​

Authentic self... According to who?

Buddhists believe that you don't have a self. As a religion they get to make up whatever they want and part of convincing you to be a part of the Buddhist religion is promising you that you don't really have a self.

Zazen is an indigenous Japanese religion that promises people freedom that only exists within the religious practice. Dogen, the messiah of Zazen, tells his followers that you can't be yourself when you're confused by life. Now granted he wrote that when he was in his early 20s and he gave it up after less than a decade but that's the Doctrine of the Shikantaza Church

What about Zen?

Zen masters teach that you're always yourself, whether you know it or not.

Zen is the only tradition that follows Buddha's sudden permanent enlightenment, an enlightenment is only possible if the preconditions for it are ever present.

Zen's self is directly experienced. It's not known so there can't be a doctrine about it because every doctrine and every teaching is about knowing.

As knowing is subtracted and experience is emphasized, we get farther and farther away from things that sound true and closer and closer to "If you haven't been in love, you're just not going to understand it."

Yunju Zhi's no seer

Clearly seeing like this is then called seeing the nature. Nature is Buddha; Buddha is nature. Therefore it is said: seeing the nature, becoming Buddha.”

[The monk] said: “Since the nature is pure and does not belong to being or nonbeing, because of what is there seeing?”

The master said: “Seeing, with nothing that is seen.”

[The monk] said: “Since there is nothing seen, why further is there seeing?”

The master said: “The place of seeing also is not.”

[The monk] said: “At the time of seeing like this, whose seeing is it?”

The master said: “There is no one able to see.”

[The monk] said: “Ultimately, how is this principle?”

The master said: “Do you know? Falsely reckoning it as being, then there is subject and object; only then does it get the name ‘confusion.’

Now a warning?

Not being able to explain love to somebody who has never been in love doesn't mean that love doesn't exist.

The problem is that people try to apply this same logic to stuff that actually doesn't exist, like God and the supernatural and higher states of consciousness and telepathy and meditative or lsd insight.

The key difference is there are real people who have been enlightened but there are no real people that have had any of that other stuff. If you can encounter it in real life and bring it out, show it to everybody, then the fact that it exists like love but cannot be explained is plausible.

No doctrine required.

​

Why are all these prostitutes in Europe?

On one of my first trips to Europe, I was stunned by both the prevalence of and tolerance for prostitution. How could Europe be all sophisticated and still have what seemed like slavery?

Well, if you know me, you know exactly what I did next: read some books.  Of the reading I did, a couple of things really stunned me. In a book called *Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor*, a sex worker described the frustration she felt when trying to get her customers to frankly express what they wanted. 

That's right. Customers were having trouble placing their order. It wasn't paying for intimacy that was the challenge. It was admitting what they were paying for.

What do you want (to be true)?

This is the exact problem we have with interviewing New Agers or reading books written by New Agers...

New-agers can't say what they believe.

They talk in vague Alan Watts platitudes. They insist that a meditative, stuporous trance can change your life. They express belief in an ephemeral divinity of goodness that has no mind of its own. 

Why?

Because these people really don't believe any thing, they believe in believing. 

So when they get to Zen, with its endless darkness of Emptiness without Goodness, obviously they are not going to get along with Zen. 

Foyan

“I respectfully urge you brothers: first, for the time being, get rid of the [objects of attention.]

All day, every day you think of clothing, think of food; all sorts of miscellaneous concerns are like the flame of a lamp—there is not one period in which they stop and rest.

Just remove the objects of your attention, [the causes of your knowing]; whatever subtle things [there truely are] will naturally become completely cleared away.”

I have no Zen for people to investigate, nor any Dharma to discuss with you. I only want each of you to accord with the message of Zen for yourselves.”

Teach that!

Foyan having nothing to teach people to make them Good - this is a tough job, made tougher by a modern society that is afraid to say a true-to-them word. 

Asking them to AMA is literally asking them for something they don't have. 

Asking new agers and Zazen people and mysticism believers to AMA is literally asking them for something they don't have. 

