Talk:Zen/Archive 2

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Contents

Clarification please

The Radical Zen section could use some clarification and/or elaboration. As it is now, there's only a couple of sentences that do not answer 'how' or 'why', and the very little 'what' and 'who' given has a lot to be desired in terms of explaining what the hell is going on to the reader who comes to this article to learn or gain information. --66.120.158.19 09:48, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I will probably soon change this section of the article - the original writer obviously had no idea what they were talking about, as the whole idea of 'killing' is metaphorical. Redxela Sinnak 02:35, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Shuffling things about

The picture of Bodhidarma, while nice, is more suited at Bodhidarma. It adds little to the Zen article itself, and frankly, that needs the space for the topic and link boxes. I noticed we have a {{Buddhism2}} template, and I took the liberty of using that at the bottom instead of the right-hand {{Buddhism}} (too many stuff ends up at the right as it is).

In doing so, I've lost the links to Chinese Buddhism and Korean Buddhism (these were "hidden" as country links), but since these are not specifically about Zen, I don't think that's a big loss. I would agree the structure can still be better elucidated and the box on the right can probably be made clearer still (all these transliteration systems are obscuring the "good" links Chan, Seon and Dhyana), but I still think this is a step in the right direction. 82.92.119.11 19:14, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't really agree with all of these changes. It's pretty standard for Wikipedia articles to lead with a picture in the upper right. It doesn't need to add anything other than being a picture. Why should the names box be privileged? Frankly, it's an eyesore. - Nat Krause 14:51, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Small Substantive Change

From "especially" to originally in the first paragraph as Zen was originated from China through Korea to Japan.

Bodhidharma Iranian ????

AFAIK Bodhidharma is Indian, either this is a typo or a controversial theory? I changed 'Iranian' to 'Indian'

There seems to be stronger evidence that he was in fact Iranian. According to Yang Hsüan-chih, the Chinese historian who personally met Bodhidharma in Lo Yang, Bodhidharma was a Persian Central Asian. His exact words are "po-szu kuo hu-jen", where hu relates to Central Asia and especially to people of Iranian descent. I suggest reading The Bodhidharma Anthology by Jeffrey R. Broughton, a translation of the Long Scroll of the Treatise on the Two Entrances and Four Practices, composed by Bodhidharma and his students. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 01:28, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
That doesn't seem like very strong evidence at all. One Chinese writer made one reference to a monk with the name Bodhidharma who he, the Chinese guy, thought was Persian. On the other hand, everybody else who writes about him (without citing evidence) says he was Indian. Neither claim is anywhere near well-documented, but the latter is much more commonly accepted. - Nat Krause 14:51, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Further reading section

Yesterday, I excised the article's Further reading section. It has been suggested that I should discuss this on the talk page. I could be wrong, but I don't think Wikipedia articles usually have a section like that. Certainly, I'm all for having a list of sources. But there is no particular indication that any of those particular books were sources; they appear to just be recommended reading. That being the case, I really don't know what the criteria are by which we would recommend anything. Today, an anonymous user added a "recommended translations" section, which is even worse. If the consensus is that we want a Further reading section, I won't remove it again, but we should clear about why we are including which books. - Nat Krause 07:04, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Zen and Buddhism

The current text of this section is not very good:

Zen is not necessarily a Buddhist religion. Rather, it is a way of living. Nevertheless all Zen schools stress the admiration of the historical Buddha as their principle inspiration.
Though Zen meditation practice does derive from the Buddha's original Eightfold Path teaching, where dhyana is one element of the eightfold way, Zen has been occasionally criticized by other Buddhists for not adequately emphasizing the other elements of the Eightfold Path and for not emphasizing study of the traditional Buddhist canon or for being ignorant of or unconcerned with Buddhist philosophy in general.
Such claims are often overpublicized. In practice, most Zen teachers, monks and centers have good relationships with those of other Buddhist schools and often cooperate with them. Much of those claims is probably due to the personal, sometimes paradoxal and often disconcerting methods of transmission that Zen uses.

