Tuesday, November 03, 2009

ZM Seung Sahn "Wake Up!" Video

An hour-long documentary of Zen Master Seung Sahn has made its way around the net. Released in 1992, the 54-minute video Wake Up! On the Road with a Zen Master follows ZMSS as he travels and teaches in Europe. It's on YouTube in 6 parts; here's Part 1:



(I've written of my personal experience with ZM Seung Sahn here.)

3 comments:

Ram Bansal said...

Zen is a missed word for spiritual practice -
http://atheism-and-agnosticism.blogspot.com/2009/11/zen-myth-and-reality.html

stuartresnick said...

Hi, Ram. I assume you're the writer of the Atheism and Agnosticism blog? In any case, thanks for stopping by.

From the link you give:
Zen is, in fact, a philosophy propounded by a prominent Theo Rishabh Dev more than 2500 years ago.

"Zen" is just a word, and you can claim it means anything. Words are like that. You could call a piano "cocaine"... but you still couldn't snort it.

In the ZM Seung Sahn video, as well as in what I write, "Zen" is a name for the practice of meeting this very moment with clarity and compassion. The practice is done in ordinary, everyday life. If you keep this mind while sitting, it's called "sitting Zen." If you keep this mind while chanting, it's "chanting Zen." While playing tennis, it's "tennis Zen." Etc etc etc.

As used in this blog, "Zen" isn't a name for the philosophy you mention, or for any philosophy at all.

Again from the "Atheism" link:
'Zen'... preaches sudden transfer of supernatural powers

Meeting this moment with clarity and compassion doesn't require creating distinctions like "natural" vs "supernatural." The practice and tradition called "Zen" doesn't require any sort of power-transfer. Just now, what do you see, what do you hear, what are you doing? That's all.

Anonymous said...

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