For most people social media is entirely performative. They aren't sharing what they know or what they are convinced of. They're sharing their belief in believing.

Foyan Instructs

I tell you: as soon as you get involved with the slightest indication, it has already become fragmented. As soon as you try to reveal it by illuminating it with knowledge, it has already become darkened.

Now simply do not seize upon my words. Each of you, on your own, do your work.

Looking into the incidents of the ancients will do. Sitting quietly will do. Observing in every place will do. All are places where you do your work. Every place is a place where you realize and enter.

Just specialize single-mindedly in one place; as the days come and the months pass, you will necessarily be broken through / dealt with by it.

Performative rabbi voodoo shamanism

New Age communities hate on this forum every day, including downvote brigading and smack talking in other forums about how rZen is gatekeeping close-minded legit real life other perspectives.

These complainers are performative rabbi voodoo shamans and understanding how we know that is as simple as they cannot name a single book about Zen they've ever read.

If they had never read a single book about being a rabbi and they claimed they were a rabbi, they'd get shut down immediately. If they never read a single book about Cherokee shamanism nobody would tolerate their claims of being a Cherokee shaman. If they were trying to promote themselves as living the voodoo lifestyle and they weren't part of a voodoo community, nobody would take them seriously.

And all of these claims would be viewed as racist, bigoted, and white privilege without hesitarion.

not a specialist because you say so

I'm not suggesting that one time reading one book is gonna get you the credibility to rant about your personal experiences.

I'm saying that reading one book one time will help you understand the difference between your personal experiences and your understanding of Zen culture

To catch a horn dog?

I was watching one of my favorite movies, To Catch a Thief, and there's a scene in it where Grace Kelly and Cary Grant are having a romantic moment. She's trying to get him to admit his erotic fascination with jewelry but he will only admit to an erotic fascination with Grace Kelly.

The end of the scene is shots of the fireworks that they were watching. I didn't really think about it. It's passionate kissing, fireworks, whatever, but in a following scene this time I noticed that she gets into an argument with her mother over some stolen jewelry. The mother says to her, "It's my jewelry so why are you upset? What did he steal from you?"

That seems to me to indicate that we were shown a raunchy sex scene with fireworks. But then I realized that 1950s audiences probably would have understood that intuitively. I didn't get this because I'm not from the there-then.

Zen master pervs

Naturally I began to think then about what Zen looked like from the outside to people who met Zen masters. I had a long conversation with ChatGPT about existing records and who created them and how we could find a record that was outside the Zen tradition but nevertheless about Zen masters.

What's it like for people to meet a Zen master when they don't live in the black robe community or the white robe community? What's it like to be outside of Zen looking in?

What are the things that I don't see on the texts because I'm not there - then?

Zhou Rudeng's recollection of first meeting Zibo Zhenke

相見慈容滿面……如故。

“When we met, his face was filled with compassion, and he received me as though we were already old acquaintances.”

余具覩如此。奇耶易耶。

“I personally saw him to be as I have described. Was he strange? Was he ordinary?”

予以目擊徐公一節可推。

“What I witnessed with my own eyes in the episode concerning Lord Xu is enough to infer [the truth].”

So this Zen Master had a reputation of being a little bit of a weirdo and the guy is saying, "I met him, he wasn't that weird?"

Apparently the list of weird things includes:

• a disregard for personal hygiene

• Dressing like a poor person

• getting super angry at monks who ate meat and drank alcohol

• not receiving guests, which later turned out to be really something his community imposed not something that he imposed

This doesn't really get me to where I wanna go

It just makes it look like spending a lot of time in the texts is a lot like being there.

That's surprising but it shouldn't be too surprising given the fact that that's what the texts were created for. It's why we have Jow Joe in the outhouse. That's why we have Kneeling Like a Foreigner. They're trying to tell you in the texts what it was personally like to see these people.

Most of the time ordinary. Some of the time not so much.

Cue the monk turning over the table with fireworks in the background.

I got a DM chiding me for not promoting these more including making sure they're in the sidebar.