The first sentence goes to the difficulty of defining Zen. Some people, such as a previous editor, would say that Zen is necessarily a Buddhist religion. Some would make a distinction between Zen and Zen Buddhism. Some people say that Zen is a way of living; some people would say that Buddhism is a way of living, and Zen is a Buddhist way of living. Some people (such as Yasutani as quoted in Three Pillars) use Zen to refer to any dhyana-related practice, and therefore Zen is present in Hinduism, Taoism, Transcendental Meditation, and many other somesuch. Somebody once said that Zen is everyday thought, meaning that it is not necessarily anything. I have no idea how to present these perspectives in the article.

It would be good to have some specific documentation of the criticisms that have been made of Zen. I'm sure it has been criticized (I've heard that Soka Gakkai people sometimes really lay into it in private), but it's good to know exactly when and by whom. I already took out some criticisms that seemed kind of questionable and had no cite. The response to criticism that was added sounds defensive and is likewise undocumented. - Nat Krause 05:16, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have reworked this section and deleted the previous entry. As there were a number of speculative unsupported statements along with some poorly researched material (difference between Zen and other sects, etc). stray 02:09:33, 2005-08-22 (UTC)

Church of the SubGenius

The article claims that the Church of the SubGenius and especially Discordianism have been influenced by this idea (the idea that any clever nonsense is also Zen). I'm curious if there evidence of this? The claim about Discordianism may have some basis, but the Church_of_the_SubGenius article makes no reference to Zen. --Ds13 23:35, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

Bourgeois

"In practice, most zen centers in the west are very conservative, bourgeois, and mundane, emphasizing the practice schedules, and everyday household chores such as cooking, cleaning, and gardening as the path of enlightenment. Very rarely is anything like the radical iconoclasm of the traditional Zen fables encountered."

Whilst I, personally, don't doubt the veracity of this statement - it certainly seems too POV for an encyclopaedia article.

Pirsig

 The book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig, deals with the notion of "quality" from the point of view of the main character.

OK, but:

 The book is largely based on the author's experience with archery instruction.

This is about the book "Zen in the art of archery", by E Herrigel. That's also the one that is misrepresenting zen (see older version).

So, the message, if any at all, should be, in my opinion:

  • read Pirsig, but it's not explicitly about zen
  • read Herrigel, it's about zen (and archery) but it's controversial.

pw 14:41, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Koan Practice

The discussion of koan practice in this article is mis-leading on several points, but the phrase, "There is no single correct answer for any given koan, though there may be a set of correct and a set of incorrect answers" is itself incorrect.

Of the 1,700 classical koans, some have a "wide gate" through which a range of answers may pass; but others have a extremely "narrow gate" and only one very specific answer will suffice.

According to whom? - Nat Krause 04:03, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, according to whom? Actually, there are several recent anonymous contributions that I would agree with. And I would welcome a discussion of how this is handled in various traditions, in Korea, in Hakuun Zen, in the Sanbo Kyodan and its offshoots...But...I think the word "answers" is misleading, causing non-practicing readers to think it's a kind of puzzle to solve. I think you can't go wrong calling them "responses".
BTW, the section on koans inaccurately mentions "the first book in English to engage Zen as a practice, 'The Three Pillars of Zen' by Philip Kapleau". Obviously, D.T. Suzuki preceeded Kapleau. This bibliography lists DT's First Series essays as being published in 1927; I think maybe it is the Second Series (1933) that focuses heavily on koans. I don't know who was first. Maybe Nukariya's Religion of the Samurai, 1913? Could it have been Lafcadio Hearn in the late 1800s/early 1900s?
Also, the article claims that authors of The Zen Koan are biased...exactly how? And in what sense are any of the other authors mentioned not biased?
Also BTW, there aren't "1700 classical koans". According to Zen Dust page 153, "The round figure 1700 was arrived at in early days by attributing one koan to each of the 1701 Zen masters whose names appear...in the Chinge-te ch'uan-teng lu....but as a matter of fact actual biographies are given for only about 960 masters. The remaining 700-odd masters are mentioned by name only" in the Jingde record. See more about that on page 352, if you can find a copy. --Munge 06:10, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I wrote the original comment above and would like to add a little more detail.

