Bruce Planck
Human Being
Hello everyone, I am engineering student from Germany and this is my first post. I directly enter your forum with my question.
I am dealing with Buddhism for quite a while now. Made it through more or less difficult books with more or less understanding of it's (Buddhism's) essence. The beginning was actually hard but over the time due to a lot of repetition and reflection in daily life I gained a certain feeling for the background and the message of this (to my understanding in the first place) philosophy. Several insightful moments encouraged me to follow this path further, because I feel a certain inner resonance with the argumentation and the conclusions of the buddhist world view. Especially when it comes to dukkha, karma, and compassion. For me, Buddhism is a deeply humane point of view with great benefits for oneself and for others, even without the believe in samsara, nirvana and reincarnation. This aspect of Buddhism makes it a Religion for me, apart from a philosophy. Since I think the idea of an endless cycle of birth and death sounds natural but I cannot really say that I believe in it, I was looking for a way to avoid that 'problem' and go a more direct way to see 'the truth'.
This brought me to Zen. I read quite some literature on Zen and I have to admit that besides a certain fascination, I have the feeling, all the Zen masters are completely crazy and don't seem like Buddhists at all. In every text, I read, the destruction of objective, conceptual thinking and the relevance of subjective, intuitive thinking where emphasized. From what I understand, this shall lead the insight, that Dualism is an illusion and that everything is essentially one. It shall lead to the destruction of the illusion of one's Ego, the destruction of desire and therefore to liberation and enlightenment. This brings two problems for me:
First problem is, that the beautiful rational argumentative explanation of Buddhist principles is questioned. Is my understanding of this principles wrong or incomplete, when Zen asks me to let to go of my expectation, that my ratio could understand everything in this world? Could it be, that rather than 'understanding' this necessity of the conclusions, when following the path of Zen I could 'feel' them, see and accept them as 'truth'?
This leads to my second problem: Where did all the humaneness, all the compassion, all the love of Buddhism go, when I start dealing with Zen? To me Zen seems to be neither rational, nor emotional. Neither inhumane, nor humane. To me, Zen is cold. Whenever some told me about Zen, he never mentioned hate, compassion, joy, or pain. Either all the authors thought of that as a prerequisit, they thought, I would already be a Buddhist and would know how to link Zen to that. Or (and that is it how it seems to me) they seperate Zen from Buddhism. From the cultivation of attitudes like love and compassion. I really hope, that this is not the case, but maybe some of you can share their view on Zen and the role of Buddhist principles in it's practice.
Maybe I am completely missing the point of Zen here. If you think so, please tell me!
Thanks for your opinions!
I am dealing with Buddhism for quite a while now. Made it through more or less difficult books with more or less understanding of it's (Buddhism's) essence. The beginning was actually hard but over the time due to a lot of repetition and reflection in daily life I gained a certain feeling for the background and the message of this (to my understanding in the first place) philosophy. Several insightful moments encouraged me to follow this path further, because I feel a certain inner resonance with the argumentation and the conclusions of the buddhist world view. Especially when it comes to dukkha, karma, and compassion. For me, Buddhism is a deeply humane point of view with great benefits for oneself and for others, even without the believe in samsara, nirvana and reincarnation. This aspect of Buddhism makes it a Religion for me, apart from a philosophy. Since I think the idea of an endless cycle of birth and death sounds natural but I cannot really say that I believe in it, I was looking for a way to avoid that 'problem' and go a more direct way to see 'the truth'.
This brought me to Zen. I read quite some literature on Zen and I have to admit that besides a certain fascination, I have the feeling, all the Zen masters are completely crazy and don't seem like Buddhists at all. In every text, I read, the destruction of objective, conceptual thinking and the relevance of subjective, intuitive thinking where emphasized. From what I understand, this shall lead the insight, that Dualism is an illusion and that everything is essentially one. It shall lead to the destruction of the illusion of one's Ego, the destruction of desire and therefore to liberation and enlightenment. This brings two problems for me:
First problem is, that the beautiful rational argumentative explanation of Buddhist principles is questioned. Is my understanding of this principles wrong or incomplete, when Zen asks me to let to go of my expectation, that my ratio could understand everything in this world? Could it be, that rather than 'understanding' this necessity of the conclusions, when following the path of Zen I could 'feel' them, see and accept them as 'truth'?
This leads to my second problem: Where did all the humaneness, all the compassion, all the love of Buddhism go, when I start dealing with Zen? To me Zen seems to be neither rational, nor emotional. Neither inhumane, nor humane. To me, Zen is cold. Whenever some told me about Zen, he never mentioned hate, compassion, joy, or pain. Either all the authors thought of that as a prerequisit, they thought, I would already be a Buddhist and would know how to link Zen to that. Or (and that is it how it seems to me) they seperate Zen from Buddhism. From the cultivation of attitudes like love and compassion. I really hope, that this is not the case, but maybe some of you can share their view on Zen and the role of Buddhist principles in it's practice.
Maybe I am completely missing the point of Zen here. If you think so, please tell me!
Thanks for your opinions!