Meaningful ideas and quotes

[Belacqua]

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.