Quote:Before his demise, the Buddha gave His last sermon. It has eight main points:

1. The more desires one has, the more they will suffer. Our mere existence is suffering. In our life we distinguish pleasure from suffering and tend to cling to pleasure. This is our inherent nature. But suffering is inseparable from pleasure, for one is never found without the other. Therefore, the more we seek pleasure and avoid suffering, the more entangled we become in the duality of pleasure and suffering.
2. Be content with our state of being. If we are not satisfied with our state of being we will be slaves to the five desires which stem from the five senses.
3. When the self and the external world become one, eternal serenity is enjoyed... Become one with no barrier between the self and the outside world.
4. Without any interruption, practice meditation. Meditation includes not only sitting. Every moment of one's life is meditation. This means to experience the oneness of yourself, time, and place.
5. Do not forget what the Buddha taught. As Buddha was dying, he told his disciples to forget about him and his belongings. The important thing was to remember his teachings.
6. When we enter samadhi and understand impermanence, we are unshaken. Everything is constantly changing, including ourselves.
7. Nonattachment (detachment) is the essential wisdom. Because all existence is fleeting, attachment to them is wasteful.
8. When we reach enlightenment we and the world become one, and there is no duality.
— Dr. Kato's Zen Buddhism Lecture Series, Zenshuji Soto Mission

(July 22, 2020 at 7:50 am)Porcupine Wrote:

Quote:Before his demise, the Buddha gave His last sermon. It has eight main points:

1. The more desires one has, the more they will suffer. Our mere existence is suffering. In our life we distinguish pleasure from suffering and tend to cling to pleasure. This is our inherent nature. But suffering is inseparable from pleasure, for one is never found without the other. Therefore, the more we seek pleasure and avoid suffering, the more entangled we become in the duality of pleasure and suffering.
2. Be content with our state of being. If we are not satisfied with our state of being we will be slaves to the five desires which stem from the five senses.
3. When the self and the external world become one, eternal serenity is enjoyed... Become one with no barrier between the self and the outside world.
4. Without any interruption, practice meditation. Meditation includes not only sitting. Every moment of one's life is meditation. This means to experience the oneness of yourself, time, and place.
5. Do not forget what the Buddha taught. As Buddha was dying, he told his disciples to forget about him and his belongings. The important thing was to remember his teachings.
6. When we enter samadhi and understand impermanence, we are unshaken. Everything is constantly changing, including ourselves.
7. Nonattachment (detachment) is the essential wisdom. Because all existence is fleeting, attachment to them is wasteful.
8. When we reach enlightenment we and the world become one, and there is no duality.
— Dr. Kato's Zen Buddhism Lecture Series, Zenshuji Soto Mission

Good stuff. Thank you for including it here.

Quote:1. The more desires one has, the more they will suffer.

I think this is the fundamental difference between Platonic/Christian thought and Buddhism. The former sees desire as inevitable and good. Our goal, which is a difficult one, is to aim it properly. The latter sees it as inevitably leading to suffering, so that even a desire to give up desiring is doomed to sorrow. Temperamentally, I feel more Western. 

Quote:8. When we reach enlightenment we and the world become one, and there is no duality.

This is really tricky for me. There is a danger of interpreting it in the Western sense -- as you know, Plotinus and the other Neoplatonics say that the world is One, and the fall into division is error and illusion. It becomes a minority Christian tradition, which has lasted for millennia kind of out of the mainstream -- the Fall of Man is not about disobedience but about taking on the illusion of division. God, being immanent in every particle of existence, means that everything is One, and our separation from him and unity is due to perceptual closure. 

The Buddhist unity may be different, but I don't know enough about it to be sure. Nirvana, after all, is total annihilation of the self, not unity. 

Eons ago (it feels like) I was in art school in the US and we all read Alan Watts and thought we were Buddhists. Then in the late '80s I moved to Japan and thought I'd study at the source. Not a single Zen Buddhist at the Fukuyama Zen place I stayed at was the least bit interested in talking about it. Using the concepts is a part of what leads to error.... 

So I used to think I understood all this, long ago, and now I suspect I don't......

‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’ - John F. Kennedy (seems topical)

Boru

(July 22, 2020 at 8:52 am)Belacqua Wrote:

Quote:8. When we reach enlightenment we and the world become one, and there is no duality.

This is really tricky for me.

Mind and matter and self and world are one and the same entity that is existence itself.

Very hard to grasp conceptually .... even harder to grasp perceptually. Although, it is all that can really be grasped at all anyway bu seeing that is the key. And when you see that the grasping becomes pointless and effortless and meaningless and either illusory or so effortless that it feels inappropriate to call it grasping anymore. You will still desire things but you won't crave things ... at least not in the same way. Mental strife dissolves and the only suffering that remains is bodily ... but we can experience painful bodily sensations in a gym that if we had without exercising would cause us great panic. So the body itself causing us far less suffering than we realize most of the time. True bodily pain is only experienced when it's absolutely excruciating.

