Acknowledging that there has never been an undergraduate or graduate degree in Zen in Western history, I still insist that these enlightenment cases should be common knowledge to anybody that claims a familiarity with the subject of Zen.

But these enlightenment cases point to the kind of personal issues that each Zen Master had to overcome.

1. Zhaozhou too smart

2. Juzhi insufficient faith

3. Dongshan not taking responsibility

4. Baizhang thought he knew

5. Deshan assumed knowledge needed

6. Linji too much self esteem

7. Xuefeng believed in discipline

8. Xiangyan relied on intellectualization

If you know any of these enlightenment cases feel free to dispute me.

But in making this list, I thought about how these were actual real people, not like the mythological supernatural figures in the Bible or the sutras. Zen Masters were real people who experienced a real life enlightenment.

Thinking about them before they were enlightened, seeing them as people before enlightenment, suggests a possible change in perception for some people. Perhaps this is one way to help people understand that these are not irrefutable Moses figures, not Messiahs, but people from a different culture and way of life that have more in common with inventors than they do with religious leaders. Enlightenment is much more like inventing something new than it is like receiving stone tablets, or finding secret knowledge.

www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/getstarted is about actual recorded history. That's the thing here, recorded history of real people.

Many come to this forum from Buddhist theosophy or new age 1900s gurus. What is the role of history playing in those other conversations? What happens when we meet people that cannot create a wiki for their ideas and their beliefs and their tradition?

As a minor segue, I was having a debate with someone yesterday about the nature of religious experience.

My argument was based on the television show *Nobody Wants This*, specifically, a scene from the first season when the couple meets in a bar for her first Shabbat, and a scene from the last episode of the second season where she comes to realize that a Jewish identity is something that comes from your heart.

I argue that this gives us a model for one of three different types of religious identity: Shared traditions of the heart. The two other models I proposed were shared enemies (e.g. christian nationalism), shared assertions (e.g. Catholicism).

How do we apply these models in conversations we have with people? What models do we use instead? What's the space between reasonable explanations and blank tolerance for every sort of claim.

https://youtu.be/D\_8tqjRq9-g?

In this video, the discussion touches on how you were raised and what your relationship to authority and counter argument and dissent was as a kid... But most of all, the way that descent is tolerated or not tolerated from culture to culture.

Here is 18-year-old Zhaozhou meeting Nanquan:

> It happened that Nanquan was lying down resting. He asked, “Recently, from what place have you left?”

> The master [Zhaozhou] said, “Recently I left Ruixiang-yuan — the Hall/Temple of the Auspicious Image.”

> Nanquan said, “Did you see the auspicious image?”

> The master said, “I did not see the auspicious image; I only saw the reclining Tathāgata.”

> Nanquan said, “Are you a novice with a master, or a novice without a master?”

> The master said, “A novice with a master.”

> Nanquan said, “Where is the master?”

> The master said, “In midwinter the cold is severe; I respectfully hope, Reverend, that your honored body is in ten-thousandfold well-being.”

> Nanquan regarded him as a vessel and permitted him to enter the inner room.

> Nanquan was a world renowned Buddha at the time of this interview, heir to the most famous Buddha of the century, Mazu.

A couple of things come out of this. First, Buddhism and Japanese Shinto-Buddhism (Zazen, Hakuin) do not have people like this now. Based on the historical records, they never had people like this. They don't want people like this. They're not trying to recruit people like this. They do not teach people to be like this.

Second, this is not unusual in Zen culture at all. Zen masters encourage this in their followers and in the general public and in people from other religions who want to disagree.

Zen is a tradition where the only practice is public debate.

And I get there's a ton of people who are uncomfortable with that and there's a ton of people from churches that really don't share that belief.

But when we talk about religious bigotry or racism we aren't just talking about somebody who doesn't like somebody else's idea about something.

This forum gets downvote brigaded constantly. There's been wiki vandalism, there's ongoing moderator approved hate speech about this forum in other subreddits that have Buddhism in the name.

