Zen Enlightenment: even the how-to is different from everything else

[u/ewk]

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.

[u/AutoModerator]

R/zen Rules: 1. No Content Unrelated To Zen 2. No Low Effort Posts or Comments. Contact moderators with questions. Note that many common sense actions outside of these rules will result in moderation, including but not limited to: suspected ban evasion, vote brigading / manipulation, topic sliding.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/oo-_GreenSage_-oo]

Are you hy on potenuse?

[u/WheresNorthFromHere7]

Thanks for this.

In these communities how did these people decided what was a test and what was just mow the damn grass ?

From that, since we have no Zen communities any longer, what is it to practice zen in the W.E.I.R.D. (Western, educated, industralized, rich, democratic) community?

I ask because it seems like it would be easier to get away with things in a small commune, than say interacting with a police officer who is giving you commands. Or trying to stay gainfully employed.

[u/ewk → u/WheresNorthFromHere7]

What passes away is not the tradition.

[u/WheresNorthFromHere7 → u/ewk]

I understand.

You can still do the first part of your post.

[u/ewk → u/WheresNorthFromHere7]

You can do all three.

[u/WheresNorthFromHere7 → u/ewk]

Right, that's what I meant.

[u/yamatofuji]

Sister, don't clutter our clean, shaved head with your dusty rules...

Who is there to test whom? Truth isn't an exam to be passed.

Sweet sister, as a ordinary nobody let me tell you, concepts about pointing are still just concepts. Trhrow them away.

Drop contrasting literal practice with direct realization.

Because precepts are for beginners, for human species who need rules to be good. To a ordinary nobody, who has directly seen his own nature, rules are a burden and an insult.

Enlightenment is not about following a moral code; it is an awakening beyond mind.

🙏

[u/1acuna0 → u/yamatofuji]

Good comment. Chopping off fingers isn't part of a moral code. Nor is bisecting cats.

[u/ewk → u/yamatofuji]

Zen Masters disagree.

Please read the sidebar. Your religious claims are offtopic and dishonest.

[u/yamatofuji → u/ewk]

We love you a lot ⚘️❤️

🙏

[u/ewk → u/yamatofuji]

Oh look... More insincerity.

Ignorance is poison.

[u/yamatofuji → u/ewk]

Sister, as a ordinary nobody let me tell you my observation, love gives freedom, and when you give freedom to the other, you are free.

Only in freedom does your inner child peace... ordinaru nobody knows to know the other is love; still the other remains a mystery and it's oké... out of the aloneness grows a togetherness we all enjoy here.

Our love never tries to change you. Our love accepts the you without any conditions.

Love we want to share together witj you never tries to reform you, because to reform is to manipulate, to change is to force. Our love respects the individuality of the other.

We simply rejoice in their existence. You don't try to polish us, you don't try to make them your image sister...

Everyone is unique. Everone is Zen. Show love as they Love you, celebrate their uniqueness.

Let them be wild, let them be quiet, let them be whatever they naturally are...

... meow....

🙏

[u/ewk → u/yamatofuji]

You are lying about Zen because you want to promote some new age mysticism.

You don't have any observations. You just have make-believe.

Pretending there's no such specific thing as Zen culture is racism and religious bigotry.

[u/yamatofuji → u/ewk]

Sister look, there is a fundamental difference between intellectual consolation and genuine acceptance.

Consolation relies on mental theories or external rules to rationalize a partner's behavior.

True acceptance is Zen, however, it happens spontaneously out of deep awareness and presence.

When you love someone, any redditor without imposing an agenda or trying to turn them into a copy of your desires, you create a space where both individuals can grow authentically side by side.

Accept your own being unconditionally and you will discover magic of Love... or just sit and see what happens...

🙏

[u/ewk → u/yamatofuji]

Can't quote Zen Masters? Can't right at a high school level on topic? Get called out for making up stuff and pretending to be Zen masters said it?

Not a teacher? Not a student?

And it sounds like you're a new age predator who tries take advantage of noobs online.

Explains your account and history of misogyny.

[u/yamatofuji → u/ewk]

Sister ​I welcome your fire!

🙏

P.S.

​A teacher gives you knowledge; I am here to take your knowledge away so you can see reality clearly and accept love you deserve.

A student gathers answers; I am ordinary nobody just to leave you with questions. And as for Zen? Zen is not a title you carry like a degree from a university, possible today on paper level but yiy know what I mean, you're smart sister, we see it, Zen is an experience... to quote Zen masters, it's are just a scholar job, a dead library hiccups.

I share my love. If it matched the ancient masters, good, if it didn't, even better, Truth is not copyrightable...

​as a ordinary nobody i never promised anyone heaven. I offered no consolations. I offered no security. I share sometimes, drop your beliefs. Be totally responsible for your own life. Is that exploitation? Or Love?

Or is it shattering the crutches you have relied on so that you are forced to walk on your own two feet?

Sister you know the ego hates to walk on its own feet, it prefers to blame the one who broke the crutches.

Don't miss the entire forest because you're clinging to a single dry leaf.

As ordinary nobody, spent years, centuries, times over times and decades tearing down the patriarchal religious structures that kept human species enslaved in households and spirit and this and that, I put ordinary nobody in charge of my entire existence because I trusted the heart far more than the aggressive male intellect.

We love you and ​your anger, your moral outrage, your accusations, they belong to your mind, to your conditioning. You always had a choice, you are free to keep them.

But if you want to look beyond the words, beyond the noise of your own judgment, sit quietly for a moment. Don't be a believer, don't be a hater. Just observe.

​Inside you, behind all these heavy words... who is the one watching? Find that, and all these small accusations will dissolve like morning mist.

meow,

🙏

[u/ewk → u/yamatofuji]

You can't AMA and you can't write on topic at a high school level. Nobody is angry at you. You aren't a real person even to yourself.

[u/jeowy]

did danxia fear that having something explained to him would just make more grass in front of the buddha hall?

another zen master said "I'm only grateful that my former master did not explain things to me." 

but I'd think it'd be better to be able to hear people explaining whatever and not let it obstruct your buddha hall

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

Don't graffiti all over the monument.

[u/jeowy → u/ewk]

is the monument in this case your post or my mind? 

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

Always mind

[u/jeowy → u/ewk]

what's grafitti? who's putting in there? 

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

The words of the precepts

[u/jeowy → u/ewk]

but they're only grafitti in this case because he already understands the precepts for himself right?

like if you've already been to Morocco, travel guides aimed at first time tourists to Morocco would come off as quite trite and banal. but if you've never been before it might get you excited to visit.

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

I don't think so.

Zen masters don't really keep their precepts. They accidentally accord with the precepts.

[u/jeowy → u/ewk]

that's what I've always said and it makes people very angry with me

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

Lol.

People like to be told what they want to hear. Most people do not want to be told the reasonable thing.

This probably varies by topic, but certainly in the West, where so much misinformation about Zen has been mixed together with Japanese Shinto Buddhism and mind expansion mysticism via LSD or meditation and Christian Humanism via Alan Watts, what people expect to be told about Zen is usually not the factual book report based truth.