As for the seeing? The seeing requires both understanding it cognitively *and* just knowing it deep in your gut. Kind of like how to lose fear of hell .... losing belief in God cognitively is sometimes not enough.

Let me know if you want me to PM you a lecture on Zen Buddhism because I can't send links here yet because I haven't been here for 60 days yet.

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(July 22, 2020 at 8:52 am)Belacqua Wrote: The Buddhist unity may be different, but I don't know enough about it to be sure. Nirvana, after all, is total annihilation of the self, not unity. 

It's annihilation of the self by realizing that it is illusory and delusory and has no distinct existence apart from the world. The eastern understanding of nothingness is no-thingness. And the world itself only doesn't exist in that there is ultimately no meaningful distinction because even though there is no nothing .... something is merely not nothing so something has no meaning either. And if something has no meaning (something as a whole as opposed to 'something in particular') then it is meaningless to say that nothing isn't it.

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(July 22, 2020 at 8:52 am)Belacqua Wrote: Not a single Zen Buddhist at the Fukuyama Zen place I stayed at was the least bit interested in talking about it.

Hahahahahahah. But that's the WHOLE POINT of Zen. They can't describe the indescribable and you create the problem by defining them as your teacher.

Okay, I think you would really enjoy the SPECIFIC Alan Watts lecture that I am guessing you haven't heard. If you want it by PM then feel free to ask. I can't post it here.

Here's another fun one:

"We aren’t better because we want to be. Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because all the do-gooders in the world whether they’re doing good for others or doing it for themselves are troublemakers: on the basis of “kindly let me help you or you will drown,” said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree." - Alan Watts

(July 22, 2020 at 11:26 am)Porcupine Wrote: But that's the WHOLE POINT of Zen. They can't describe the indescribable and you create the problem by defining them as your teacher.

Right, that's a paradox. And yet people like Alan Watts keep talking about it.

My experience led me to think that either I had to commit to it full time, or it would just be cosplay. And among the cosplayers there was just as much cliquishness and holier-than-thou feeling as in any other religion. 

Plus, people here in Japan tend to associate Zen with the military class. It played a significant role in the militarism that led up to WWII, and all the evil that went with that. Apparently non-attachment to the world and an emphasis on impermanence come in handy when you're sending people off to kill and die. All of that got filtered out when Zen became popular in the US. 

In William James' The Variety of Religious Experience, he describes a minority Christian tradition in the US that made an impression on me, because it is very similar to what Americans think of as Zen. Not the Japanese version, but the American version. It appears to me that a lot of Zen's popularity in the US is that it allowed Americans to continue an existing tradition that was appealing to them but to dissociate it from Christianity, which isn't cool any more, among that kind of person. By re-stating the existing concepts with imported vocabulary, it appears exotic and fresh. 

So I think I did my work on Alan Watts already, and won't look into it again. Thank you anyway. It makes sense for you to go through it, if it's new to you. 

Currently I'm listening to these podcasts.

https://shwep.net

This guy is fantastically knowledgable -- better than a college class. It's further helped me to get past the narrow image of Christianity which people like to condemn on forums like this one.

Nada:
I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.

(July 22, 2020 at 7:32 pm)Belacqua Wrote: Right, that's a paradox. And yet people like Alan Watts keep talking about it.

But Alan addresses this and explains this in a lecture that I can't post here.

Quote:My experience led me to think that either I had to commit to it full time, or it would just be cosplay. And among the cosplayers there was just as much cliquishness and holier-than-thou feeling as in any other religion. 

Alan Watts instead teaches that it can take you 30 years or 3 seconds. Insight can happen suddenly.

One key thing is that Zen was originally Chinese and most Zen Buddhism today is Japanese. Alan Watts teaches the original Chinese kind but he still explains why Japanese Zen Buddhists behave so bizarrely and refuse to teach. There is a method in the madness. They teach by not teaching.

Quote:Plus, people here in Japan tend to associate Zen with the military class. It played a significant role in the militarism that led up to WWII, and all the evil that went with that. Apparently non-attachment to the world and an emphasis on impermanence come in handy when you're sending people off to kill and die. All of that got filtered out when Zen became popular in the US. 

But we mustn't confuse Zen Buddhism with Zen Buddhists. Anybody can be violent.

Quote:In William James' The Variety of Religious Experience, he describes a minority Christian tradition in the US that made an impression on me, because it is very similar to what Americans think of as Zen. Not the Japanese version, but the American version. It appears to me that a lot of Zen's popularity in the US is that it allowed Americans to continue an existing tradition that was appealing to them but to dissociate it from Christianity, which isn't cool any more, among that kind of person. By re-stating the existing concepts with imported vocabulary, it appears exotic and fresh. 

