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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

"Well, there is Sitting Zen (zazen, meditation), there is Walking Zen. Oh, and then, of course, especially in the West, there is Talking Zen. No good."

Many Zen practitioners have received their first contact with zen trough Alan Watts. He was really good writer. But eventually you must realize that he was philosopher, alcoholic and religions scholar who looked Zen from the outside. Talking and thinking about Zen is like talking and thinking about physical exercise. Philosophical thinking about koan is like treating bench press as a philosophical problem. You can't lift it with your toughs.

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Apparently You and the author haven't haven't heard of the Rinzai school of Zen, which is not a Western invention. You're espousing quite a narrow point of view of a philosophy that is about supplanting dualistic closemindedness.

For people who are put off by ceremony and do not find long periods of sitting meditation (40 minutes or more) particularly useful, check out the Rinzai school of Zen. Shorter periods of sitting meditation, more emphasis on thinking critically about koans and "dharma combat" -- critical discussion. Rinzai abhorred ritual and ceremony for its own sake, so less emphasis on that.

So how else do I do Zen?

(That is a serious question!)

Zen is meditation first school of Buddhism. You must learn to do zazen (zen meditation). In other words, sit down and shut up. If you want to become Buddha, do what Buddha did and don't just listen and think about what he said.

I'm myself a Zen Buddhist, I train with a teacher and have spend time zen training in a zen temple and attend sesshins regularly. I'm also very secular and atheist person who don't like organized religion. It's miracle that I can coexist with religious setting, but I do it because I see Buddhsit Zen teachers as experienced coaches and temple as training facility. I also know that he is not going to indoctrinate me for anything superstitions despite his own beliefs that are different from mine (there are number of rotten zen teachers though).

If I were to describe what zazen meditation[1] is using as scientific terms as possible, I would say that it's developing and directing your attention towards higher temporal resolution and developing the ability of keeping it there (always below 1s and it can go as low as ~40 Hz). You can put your poet hat on and call it "living in this moment", "looking at the reality", "awakening to reality", "seeing the world as it really is", "impermanence" or "looking into yourself/mind", but that's what it really is in my opinion. You can't have complex philosophical toughs in such a short time. You can only see 'thoughtlets' (small incomplete toughs) forming and fading away in fractions of second. It's like using low level debugger into the functioning of yor mind (debugger being directed attention).

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[1] Same thing with most other awareness style Buddhist meditation traditions. You learn to see similarities with other traditions when you practice. Zazen is often more spartan and simplified and vital (not for everyone).

Nice description of the differences between Zen and Vipassana styles by Shinzen Young http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WiM-w5qqmE

I apologize if this is a rude question. But what do you get out of doing all this? I went to a zen Buddhism workshop a few years ago and it all felt very strangely ritualistic and bizarre. I just didn't see the point of it.

Why should I be doing zen or any other form of meditation?

The strange ritualistic culture is merely a means by which Zen propagates itself (forward momentum in time) and not the "thing" itself.

In my own words you should meditate because with practice one builds a refuge within stillness. Knowledge of this refuge changes the way you feel about circumstances and mental phenomena (motion). The change just feels right, like a lessening of burden, but it takes practice, that's the thing. The rituals and calligraphy are not the thing.

Just as a thought experiment: if you could take a pill that did all this for you, would you still do the practice?

In actual fact I did take a pill that did this for me.. that is.. thrusted me into a state of mind akin to some of what can be found in concentration states. That was what provided for me the impetus to explore meditation because after a certain MDMA experience I suddenly felt that "now I know" that there's a more clear, or natural feeling which conscious awareness can navigate to. It was unfortunately a fleeting experience, and taking more of the same substance did not guarantee a return trip to the same state.

I eventually discovered a way to approach this state without drugs, it has to do with studying the Buddha Dhamma and practicing based on the teachings preserved in the Pali cannon, safeguarded by the Theravada lineage.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.22.0.than.html ^ if you ctrl-f and search this text for the string "And what is right mindfulness?" then you will be onto something.