I haven't done a comparative translation but I thought I would offer the first few steps that I go through when doing a comparative translation:

# chatgpt - find the Chinese, take the first pass.

> The text usually translated as “Wumen’s Warnings” or “Wumen’s Admonitions” is titled 禪箴 (Chán zhēn), literally “Chan Admonitions,” “Chan Cautions,” or “Needles of Chan.” It appears after the forty-eight cases of the Wumenguan.

* ewk- have to explain why the word needles is here.

> A reliable electronic source is CBETA, T2005, Chanzong Wumenguan. You can also see the photographic Taishō canon text in this NTU scan, page 20.

* ewk - need to run a comparison across the existing copies and maybe date when those copies became available.

# Chinese of Wumen

禪箴

循規守矩，無繩自縛。

縱橫無礙，外道魔軍。

存心澄寂，默照邪禪。

恣意忘緣，墮落深坑。

惺惺不昧，帶鎖擔枷。

思善思惡，地獄天堂。

佛見法見，二鐵圍山。

念起即覺，弄精魂漢。

兀然習定，鬼家活計。

進則迷理，退則乖宗。

不進不退，有氣死人。

且道如何履踐？

努力今生須了卻，

莫教永劫受餘殃。

# Problems with translation

禪箴

“Admonitions of Chan.”

循規守矩，無繩自縛。

“To follow the compass and keep to the square: binding yourself when there is no rope.”

* ewk - Goliath has it without rope. This language seems stronger * When there is no such thing as rope *?

規 and 矩 are literally the compass and carpenter’s square, hence prescribed rules and standards.

The warning is against becoming imprisoned by correct forms—not necessarily against discipline itself.

縱橫無礙，外道魔軍。

“To range vertically and horizontally without obstruction: the demonic army of the outside ways.”

縱橫 suggests moving freely in every direction.

A claim of complete spontaneity and unrestricted freedom can itself become a heterodox or demonic attachment.

* ewk - need to focus here because the language others have used does not really convey a refusal to accept restrictions

存心澄寂，默照邪禪。

“To preserve the mind in limpid stillness: the deviant Zen of silent illumination.”

* ewk - I need a footnote on silent illumination: etymology of the term. Who it applies to, controversy.

存心 means deliberately maintaining or holding the mind in a particular condition.

澄寂 is “clear and still,” like water allowed to settle.

默照, “silent illumination,” was also the name associated with a contemplative approach. Here Wumen attacks deliberately maintaining quiet inner clarity as a fixed state.

恣意忘緣，墮落深坑。

“To indulge the mind and forget conditions: falling into a deep pit.”

恣意 means letting the mind do as it pleases.

忘緣 means forgetting, abandoning, or becoming oblivious to conditioned relations and circumstances.

惺惺不昧，帶鎖擔枷。

“To remain alert and never obscured: wearing a lock and carrying a cangue.”

惺惺 is bright, awake, and keenly attentive.

* ewk - I have a footnote somewhere about the use of the term "bright". It should be repeated here

枷 is the wooden penal collar or cangue.

Even continuous spiritual vigilance becomes an instrument of confinement when deliberately maintained.

思善思惡，地獄天堂。

“To think good and think evil: hell and heaven.”

The syntax is extremely compressed. Literally, discriminating good and evil establishes the dual realm of “hell and heaven.” This recalls Huineng’s question: “Without thinking good and without thinking evil, at just this moment, what is your original face?”

佛見法見，二鐵圍山。

“Views of Buddha and views of Dharma: two Iron-Encircling Mountains.”

見 means a view, conception, or fixed way of seeing.

鐵圍山 is the vast iron mountain encircling a Indian cosmos.

* ewk - this needs a footnote and I think ChatGPT made a mistake regarding the mountains. I think it's a reference to an impassable terrain.

Conceptions of “Buddha” and “Dharma” become two enormous enclosing walls.

念起即覺，弄精魂漢。

“When a thought arises, immediately to notice it: a fellow playing with the spirit-soul.”

覺 can mean awaken to, notice, recognize, or become aware of.