It's not about personalities, and it's not about books. It's about cultural conflict. And you don't have to apologize for being from a different culture. You gotta respect the form you're in, but you don't have to apologize because you're not like people from some church you don't go to.

I don't know about you, but I have arguments that run moments and years and decades with friends and family members. When we meet, each of us will share new data, new studies, new papers and books. Sometimes people change sides. Sometimes the arguments go back through the historical records, sometimes forward into modern phenomena like AI.

One of these old arguments started up again yesterday:

Why bother with Zen?

Here are the branches that the argument moves back and forth between (and the relevant recent data points:

1. What is mental illness?

   • European Union in studies on Medicalizing Social and Material Hardship
   • Poverty is not depression, but is it spiritual suffering?
   • If we treat chemical imbalances in the brain, is there really any other problem?

2. What is suffering?

   • What was Buddhist suffering from during his identity crisis regarding death, disease, and infirmity?
   • Philosophers and churches have long tried to answer the questions that are the core of many kinds of spiritual suffering: Who am I? What is good? How should I behave? When are we in history? Where are the rewards to be found?

3. Does Zen enlightenment matter?

   • Keep in mind that there is no other enlightenment in any culture or any tradition. This is just a historical reality. Zen Master Buddha is the historical starting point for every conversation about enlightenment in the East and West.
   • If you keep the five lay precepts, do you really need enlightenment to have a satisfying and happy life?
   • Does the sacred and holy matter at the end of the day to people who need food shelter and family?
   • Also keep in mind that for a thousand years in China, Zen communes fed, housed, clothed, and familied **more people than Zen communes enlightened**. These people or the context that produced every Zen master.

Ask a Zen Master

Bork of Serenity Case 12

地藏問脩山主。甚處來。

“Dizang asked Head Monk Xiu, ‘From what place have you come?’”

脩雲。南方來。

“Xiu said, ‘I have come from the South.’”

藏雲。南方近日佛法如何。

“Dizang said, ‘Recently, how is the Buddha-dharma in the South?’”

脩雲。商量浩浩地。

“Xiu said, ‘Discussion is vast and overflowing.’”

藏雲。爭如我這裏種田博飯喫。

“Dizang said, ‘How could that compare with here, where I plant fields to get rice to eat?’”

脩雲。爭奈三界何。

“Xiu said, ‘What can be done about the three realms?’”

藏雲。爾喚甚麼作三界。

“Dizang said, ‘What do you call the three realms?’”

three realms

In keeping and within the context of this conversation here's a note on the three realms.

Sense realm- physical needs.

Refined realm - needs understood by concept

Formless realm - non-conceptual needs.

too long, didn't read?

We talk about first-world problems versus third-world problems, and certainly the planting of rice is an addressing of a third-world problem. If you live in a society that throws away food, you have a fundamentally different perspective than if you live in a society that doesn't have enough food.

But clearly we cannot say that food is all that matters, that having given food no other questions arise.

The dilemma about the difference in the questions that arise for starving people versus people who throw away food versus people with mental health issues, all play a part in this question of why bother with Zen.

The passage is from 佛眼清遠禪師《示禪人心要》 — Foyan Qingyuan Chan Master’s “Showing Chan People the Essentials of Mind”, preserved in 《古尊宿語錄》 — Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies, fascicle 34. The CText page has the section title at line 264 and the passage at line 265

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學道者。明知有是事。何故不得旨而長疑。葢信未極。疑未深也。唯深與極。若信與疑。真是事也。不解如此返照。遂迷亂不知由緒。困躓中途能自返省。更無第二人也。既曰此事。又豈更知耶。知是妄慮。此事則不失也。

​

Chatgpt: Those who study the Way clearly know there is this matter.

Why do they not obtain the intent and remain long in doubt?

Because faith has not reached the utmost, and doubt has not gone deep.

Only depth and utmostness — whether faith or doubt — are truly this matter.

Not understanding how to turn the light back like this, they then become confused and disordered, not knowing the thread of origin, exhausted and stumbling midway.

If one can return and examine oneself, there is no second person.

Since it is called “this matter,” how could there again be knowing?