Although the function of koan practice in the Zen tradition can be described in a straightforward manner, any discussion about answers risks creating real problems for newer students (and possibly even older ones). Books such as The Three Pillars of Zen (my first Zen book), which go beyond a functional description of koan training, have fostered expectations among some practitioners that have later caused problems in their training, as expectations generally do.

I wrote the initial comment based on my own experience during nearly two decades of intensive work with koans. It's sensitive, I believe, to claim any understanding when it comes to koan training and so I've chosen anonymity because such a discussion is both highly personal and also unpredictably revealing. Thanks for your patience.

Perhaps the following comments provide enough additional information to support a revision to the koan section of the article (by the way, the article as a whole is superb -- thanks to whoever wrote (most of) it!). I wrote initially about "wide gates" and "narrow gates" in koan training because these concepts convey the complexity of any talk about answers.

Case 21 in the Wu Men Kuan ("Yun Men's Dried Shitstick") is an example of a koan for which several responses (good suggestion, Munge) could be accepted, provided they all were within the general area of the . . . toilet. This is a fine example of a "wide gate" koan.

However Case 14 of the same collection, in which Nan Ch'uan kills a cat, requires a highly specific response -- if the student does not respond directly and immediately to the situation created by Nan Ch'uan, the cat will die. None of the monks could answer, so Nan Ch'uan killed the cat. Nan Ch'uan was being extremely meticulous -- it was a life and death matter, after all -- and wanted a "narrow gate" response. In fact, the gate in this koan is terribly narrow.

This matter of responses become even more complicated because keen-eyed teachers will often employ a range of questions about a particular case. For example, in Yun Men's Dried Shit Stick, a teacher might ask, "What is the meaning of Yun Men's teaching?" or "What is a dried shitstick?" The same teacher might also ask, "If you had been that monk, how could you have replied to Yun Men?"

To make all this more complicated, teachers in one tradition might not accept a response that teachers in another tradition accept as ideal. For example, Japanese Rinzai teachers typically seek a different kind of response to Nan Ch'uan than the response acceptable to Korean Chogye teachers.

I hope that the language in the article can become a little less descriptive regarding answers. While there is indeed a sharp distinction between right and wrong answers, I recommend eliminating the clause, "though there may be many "right answers"". Also, in the subsequent paragraph, I recommend deleting all but the first sentence -- the "how" of an answer is important, but the "what" of the answer is central. Finally, in the next-to-the-last paragraph in this section, I recommend deleting the first half of the first sentence, for the points mentioned above.

Guangzhou/Guangdong

Not being a China-native poster nor an expert on Chinese geography, I can't act with authority in this matter, but shouldn't Guangzhou be listed as Guangdong, seeing as -zhou is the city and -dong is the province? --hidoshi@hidoshi.com 10:25, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)

But, are you certain that it is the province that's meant, rather than the city? - Nat Krause 03:22, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hm, from what I can dig up in my own books and online through Google, there seems to be a little confusion over the matter. Maybe it'd be wise to list it as both instead of just one? Hidoshi 18:53, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)
Might as well change it to Guangdong in the meantime, since Guangzhou is in Guangdong. - Nat Krause 05:21, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. Hidoshi 21:27, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Western Culture

I feel like this is not NPOV but am not yet sure what to suggest:

 Many youths in the Beat generation and among the hippies of the 1960s and 1970s misunderstood the goals and methods of Zen. While the scholar D.T. 
 Suzuki may have brought attention to concepts in Zen such as humility, labor, service, prayer, gratitude, and meditation, the 'hip' subculture often
 focused on states of consciousness in themselves. Japanese Zen master Zenkei Shibayama commented: 'It may be true that the effect which such 
 scientifically prepared drugs as LSD produce may have some superficial resemblance to some aspects of Zen experience.... When the effect of the 
 drug is gone, the psychological experience one may have had is also weakened and dispersed, and does not endure as a living fact.'

There are also many Zen masters who referred to LSD as the "elevator" to enlightenment while zazen was the "stairs". Many did not see these experiences as superficial at all. I'll try to dig some of this stuff up, but in the meantime, I just wanted to call this out for discussion. Many of these so-called "hippies" also realized that the magic of existence and consciousness - altered or not - was Zen as much as anything else is.