弄精魂漢 is deliberately contemptuous: “a fellow fooling around with his psychic spirit,” meaning someone making a performance or contrivance out of monitoring consciousness.

* ewk - Spirit Soul is going to need a massive footnote

兀然習定，鬼家活計。

“To sit blankly cultivating concentration: the livelihood of a household of ghosts.”

兀然 suggests rigid, motionless, blank, or inert stillness.

活計 literally means one’s livelihood, trade, or customary business.

“Ghost-family business” suggests a lifeless practice belonging among the dead.

* ewk - this has come up and been argued before. I don't think Ghosts works in English. I think it's a reference to the living dead... Zombie mentality.

進則迷理，退則乖宗。

“If you advance, you lose the principle; if you retreat, you turn away from the source.”

宗 can mean the essential teaching, fundamental principle, ancestral tradition, or source.

Both pressing forward and withdrawing miss it.

不進不退，有氣死人。

“Neither advancing nor retreating: a dead person who still has breath.”

有氣死人 is literally “a dead person possessing breath”: biologically alive, but spiritually inert.

且道如何履踐？

“Now say: how will you tread it and put it into practice?”

履踐 literally means to tread, walk, carry out, or practice personally.

努力今生須了卻，

“Exert yourself—in this present life you must finish it completely.”

了卻 means to settle, complete, finish, or be done with the matter.

莫教永劫受餘殃。

“Do not let yourself, through endless kalpas, suffer the calamity left over.”

* ewk - this is a criticism of reincarnation so we need to make sure we include that

More naturally: “Do not allow the consequences of failing to settle it to afflict you for endless ages.”

The structure is intentionally merciless: rule-following is bondage, freedom is demonic, quietude is false Chan, spontaneity is a pit, awareness is a cangue, thought-monitoring is playing with consciousness, and stillness is ghost-work. Advance, retreat, and standing still are all rejected. Wumen is not offering a better mental posture; he is blocking every posture the practitioner might convert into a secure method or identity.

* ewk - I have to re-assess ChatGPT's argument because it hadn't occurred to me before that this constitutes a list of rejections of everything that can be thought of as useful or good

ewk theory of translation

The ewk theory breaks down translation into five sections. Why? Because if you try to footnote your way through a translation without these sections:

• the text can become unreadable, with the eye constantly trying to sort through footnoting.
• not all audiences want all sections; by sectioning we allow audience selection. If they just want Translation Questions or Restatement they can skip.
• not every section is going to be the same length for any given text. Sometimes translation is super simple but context takes an hour. Sometimes the opposite.

Literal

• using words and phrases which for the most part mean something in English.
• No "four modes" what is that? It turns out that this means "four body postures"^1, 1. sitting, standing, lying, reclining.

###Context

• Who the mentioned people are, how they know each other, what references they are making,
• This is contextual material that Zen audiences had for 1,000 years. It's a "I told you that story so I can tell you this one" section.

Restatement

• Relate the Case in your own words. This provides HUGE value, often accidentally.
• 1900's translators often tried to cram the restatement into the literal translation, causing mistakes like words in translations that aren't in the text anywhere.

Translation Questions

• Explain why this translation is different from other translations of the same material and/or same terms.
• Explain why other translations are different from each other. Explain mistakes being made.
• Mysticism and faith thrive on vagueness. Vagueness erases the challenging philosophical questions Zen Masters thrive on.

Discussion

• Explain why for 1,000 years people thought this Case was meaningful in their everyday lives, and how today's audience can understand the same meaningfulness.
  * Identify the universal philosophical questions under dispute: Nanquan killed a cat. Is cat killing bad? Can anyone kill a cat? Can Masters do what they want? * Identify the particular philosophical questions under dispute: Nanquan was a vegetarian pacifist Zen hippy his whole life. Why jump off the bandwagon over this non-edible can? Why didn't his congregation desert him? Why did he risk his community by killing this cat?

Testing

Here's Wumen's poem on Baizhang's Fox:

不落不昧　兩采一賽　不昧不落　千錯萬錯

It's only four sentences! Of four characters! How hard could that be to make sense of?

