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Comment by Slow_Hand | Hacker News Reader

What's the story there? I'm curious to know how such behavior manifests in Zen Buddhism, of all things.

Many folks end up in r/zen after reading books like “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind” written by Japanese Zen Buddhists.

Ewk is obsessed with the Chinese source material, written by Chan (Chinese for Zen) masters, and believes that the Chinese Chan masters were not Buddhist at all.

Many people who come to the subreddit are interested in meditation. It is a big focus of Japanese Zen as practiced in the west. It is not particularly emphasised in Chan… at least not in the records we have. Some of the most amusing bits on r/zen are watching Ewk lay into some poor suffering sap looking to get some semblance of peace in their life by starting a meditation practice. According to Ewk, meditation is “not zen”.

It’s hard to explain exactly how crazy things are. He’s not wrong about everything. Chan really doesn’t emphasise having a meditation practice. But he also, despite being interested in this for over 20 years and posting nearly full time - literally for 16 hours a day every day for two decades - has never taken a single Chinese lesson. And he has major, major disagreements with the translators of these ancient Chinese texts (because they are Buddhists). So he uses Google translate to prove the translators wrong.

But the old Chan texts are full of violence and masters bashing one another on the head, as Ewk is quick to point out. Maybe he’s onto something. It really is pretty entertaining.

16 hours a day every day for two decades

If I hadn't taken a look at the subreddit just now I would have thought you were being flippant. What a voluble fellow. So much wisdom must be a terrible burden!

What you are describing sounds like the behaviour of someone who is passionate, righteous and perhaps obsessed. That is not the case in the case of Michael Novati according to Lars Lofgren's post. He is claiming that Novati's Reddit posts are entirely driven by profit motives, not to do with the truth or passion for the code bootcamp space.

No, I think you misread the post. The story about backstabbing Zuckerberg in a Risk game and boasting about it in his blog, I believe the author included especially to show that it's not just about the profit motive. It's far more about rivalry and crushing your opponents, he's basically saying. Clearly, spending so much time in a forum trash talking a rival (without disclosure) isn't a good investment of time, if profit is the sole motive.

Certainly, such people exist though. The picture he's painting of Novati is not something I'd find terribly surprising from an ex-Facebook code boot camp entrepreneur.

You're missing the bit where he has never studied under a Buddhist master and actively refuses to. Both Chan and Zen are traditions that are characterised by the belief that written works are always flawed and can't contain the actual teachings and if you want to learn you should find someone who already knows.

You're reminding me of the old 'News of the Weird' (RIP) category "No Longer Weird: frequently recurring stories that have been retired from circulation: ... violence breaks out at peace conference ...".

I wonder if this is the same person behind a series of accounts and similar opinions in the taosim subreddit.

Wow it's incredible how much almost every single post of his is downloaded to oblivion. Never seen a community so united against an individual.

I do actually believe distinguishing the historical Chinese practice of Zen from its western incarnation is a valuable contribution but also see how unnecessarily instigative his comments can be. Perhaps in a different world where his contributions were more validated he could've learned to frame things in a more generative way

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