There is nothing wrong with explaining Eastern teachings in a Western way. And although people will disagree about the right way to teach Zen ... there is no right or wrong way to practice it. And it's the practice that is important.

And the reason why there's not a right or wrong way to practice it is because it's not a matter of doing the right thing or the wrong thing ... or doing anything at all. It's a state of mind rather than a set of rules to follow. And what can often seem like rules are more like clues to the insight.

Quote:So I think I did my work on Alan Watts already, and won't look into it again. Thank you anyway. It makes sense for you to go through it, if it's new to you.

Okey-dokey, then.

Quote:Currently I'm listening to these podcasts.

https://shwep.net

This guy is fantastically knowledgable -- better than a college class. It's further helped me to get past the narrow image of Christianity which people like to condemn on forums like this one.

Well, I don't even like the core of Christianity no matter how much of the supernatural baggage is removed from it. I will probably check this out anyway out of curiosity but I don't expect to be impressed by it. Thanks anyway.

(July 23, 2020 at 2:37 am)Porcupine Wrote: But Alan addresses this and explains this in a lecture that I can't post here.

What Watts writes may be fascinating and inspiring, but I am not convinced that what he described is Zen Buddhism. I think it's his own synthesis. I'm not the only one to feel this way. He's a synthesist and a popularizer. 

Charismatic media figures make me skeptical.

Back in the day I heard him speak at my college, as well as Gary Snyder and John Cage. I studied with this guy:

https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Addiss/e/...dp_epwbk_0

In my view, there are two ways to learn real Zen: experiential or scholarly. The former would take total dedication -- living the life, not just meditating at home. It would also require obedience to a teacher, which Watts was never able to manage. The latter would require things like paleographic knowledge of Chinese and Japanese, and quite possibly Indian languages. I've met people who've done this -- it's not for amateurs. 

Reading is a great pleasure, but I think that once you've reached a certain point you either have to plunge all the way in or accept that you're going to stay an amateur. I'm content to be an amateur on this subject.

(July 23, 2020 at 3:28 am)Belacqua Wrote: What Watts writes may be fascinating and inspiring, but I am not convinced that what he described is Zen Buddhism. I think it's his own synthesis. I'm not the only one to feel this way. He's a synthesist and a popularizer. 

But what something is or whether it's the 'real thing' is less important than whether it is true or works for you. He's certainly interpreting Zen Buddhism and he's also not interpreting it literally. Literal interpretations of religion are, of course, nonsense but when one goes into interpreting a religion allegorically then who is to say that it's wrong? What does it even mean to say that it's 'not really Zen Buddhism'. One offers an allegorical interpretation that either works for you or it doesn't. And either helps or it doesn't.

And Zen Buddhism is ultimately a form of Buddhism and for the Buddha following certain rules or believing certain things is not important. The sect is not important. Whether it's Zen or another form of Buddhism is not important. The important thing is to lose attachment and to reach enlighthment. Zen tries to get you there in a bizarre but more direct way. And Alan Watts does speak of how many Zen masters will say that his talking about it misses the whole point. And many do believe that it requires years of sitting meditation and training. But Zen Buddhism originated in China, not Japan, and Zen is mostly widespread in Japan today but that is not where it originated or its core. The original Zen is a lot more like Daoism.

But Watts makes it clear that he is just practicing Zen and he's not a teacher and he's an entertainer. He's quite aware of this. It doesn't matter how the insight is provided and if you can find it in a form of Christianity then that's fine. It's just unlikely to work for me. After all, it's not like I need it. I mean, that's kind of the point.

There is no wrong way to do Zen. There can't be. Because Zen is not a matter of doing. That's kind of the whole point. There is no doing.

Quote:In my view, there are two ways to learn real Zen: experiential or scholarly. The former would take total dedication -- living the life, not just meditating at home. It would also require obedience to a teacher, which Watts was never able to manage. The latter would require things like paleographic knowledge of Chinese and Japanese, and quite possibly Indian languages. I've met people who've done this -- it's not for amateurs.

For somebody who has lost their ego very quickly and effortlessly and accidentally without seeking it the idea that it should take a lifetime and a lot of work is very silly. The idea that you can eliminate craving by craving the elimination of craving is absurd.

Quote:Reading is a great pleasure, but I think that once you've reached a certain point you either have to plunge all the way in or accept that you're going to stay an amateur. I'm content to be an amateur on this subject.

No offense, but I think you portray yourself as a student but it is also your ego talking when you call me an amateur. It's like you're playing the "I'm more humble than you" game. It may seem like I am doing that now too. But I don't claim to be more humble than you. I am quite content remaining an amateur forever. It's not like I'm above or below any 'masters'. That's kind of the whole point. But the really crucial thing is to not only understand that but to also be able to see it and feel it and then all that's left is to see and feel it consistently.

Neither of us are doing anything wrong. But it's not as if we ought to agree on that because if you disagreed you still wouldn't be doing anything wrong and nor would I.