I'll save you a little headache and point out that 4x4 is a traditional structure, which means it's unlikely that this poem will feature Wumen shenaniganary, like when he lifts lines from other poems.\

There are some huge problems with this poem. Huge. Here's my translation which we can use as one of the disputed versions in the "translation questions" section.

ewk translation:

> Neither falling [into being subject to causation] nor ignorant of it, > > both these two matched in one contest. > > Neither oblivious [to causation] nor falling [into being subject to it] > > a thousand mistakes, ten thousand mistakes."

Zen is about the Four Statements

https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/fourstatements/

1. Transmission is not recorded in Texts

2. Transmission is not gained through explanations.

3. Transmission depends upon direct experience of the core of the self.

4. Recognition of the core of the self is is called attainment of Buddhahood.

Buddhism's core principles are Commandments

Buddhism has the eight-fold path, a list of rules to follow so that you can accumulate merit.

> Aggappasāda Sutta: the noble eightfold path—right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration—is considered supreme... Those who have confidence in the dhamma of the noble path have confidence in what is supreme; and for those with confidence in the supreme, supreme is the result... having given gifts to the supreme,

one develops supreme merit…”

Zen's four statements don't give you any benefit at all and only describe enlightenment really to people who've already experienced it.

Zen is about direct real-life experience

A transmission not contained in teachings or texts

• this is especially controversial in the world of religious thought because every religion and philosophy depends upon having an explanation that can be given to you.

Taoism, the religion, which is primarily alchemy and its pantheon of gods, has this Tao-Way that is identical to the ontological argument for a Christian God... What can be spoken or conceived of is not the divine.

Zen is antithetical to Daoism because Zen says direct experience can't be spoken. It's not an ontological argument. It's a common sense view... If you haven't been there or had that kind of food or fallen in love, you can't know it.

The Buddha named Bodhidharma

Emperor Wu of Liang asked Great Master Bodhidharma, “What is the first principle of the holy truth?”

Bodhidharma said, “Unobstructed with nothing holy.”

The emperor said, “Who is the one facing me?”

Bodhidharma said, “I don't recognize [him].”

What is Buddhism?

At the time the Indian Buddhism that had come to China taught very specific things:

• Accumulate merit through good deeds, like building temples and copying sacred texts

• Accumulated merit improved your rebirth status in the next life.

• From repeated rebirth improvements. One could become a Buddha.

Since the Zen did not teach these things when Zen came to China, the Chinese said, "Well this is a different thing than we have been told about. We're gonna call this thing Zen."

Why people lie about Zen all the time on social media

1. They believe in something holy.

2. Facts don't matter when you believe in a holy thing.

You can always figure out whether facts matter to these people by saying, "What book did you read about Buddhism in?"

What book did you read about Zen in?

Religious people who are opposed to facts won't be willing to answer these questions.

They won't want to look fairly have their own conduct and be responsible for what they are doing in the world.

In this sense there's really no difference between Buddhism and corporate capitalism (neo-liberalism)... It is all entirely irresponsible, desire-driven impulsivity with no regard for fact.

Edit

One of the interesting things about this current social media climate (comparing this post vs the previous same post) so against Zen is that the very people that we need to advance the academic study of Zen (that is, people interested in Eastern philosophy) have been turned off by Shikantaza fraud and the sex predator scandals and the obvious stank of makebelieve fairies and elves mysticism that pervades Western Shinto-Buddhism.

But the people who hate on authentic Zen on social media, they want it that way. They want less academic work to go into Zen history. That's the real reason for the vote brigading and the harassment that we see online.

Alan Watts was not enlightened, he was a defrocked Christian priest

One of the most significant problems in modern new age (LSD, meditation mysticism) and Shinto-Buddhism (like Zazen, Hakuin, etc) is the reliance on gurus and teachers who were in no way enlightened themselves... famously the four Zazen masters of the 1900s had problems with addiction and were sexual predators: www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/sexpredators.

When you get your "wisdom" from drug addicts and sex predators, you can't be shocked when it doesn't work out for you.

