Comment by bowsamic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bowsamic | Hacker News Reader

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Zazen is about sitting without making distinctions. If a good feeling arises, we treat it the same as a bad feeling, we just let it arise and pass without judging it. Same for distinguishing between self and other, etc. Zazen is a practise for learning how to cultivate a mind that does not attach to discriminations or distinctions between different mental or physical states or objects.

We put distinctions on the world because we think it's necessary to be able to actually live here, but actually if you let go of distinctions you will find that life lives on as normal and you still somehow know what to do but in a much more liberated way.

"Not putting distinctions and discriminations on play" means to play without making distinctions or discriminations, such as: "am I playing right?", "am I being too loud?", "is this a good use of my time?", "could I be doing something more productive?", etc. Most adults cannot play without attaching to those questions and being bothered by them. One way to learn to not attach to those questions is to practise zazen

>We put distinctions on the world because we think it's necessary to be able to actually live here

You'll find that living on the world without distinctions in some places will get you shot or eaten by wildlife. Which does make your life in the world a wee shorter, yes... Although at that point I guess someone truly enlightened wouldn't mind it

Have you tried it? If you did you will realise that actually it isn't our attachment to distinctions that propels us, but there is an automatic animal decision making process before we rationalise about it. We actually do this a lot but we just don't realise it, afterwards we think that our rational sense of "I" is in the driving seat but really it is a bit different. As I said, it's hard to believe that you could live a life like that, but I promise you that after dropping distinctions you will handle the person shouting at you or the bear attacking you far more effectively than you would if you were rationally deliberating over it. But you'll have to try it to believe me perhaps, I was surprised too. Part of the reason why enlightenment is a long and difficult process is because we are so convinced that we need to hold onto things to keep surviving. Some people are so shocked by the realisation that they even commit suicide, particularly if done in an unsafe setting without support.

I don't think deliberate thoughts are the best tools for all circumstances. That's not my point

Actually getting rid of distinctions requires an overwriting of the non-deliberate thought processes too. You won't "handle" the person shouting at you or the bear attacking you more effectively, you won't handle anything at all. You'll just be the cognitive equivalent of a rock, but in human flesh

You seem to be using "distinctions" as a synonym for deliberate thought (I could be wrong, of course)

Yes, by distinctions I mean rational deliberate ones that arise from attachments to ideas that we have about the world. For example the idea that I am me and you are you. We are attached to this idea and act in a non-optimal way due to it. Being before that mind is called "prajna" or wisdom in Buddhism, prajnaparamita being the "perfection of wisdom". I don't mean the distinctions made by our material condition such as hunger or flight and fight, I mean the reactions to those things.

It is the Buddha's parable of the two arrows: the first arrow (pain) is unavoidable, however we also then take on an unecessary second arrow (negative emotional reaction to pain) that is totally avoidable. I'm talking about the second part.

Letting go of our conscious attachment to distinctions and discriminations we can play like children again

Might want to start using "deliberate thinking" (or something like that) instead of "distinction".

Even if it's valid, "distinction" also has other meanings that might come to mind first in the same context, which can lead people to misunderstand what you are talking about. It's what happened to me

Apologies, Buddhist terminology is extremely difficult to translate accurately into English. For example the word "suffering" is not quite right for translating the sanksrit word "Duḥkha". It's easy to forget to clarify the translations, but that's part of why it is so difficult to learn. When we get more Buddhist texts that are written primarily in English first, it will be easier to communicate

You could make the same argument about listening to music, that wandering around while listening to music will get you shot or eaten by wildlife, and yet people generally gain some benefit from listening to music.

Yes, however people don't come up with philosophies about hijacking your whole thought process so the only thing left is listening to music

If someone is selling a fundamental truth about the universe, it better damn well work in every situation

One way I gain confidence in it is to think about how it has had 2500 years of research and development, and in that time has not asked the majority of Buddhists to accept a set of beliefs blindly. It has changed drastically with time and culture: Japanese Buddhism is very different from Chinese Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism in the 1200s is very different from in the 800s. It is allowed to evolve with what works for people, and I find that quite compelling. Of course that alone is not enough, I have to also actually do the practise myself and see what happens

Aside from the blind acceptance, how can you be so confident in "it" if Japanese Buddhism is so different from Chinese Buddhism? Haven't the other major religions existed for almost the same amount of time and gone through just as much "research and development"? Doesn't that give you confidence in them? Have you practiced them and seen what happens?

The difference is that the Buddha specifically taught that the way to verify his teachings was to practise it. Buddhism gives you a path to become a Buddha. In contrast, Christianity does not give you a path to become Christ, or even become sure of Christ. You are expected to believe in Christ without ever seeing any evidence of it. It is the same for many other religions, they do not offer empirically tested methods for personally verifying the teachings, but Buddhism does.

Japanese Buddhism is so different from Chinese Buddhism because the cultural background of Japan is very different to China, so people have different needs, propensities, and capabilities.

> If someone is selling a fundamental truth about the universe, it better damn well work in every situation

Seems like a strange thing to say. Fundamental truths don't have to be useful period, let alone be useful in every situation.

If someone tomorrow proved that life simply had to be common in the universe, that would hardly be useful to any situation you'd face in your lifetime.

>Fundamental truths don't have to be useful period, let alone be useful in every situation.

They have to if the fundamental truth pertains to the One True mental state one should achieve

I probably should have used more qualifiers to make the context explicit...

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