, April 6, 2023

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In her 2009 book “Enfleshing Freedom,” the theologian M. Shawn Copeland traces Western Christianity’s entanglement with colonization, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Native genocide and other societal evils that find justification in “compromised Christian thinking about the meaning of human being.” Distortions of Scripture aid and abet these sins against our fellow human beings. In Genesis, after Ham sees Noah naked, Noah curses Ham’s son Canaan — falsely identified by later interpreters as a progenitor of Egyptians and other dark-skinned people: “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” The curse of Ham was used for centuries in defenses of slavery — enslavement, so the argument went, was the lot and inheritance of Black people.

Why Do Evil and Suffering Exist? Religion Has One Answer, Literature Another

By Ayana Mathis, Nov. 19, 2023, New York Times

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To have a perspective of practice, where you really just really deeply accept yourself as you are. As a flawed human being. Like the rest of us, like all of us.

The Paradoxical Nature of Suffering talk by Geoff Dawson, December 1, 2022, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

On Not Taking Oneself So Seriously

On Not Taking Oneself So Seriously talk by Geoff Dawson, October 31, 2023, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

Live transcript, not proofed yet

You're throwing all of your energy. Into activity. Whatever it is you're doing in your life, that's playful. And it's contrasted when you do things, you know, resentfully or heart-heartedly. So this this sense of putting oneself completely into whatever it is we do work or play whatever. 

And enthusiastically engaging with other living beings things. Situations, in other words, not Withdrawing. From things out of the sense of fear. 

Um, Willingly thinking and facing challenge as part of the process. Rather than approaching things defensively always aggression. 

Immersing ourselves in activities, unconditionally. 

Um, and not being sort of To participating contingent on the success of the outcome. That's a thing in the process rather than i'm only going to do this if it turns out. Okay. 

Doing it since feeling which means enjoying the whole process, for its own sake. In other words, doing session, doing something each moment of sizing for its own sake. That's the 

Spiritually. She cantazah, not sitting to becoming lighted. 

We're not sitting with any goal in mind which are sitting and that's a sincerity of sitting. And bringing that to everything that we do in our life. 

The body sat for also practiced, you know, approaches life in a relaxed manner. You know, rather than A stress, man. 

Attentive and curious. And in paying attentive and curious, it's like begin his mind, it's not fixated on goals or outcomes. 

Moving forward. To meet everyone. 

Sorry. Moving forward to meeting engage the world. Not holding ourselves back. Um, Because we can't see any self-reward for it in ourselves. 

And embracing whatever it is we encounter pleasant or unpleasant? As part of the journey. These are really all good point in terms of how we Um, 

Apply our practice, not just in session formally. But outside of session informally, which is really the rest of our most of our life. In a way where we we commit to those serious body such for in the preset fails. At the spirit in which we do, it is one of playfulness. To thousand. Did seriousness. 

Let me just finish up. 

My legacy --

What will it be?

Flowers in spring,

The cuckoo in summer,

And the crimson maples

Of autumn...

 

Taigu Ryokan

(1758-1831)