Alan Watts was a famous drug addict who died of alcoholism. Watts was also a sexual predator who even bragged about it on occasion. Watts was a college dropout who went to seminary only to get defrocked for sexual misconduct. Watts injected both Christianity and the addict ideologies into his teachings, passing them off as Zen in order to distract from his lack of legitimacy as a source of information.

Here are some examples from Chatgpt:

Watts' Christian Mysticism: "You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean."

Watts was a Christian Humanist, someone who takes Christianity and tries to modernize it by making it more mystical and less supernatural. Instead of "Skyman god made you", Watts took the the mystical christian route which is just as untrue: YOU ARE FROM A CREATOR ESSENCE.

It's New Christianity, but old Bullsh1ttery.

Huangbo: THIS VERY MIND IS BUDDHA.

The whole notion of Buddhahood has never been something given to you or created outside of you.

Zen Masters famously claim that enlightenment, the seeing of your essential nature, is not "caused", not "born", not "created". Your essential awareness does not come from outside of you.

Watts programming - trust him, not yourself: "A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions."

Zen Masters teach that EVERYWHERE is the entrance. Memory? Yup. Daydreams? Yup. that's why there are SIX SENSES in Zen, the five plus the sense of thinking.

Watts, like a good Christian, wants to undermine your confidence in a) Your own reason, b) your own experience. Religious programming is all about not trusting yourself.

Zen Masters teach TRUST IN MIND.

Trust in Mind is not two

Not two itself is Trust in Mind.

To have mind is to trust it. Everybody already does this. Religions want to teach you concepts that take you away from your own mind ground awareness. Illusion is a concept. Mind exists everywhere, penetrating illusions.

Watts the Christian Messenger: "The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple."

Look what happens when you take meaningless things and impose conceptual meaning on them: Sunsets are a sign from god. The number 8 is lucky. The month of August is auspicious. WTF kind of crazy is that? Church craycray.

The idea that life needs "meaning" is ridiculous. Sunsets and the number 7 don't mean anything. Garlic doesn't mean anything.

Meaning is a creation of awareness, and thus will always be an imperfect flawed product of actual insight. It gets worse though... what is "alive"? Should we let a defrocked sex predator alcoholic tell us about what "alive" is? STFU and get yourself sober before "teaching".

“What is the meaning/intention of the Patriarch’s coming from the West?”

Zhaozhou answers: 庭前柏樹子 “The cypress tree in the courtyard.”

Why did Bodhidharma come to save us? What is the essential teaching? What MUST WE KNOW TO BE SAVED??

Zhaozhou: check out that tree behind you.

AWAKE is not meaning. It's bigger than meaning. If you are awake, why do things need to mean things?

Nobody can defend Alan Watts, just like nobody can prove Zazen or Mormonism is real

But there will be a ton of downvote brigading by people who are slaves to religion.

Edit: as predicted nobody tried to link Alan Watts' teachings to the Zen historical record.

Nobody wanted to acknowledge that having some white guy with a history of alcoholism, a college dropout, and a defrocked Christian minister as a representative of a thousand years of an Asian subculture was problematic.

Again and again we come back to the precepts against lying and stealing and how difficult to near impossible it is to be a New Age thinker or a Zazen follower and keep the lay precepts.

Metaphors with benefits

There is a long history in Zen of using metaphors which are acknowledged from the beginning to be incomplete/breakable.

Some of the most famous are the seeing metaphor and the pointing metaphor and the jewel metaphor, for example.

So in that spirit- Zen's unique enlightenment as if it were a new job.

We'd like to extend you an offer.

Imagine you get a job offer for the best job you ever had. Since this job is Zen's unique enlightenment, there are some weird aspects to it.

1. You'll never report to anyone, and you can't hire anybody.

2. Other people will claim to do the job. Part of the job is proving that they're not doing it.

3. You're the only one who can say whether you're doing the job well.

4. It's an unpaid position by design. You only get paid what people voluntarily offer you.

Zhaozhou

1. I like killing

2. Why would I spit in your face.

3. Wash the donations bowl Buddha gave you.

Nobody could promote this guy.