I get and support the use of psychedelics to demonstrate the mind's potential, but I'm thinking more day to day. When you "approach this state without drugs," is it in the context of interacting with people, or only through meditation?

It sounds like you're asking if practice makes a difference for me outside of the time where formal sitting practice occurs. The answer would be yes. My experience has been that there is a connection between the dimension of stillness which one arrives at in meditation and the phenomena known as intuition, and also the phenomena known as emotion. To put it into plain English, a regular practice makes me feel "less depressed", more patient, and creativity seems to flow more easily.

I realize that the description above may sound too general, or even like I'm describing a panacea, and perhaps I am, that's the thing.

zen or meditation, is not just about developing a capability. With a pill, or drugs/steriods, you can gain something...but what is the use of all this, if you dont gain the wisdom (the ultimate end goal, which you usually get by walking the path. )

Lots of reasons. It can help with depression, anxiety and other states of mind that cause unhappiness in your daily life. It can help calm your mind and allow you to focus on what you're doing rather than worrying excessively about the past or the future. It can impart a pleasant feeling of acceptance. It can make you more tolerant of "bad" things that happen, and allows frustrations to flow over you (for example being annoyed at a friend being late for coffee). It's like packing everything you need for a camping trip and feeling prepared, without packing anything and knowing the unexpected will come.

I ditch all the rituals. You can get a lot from just sitting in a chair and meditating.

Because you want to. If not, don't.

"I'm also very secular and atheist person who don't like organized religion."

Its fantastic that it works for you. For me, This is exactly why I couldn't handle Zen. It feels too much like the hierarchical church patriarchy.

Due to this I've gravitated towards the Pragmatic Dharma crowd which tends to be a mix of Theravada and Advaita practices (though rejecting Advaita view).

Some resources for the looks-like-religion allergic:

http://kennethfolkdharma.com/quick-start-guide/ http://www.dharmaoverground.org http://awakenetwork.org

I read a book a while ago about hynduism that said that buddists don't get it: Yes, budda achieved "illumination" by "sitting down and shutting up" (meditanting), but that is not, by any means, the only way to achieve illumination.

I think the author was that Osho guy...

buddha knew how to shut up, unlike osho. osho were alive, he would endorse my comment :)

the smart thing about buddha is he kept the discourse always on the root ("dukkha" , look it up). It's very easy to loose one's way, which osho did, if you see his life's progression.

Zazen (za: seated, zen:meditation) is central to nearly every school of zen Buddhism. The name of zen alludes to this, and Watts' translation of chan/dhyuna as emptiness rather then meditation is unusual. Zen emerged in response to certain schools of bhudhism which put emphasis on making offerings and gaining merit over meditation. So in some respects it was de-empasizing religious ritual as the article alludes (though I feel authentic zen is very much a religion, albeit without a creator), but this was to put the emphasis back on meditation. Watts' de-emphasis of zazen in zen is therfore quite ironic. To do zen, set some time aside each day to sit in a dignified pasture and place your awareness on your breath. As your mind wanders, notice this and bring your attention back to your breath. Repeat a hundred thousand times. Over time, the emptiness of these thoughts becomes apparent and your attachment to them weakens. But, don't attach to this emptiness either.

It's a practice more than an analysis, so to do it you practice Zen exercises. The central exercise is meditation. Thinking about meditation is like thinking about push-ups. A little analysis helps to refine the form, but it's not the point.

Practice leads to Zen. Practice isn't Zen. But yeah otherwise i agree.

You will be hard pressed to find a Zen teacher who would deny that practise is Zen. It does certainly not "lead to Zen". E.g. "Enlightenment and Practise are one" (Dogen), "There is no Zen master in great (Sung) China", the frequent warnings against step-ladder Zen, the idea that Zen is not useful and nothing is gained, "there is only the way, beginning, middle and end" etc.

You don't need to practice to "get to Zen".

The point is this. You can say that practice is Zen but in that perspective everything is Zen because everything is practice.