You really think there's many? I doubt that. - Nat Krause 05:21, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Same. I've talked to many Zen practitioners in my short lifetime thus far about the use of drugs, and most are in opposition, largely because while it can be a way to open you up to new experiences, LSD and other intoxicants are 1) Against the Vinaya, and 2) A counterfeit replacement for genuine realisation by your own efforts. There may be a few here and there who agree with the use of LSD and other substances, but I wouldn't say "many" at all. Hidoshi 21:27, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Branches, traditions, and schools

I wanted to emphasize the plurality of Zen schools in the article. In places, it talks about "Zen" as if it was one single school, whereas it is in fact several (Rinzai, Soto, etc.) I then noticed that the text refers to these sometimes as "traditions" and sometimes as "schools". Which is correct?

In the article, Mahayana is called a "branch" of Buddhism, which I think is ok, and Zen as a tradition of this branch.

This, I think, leads to the taxonomy

  • Branch (e.g. Mahayana Buddhism)
    • Tradition (e.g. Zen)
      • School (e.g. Soto)

If no-one objects, I'm going to edit the article to fix this where appropriate within the next few days (I'm travelling at the moment). Maybe there's other Buddhism-related articles that needs fixing as well? Do we care about this at all? Is there a standard?

Andkaha 23:32, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I did some changes along the lines I mentioned above, but I don't know if they turned the text to the better or not... I felt I couldn't be as consistent as I wanted to be. Andkaha(talk) 19:27, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

One may note that 'School' in the history of Ch'an/Zen may refer to the 'Northern' or 'Southern' School. Originally, adherents of the Northern School did not use the name to characterize themselves - it was a pejorative term against those who broke off from the 'Dharma Gate of East Mountain' and was used in the sense of a "branch line of Bodhidharma Zen", thereby rendering the use of the term 'branch' historically troublesome in the strict (and 20th century politically correct) sense. Also note that the idiosyncratic practice style of individual Ch'an/Zen masters as followed by their disciples is called a 'School' .. therefore it is customary to refer to Lin-chi's School (which later becomes known in Japanese as 'Rinzai') but we might also say that of almost any Zen Master who leaves a formalized style of practice lived by his students. This brings in the issue of 'Lineage' (the acknowledgement of mastery by another master - or as the result of a direct personal enlightenment experience such as that of Gautama Buddha) which overlaps and runs through the continuity of Buddhist practices. For outside support of these comments refer to 'Zen Buddhism: A History (India and China) by Henrich Dumoulin (reprinted/updated edition published by World Wisdom: 2005). This comment posted: 17 October 2005 MatthewStevenCarlos

Request for your aid dealing with actions from a user against Religious, Spiritual and Esoteric articles

User:Baphomet. is damaging Wikipedia: he his trying to label Religious articles as Superstition (from a POV view of positivism, that he calls Science). At the article Reincarnation he just went on to add to category "Superstition" and later on without discussion put a POV msg in the article. Please see the discussion page between both of us Talk:Reincarnation#Superstition.

Through the use of a Culture created by extremism in Science, he is clearly trying to do the job that the Inquisition did in the Middle Ages in a Culture created by extremism in Religion. He is damaging Wikipedia in a subtle invious way!

Please see also the Alert message I have created at Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#September_4, Thank you! --GalaazV 20:25, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Spread of Zen into

The first sentence in the "Spread of Zen" section is incorrectly structured and doesn't make clear sense:

Traditionally, Zen traces its roots back to Indian Buddhism, while not an independent school of Buddhism there, takes its name from the Sanskrit term for meditation "dhyāna"

The sugject of the phrase after the second comma is unclear. What does it mean? That Zen is not an independent school of Buddhism in India? Or that India lacks an independent school of Buddhism? This should be split into two sentences at the comma, and the second one given a subject.

Vanwaffle 21:01, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Thay

Dear Friends, I have added a somewhat lenghty paragraph on Thich Nhat Hanh. In a few days I will move the bulk of this to his biographical page. But it seemed important that this information be seen here in view of the misinformed text that previously was here. BertMayo 21:41, 30 November 2005 (UTC)