How to Zen Enlightenment

1. Keep the five lay precepts, including refusing recreational drugs and alcohol.
2. Study four statements of Zen teachings to understand direct seeing and pointing only to mind.
3. Practice Zen public interview where you test yourself by explaining in your own words

Doing Zen

> One day Shitou told the assembly, “Tomorrow, clear away the grass in front of the Buddha hall.”

> When the next day came, everyone in the assembly, including the postulants, prepared spades and hoes to clear the grass. Danxia alone filled a basin with water, washed his head, and knelt in the foreign manner before the reverend.

Shitou saw this and laughed. He then shaved his head and began to explain the precepts to him. Danxia covered his ears and went out.

Mind is the Buddha Hall.

# Zen is the Ordinary Mind School

Mazu: ordinary mind is the way

Not meditation mind, not LSD mind, not locking yourself up in a monastic isolation mind.

Crossing the street mind, going to the grocery store mind.

# Zen History

We have a thousand years of Zen historical records in the form of transcripts called koans. These koans document the only practice of Zen, which is public interview.

There has never been any such thing as a Zen monastery. Zen communes were not monasteries in any traditional sense. They were closer to the socialist farming communes of early American history. These communes were built on the Five Lay Precepts:

- No lying

- No stealing

- No rape

- No murder

- No recreational drugs or alcohol

# Foreign Zen

But even with the fact that this is a wildly different time period that encompasses China's metropolitan wonder cities, and despite the fact that this is a different language that uses symbols instead of words in their writing, and despite the fact that this is about a culture that does not have the Greeks or the Christians, the biggest obstacles to understanding this culture in the modern world are the prohibitions against lying, recreational drugs, and alcohol.

# Why are lying, drugs, and alcohol so popular?

1. Ease of access. It's easier to find drugs and alcohol or communities with a common lie than it is to find an AA meeting.

2. Nobody to trust. The three central pillars of authority in life, church, politics, academia have all gone through major upheavals that have wildly exacerbated their profiteerings.

3. Accumulating stuff rather than accumulating knowledge.

We see the current political climate in the U.S. as an exemplification of how desperate people are to make life about accumulating stuff rather than accumulating learning, insight, and wisfom.

When we say that Zen is not Buddhism, not Mahayana, or that there is no Zen meditation, we aren't just echoing that infamous Phd from Japan Dr. Hakamaya and the Critical Buddhists who attacked the idea that Buddhism was whatever anyone believed. www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/hakamaya.

When we say that "Buddhism" and "mahayana" are religious doublespeak, it's because 1900s Western religious academics couldn't define "Buddhism", and avoided the issue to advance their careers. www.reddit.com//r/zen/wiki/buddhism

More than anything else though, the problem is that Mahayana Buddhism doesn't produce Buddhas, and that's the only purpose of Zen Master Buddha's teaching. Zen Master Buddha got enlightened and passed that enlightenment onto others. No enlightened, not Buddha teaching.

> One day Councilor Wang visited Linji. Together they stood looking in front of the monks’ hall. Wang asked: > > “Do the monks in this hall read the scriptures?” > > The Master said, “They do not read the scriptures.” > > “Do they study Chan?” > > “They do not study Chan.” > > “If they neither read the scriptures nor study Chan, what, ultimately, are they doing?” > > The Master said: > > “I simply have them become buddhas and become patriarchs.”

How do we know Zazen doesn't work?

*1900s Zazen "masters" had sex problems

• www.reddit.com//r/zen/wiki/sexpredators *1900s Zazen "masters" lied about history and their religion

• www.reddit.com//r/zen/wiki/secular_dogen *1900s Zazen "masters" lied about meditation helping people

• www.reddit.com//r/zen/wiki/meditation_science

   Most of all, nobody can defend any of this
   and mahayana meditation teachers don't even try.
  

Nowhere on the internet do Mahayana Buddhist meditators answer any and all questions about their history, doctrine, or practices.

Because Mahayana Buddhist meditation is a scam, like Scientology.