Knowing is delusive thought; this matter is then not lost.

​

Cleary: From Instant Zen by Cleary: People who study the path clearly know there is such a thing; why do they fail to get the message, and go on doubting? is because their faith is not complete enough and their doubt is not deep enough. Only with depth and completeness, be it faith or doubt, is it really Zen; if you are incapable of introspection like this, you will eventually get lost in confusion and lose the thread, wearing out and stumbling halfway along the road. But if you can look into yourself, there is no one else.

​

Find the Chinese text this was translated from and provide a link. quote the Chinese text and then translated literally into English.

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ewk: I put this up because there's some problems here, but I don't have time to work on them at the moment, and somebody else was interested.

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The steps I would normally follow are (1) follow the link and validate the text. (2) identify lack of clarity and chat GPT translation. (3) begin deconstructing cleary translation by comparing and contrasting.

​

​

> “One day Linji went together with Puhua to a patron’s house for a vegetarian meal. Linji asked: ‘A hair swallows the great ocean; a mustard seed contains Sumeru. Is this the marvelous function of spiritual powers? I] the original substance just so?’

> Puhua kicked over the meal table.

> The Master said: ‘Too coarse.’

> Puhua said: ‘What place is this here, that you speak of coarse and speak of fine?’

Lots of people thought Puhua was inelegant, that Puhua was a dirty, unwashed party pooper. Puhua suspected Linji was stinking up the room so bad nobody could eat.

These are the fathers of Zen. The mothers, Iron Grinder, Miaozhong, were just as unpleasant. But it's fathers' day, so raise your glass to a thousand years of history from socialist communes ruled by Buddhas, forgotten by humanity deep in its cups of greed.

Turn over the table.

​

​

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multiverse timelines?

LLMs are invaluable in academic research when the quantity of data is just too big for people process.  Whether it's 100,000 x-rays, or 1,000 years of Zen public interview transcripts (koans), LLMs can chew this data up.  Of course, in every case, you have to go back and validate the conclusion.  

For example, we can do something that Zen masters themselves would have struggled to deal with, and that is we can ask the LLM to look for every reference to the 2nd Zen patriarch.  It turns out there seem to be three categories, which points to weak historical evidence.

1. Second Patriarch Huike persecuted by Buddhists, attacked by bandits, arm cut off.    * this argues for my theory that he cut his fingertip off and not his arm.

2. Huike punished by Buddhist community for heresy 

   • we would have to look carefully at the language for this punishment don't rule out slang, but it does not appear to be an execution.

3. Huike execuded for heresy 

   • this is what we see by 1100 in books of instruction written by Zen Masters.
   • why?

Zen Heresy vs Buddhist Heresy

Zen is hyper-aggressive from the western perspective about dealing with heresy publicly.  But this "dealing" is public shaming, and the heresy is heresy of intent.

In contrast, Buddhists punish heresy through physical and political violence.  Buddhist also use physical and political violence against enemies perceived or otherwise of Buddhism.

These two different views of how to deal with heresy arise both from the doctrinal basis of what it means to be a heretic as well as the hierarchical nature of Buddhist authorities and institutions.

Why it's believable that Buddhists are violent

Not only is there a long history of Buddhist violence, there are a number of instances where Buddhist establishments attack all kinds of heresies.

Chatgpt argued that these weren't not simply doctrinal disputes, but arose from the fact that Buddhists collected taxes and raised armies, which gave them both the means to defend their orthodoxy and reasons to enforce it.

In contrast, Zen built socialist farming cooperatives with flat, religious hierarchies where anyone could challenge the teacher publicly.

buddhist violence is evident on the internet today.

Reddit forums with Buddhist in the title aggressively censor horitical voices and topics while simultaneously encouraging political and social censorship.

rZen is often the subject of this kind of talk, it's members, it's wiki, it's existence.  At least one high karma Buddhist has called for the removal of rZen.

This contrasts with rZen intolerance for faith-based claims, anti-historicism, and religious and racial bias.  Intolerance is not censorship, though distinction is often lost on the rabid masses.