Do you have any interest in the philosophies of introflection pioneered by Buddhism?

[emjay]

Zen buddhism and modernist (or western) buddhism present an interesting locus of competing motivations, lol.

In modernist buddhism, god and ritual and concrete dogma aren't there because it's a pitch to a largely secular and western (and humanist) audience.  It wouldn't have worked otherwise.  In zen buddhism, that stuffs not there because they were building empires. It didn't work, or, if we prefer, if it wasn't tang-alike it was gonna end up stuck on a spear.  They didn't wanna hear about fucking gods and concurrent dissenting traditions.  Certainly didn't want their soldiers having a moral crisis on the battlefield.  In china and japan, the emergence of zen is linked to civil wars.

Hehe, I see, I think.

It's certainly interesting though... a whole new bunch of ramifications for a type of Buddhism that has no end game. Not that most people seem that comfortable with the traditional end game of Buddhism anyway, of basically annihilation... and that seems to me to be an issue of potentially competing motivations where theistic Buddhism is concerned. Ie any notions of heavens and hells, interwoven with Nirvana.