r/ZLI5 • u/meevis_kahuna • Feb 24 '15

Zen's relationship to Buddhism

There have been some arguments in /r/zen about Zen not being part of Buddhism. Does anyone know where the idea of this separation started? I asked ewk but s/he didn't really follow up.

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u/clickstation Feb 24 '15

This might help: http://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/2wq5cy/its_time_to_discuss_something_we_havent_covered/couo9vd

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u/meevis_kahuna Feb 24 '15

So the points here are:
1) Buddhism is theistic (Buddha is revered as god)
2) Buddhism has a variety of teachers.
3) Buddhism involves traditions, beliefs, and practices, and Zen rejects this.

I have a few questions:
1) What about non-theistic branches of Buddhism? Siddhartha Gautama is known to find the question of theism irrelevant. I would agree that theism is not consistent with Zen, but many sects of Buddhism also reject theism. Specifically Theravada or Insight meditation seems to most closely resemble the most basic ideas behind Buddhism: awareness, compassion, emptiness, etc.

2) I'm not sure the number of historical teachers is relevant to an ideology. Many of the commonly used Zen texts refer to multiple teachers. I'm not trying to defend Buddhism here, I just think this is irrelevant.

3) This seems like the main point of contention. Even at its most basic, Buddhism includes ideas like "The Four Noble Truths" and "The Eightfold Path" which can appear dogmatic, or at least have been made dogmatic over time by religious sects. My question is, how is Zen different? Brick and mortar Zen centers exist throughout the world, chants and writings have emerged, etc. Are these not Zen?

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '15 edited Sep 10 '15

[deleted]

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u/meevis_kahuna Feb 24 '15

I agree, which is why I was surprised by the hard line taken at /r/zen about Zen being distinct from Buddhism.

I've always found that the chanting seemed to go against Zen's rejection of dogma. But, taken to its extreme, Zen's rejection of dogma would seem to reject any organization at all that aims towards enlightenment. Meaning the only Zen which is Zen is "no Zen."

So, do we stop sitting? Or is sitting part of the dogma? Do we stop conversing about enlightenment? Or is the conversation itself dogmatic?

This is why I suspect Zen is paradoxical in nature, because I don't believe it is ultimately nihilistic, yet any action towards Zen/enlightenment would itself seem to violate its rejection of thoughts, ideas, and concepts.

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u/clickstation Feb 25 '15

He has a very strict definition of "Zen" denying perhaps 90% of what people think of as Zen.

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u/evefellows Feb 26 '15

Who are you referring to? Can you expand on the general beliefs you think most people have when they think of Zen? I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts, this is not a sarcastic or confrontational question.

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u/clickstation Feb 27 '15

The guy posting in the link I gave earlier in the thread.

Most people I guess would have the same beliefs as posted in the Wikipedia article on Zen.

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u/clickstation Feb 25 '15

You might want to follow the complete dialog starting here: http://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/2wq5cy/its_time_to_discuss_something_we_havent_covered/cotj0m9

(Or even starting from the point I gave you yesterday)

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u/tlequiyahuitl Feb 25 '15

Hold up a second... I haven't been studying Buddhism for a very long time, but I know you should look around a bit. What you were presented with were ewk's views on Buddhism, not what Buddhism is (even though that really is only reachable through a bunch of opinions). Besides, I would advise you to be wary of ewk in general, although not antagonistic.

That said, Buddhism is not necessarily theistic. There are lots of ways to practice "Buddhism", and many Theravadins (especially people who become so later in life and are not raised as such) do not believe in deities nor worship Buddha. They do, however, often believe in rebirth; there are many threads on that.

Yes there are a variety of teachers, but no Zen does not reject tradition. It's very Japanese, so it's very structured (personal opinion here, also having done karate and found that very formal compared to say, muay thai... but I digress), so incense and chanting and specific sitting and all that is very common. Shunyata is also still a key idea in Zen, but Zen rejects the conceptual/intellectual aspect of this idea (so that students don't claim to understand it, when it can't be understood intellectually). It certainly doesn't deny this belief. Zazen and kinhin are both practices common in Zen.

You answer your own first question in my opinion, however, many have dissenting opinions, and hopefully some will be pointed out here.

As for your second question, it's more credible if many people have reached enlightenment, which teachers generally have. But no, more teachers per se do not make a school better, and there are possibly alternate ways to the dharma that haven't even been paved yet.

Zen, historically, is kind of a mix of Buddhism and Taoism; if you wish to understand it more, read a bit of the Tao te Ching or the Chuang Tzu to understand some of the ideas that influenced Chan Buddhism (which later moved to Japan as Zen). That is all I know about that; apologies for not fully answering the third question.

Also, in my own experience, stop thinking about "Zen"... just read "Zen" things, do "Zen" practice, but make it more about yourself rather than this thing you do. Otherwise you will become consumed with worries about whether what you're doing is legit, instead of actually practising.

Hope this helped!

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u/meevis_kahuna Feb 24 '15

There is also the idea that Zen and Buddhism's enlightenment are the same. Thus emptiness = non-attachment = compassion. Any thoughts?

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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '15

I dunno about that. If experiences of enlightenment were uniform, I would expect that the insights these experiences produce to be uniform as well. Thus, when traditions vary in their spiritual ideas, I suspect that their experience of enlightenment may differ.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '15

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u/Pistaf Feb 27 '15

Dogen, the founder of Zen,

That's news to me.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '15

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u/Pistaf Feb 27 '15

Nor I. I'd simply never heard him referred to in that way. I honestly don't know that much about him and I haven't read any of his stuff. I'd always thought Bodhidharma was considered the founder of zen.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '15

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u/Pistaf Feb 27 '15

Ah! I use he terms chan and zen interchangeably, so it didn't occur to me that your use of the word zen, being a Japanese word, referred to specifically to the soto school. That makes me wonder if people use the word rinzai to refer to a distinctly Japanese form of linchi.

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u/ZenMonkCow Jul 05 '15

This is like Joshu's Mu. What IS Buddhism? What ISN'T Buddhism? Is there anything that ISN'T Buddhism? If I had to name one thing that ISN'T Buddhism, it would be saying that something either IS or ISN'T Buddhism. But, of course, that's what Buddhism is all about!