The Most Important Thing About Zen

Zen Master Dae Kwang on The Meaning of Life

Obsolescence

My friends and I are watching a war movie on TV. One of us says something like, "That actor looks familiar. Who is he? What else has he starred in?" or "The general he's portraying... is he historical or fictional? If he's real, what happened to him after the war?" Then we'll perhaps pause the DVR, quick draw our smart phones, and get the answer.

Now consider people who are great trivia experts (think Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, etc). Up until now, they've been able to capitalize on their skills by winning bar bets, and entertaining folks at parties with their breadth of knowledge. But now that everyone can know anything at any time, the unique value of their talent must be collapsing. I imagine there are lots of trivia wizards who now feel like Ron Jeremy after the introduction of Viagra.

Experience, Belief, and Science

Consider an ancient man seeing the sun cross the sky. It's so much brighter than anything else; it fascinates and frightens him. He hears this story that a god named Apollo drives a chariot across the sky each day. There's a big fire in the chariot, and that explains that super-bright light we see during the daytime.

The ancient man feels better, because it's comforting to have an explanation, any explanation. He accepts the Apollo myth as if it were Truth. If anyone questions the myth, he'll angrily respond, "I know it's true from experience! Every day I look in the sky and with my own eyes I see the brightness of Apollo's chariot. How dare you question my experience!"

But Apollo's chariot isn't anyone's experience. It's a belief, a story that got wrapped around the experience... so tightly that the experience (the undeniable brightness seen in the sky) got confused with the myth (the story about a chariot).

I see a similar situation in the realm of religion and spirituality. Many people try meditation, yoga, philosophy, worship, or other techniques. In a substantial minority of cases, they get astounding inner experiences: seeing lights, hearing sounds, getting extreme and unusual feelings of bliss or whatever.

Like the ancient men, spiritual practitioners hear stories that attempt to explain the experiences. Maybe they read the Bible, listen to a preacher, hang out with a congregations that shares a belief-system, study old Yoga or Hindu texts, or follow teachings of long-dead Indian monks. They find a story that kinda sorta explains their experience. They start to claim, "I experienced being re-born in the Heart of Jesus" or "I experienced an awakening of Shakti energy" or "I experienced the grace of Guru Schmuckananda" or "I experienced Space Aliens controlling my brain."

Whatever belief-system they choose., it's not an experience. It's a bunch of ideas that they wrap around the memory of the experience. The wrapping is so tight that they mix up the reality with the myth. The experience (seeing lights or feeling bliss etc) is undeniable while it's happening. But the stories made up to explain the experience... they're just stories.

When someone calls their story an "experience," it means that they've lost their "bullshit detector." They're treating a story, a belief-system, as if it were an undeniable Truth. In doing so, they've lost the ability to separate reality from imagination.

What can help in a situation like this? For me, it helped to understand scientific method, the ultimate bullshit detector. I've been inspired by reading about my hometown boy Ben Franklin debunking Franz Mesmer (a centuries-old example of myth-busting).

These days, some techies (including my brother) want to help everyone to learn computer coding. Their intention is for everyone to develop critical thinking skills that would arm them against confusing myths with reality. But is it really possible for the masses of humanity to learn to think rationally? I don't know.

All of us are born without much reasoning ability, then gradually learn it as we grow. Yet DNA in her wisdom seems to produce lots of humans who never achieve much rationality at all. Sermons in mega-churches draw bigger crowds than science lectures at universities. Perhaps this will change in time. But perhaps survival of the species requires only a minority of critical thinkers, and a majority of followers.

Economics Lesson

A college Intro to Economics book began, "Man's desires are infinite. But the means necessary for satisfying these desires are limited. This is what gives rise to value." The first sentence was enough to inspire me to leave school and look into the big questions of desire and suffering.


Today I found further evidence of the Buddhist wisdom within Economics, in the form of this quote from John Maynard Keynes:


The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

Caution

"A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve."

-- Confucious

Self Improvement

We often say Zen is not really about self improvement. What is the self that you want to improve? Who are you really? That's the fundamental point. And until we really deal with that question, we are not really getting to the base of practice. Because our desires, our beliefs, and our opinions drag us around. Until we doubt them, investigate them, and use the moment as an investigatory tool, we're just playing around.  


-- Zen Master Bon Soeng

Zen Master Bon Yeon on How to Meditate

Pessimist

With the possible exception of Groundhog Day and Kung Fu Panda... HBO's True Detective includes the best Zen teaching ever presented on film or TV.

That's Life

"I came into this world naked and confused. Now I have clothes."
-- Charles Baker (Skinny Pete)

Breaking Bad Prediction

Todd's neo-nazi ex-con Uncle Jack will surely share some of the $70 million with him. So why is Todd bothering with cooking meth (and keeping Jesse alive to make it 99% pure)? It must be part of Todd's plan to woo Lydia. And what's Lydia's tragic flaw? Her addiction to Stevia.

Walt will poison Lydia by disguising ricin in a packet of Stevia. It will be part of a plot (a la Brock) to flush out Todd as a pre-requisite for saving Jesse, and redeeming Walt's soul.

And somehow Walt will kill Uncle Jack, get his money back, and use it for benefit of Jesse and/or the surviving White family. The scheme will have something to do with poisoning Jack with fumes, since he doesn't wear a mask in the meth lab.

After the last episode, please use the comments section of this post to marvel at my psychic abilities.

Karma

Regarding the Abdication

In the actual resignation letter, which wasn't made public, the Pontiff revealed that he had woken up in a cold sweat at 3am, realizing that he really didn't know the meaning and purpose of life. The poor old guy just didn't have the energy to keep pretending.

BuckyBall Pyramid

On Thanksgiving, my brother introduced me to BuckyBalls, and I've become a bit obsessed. They work better than prayer beads at pacifying my mind.



Last month, BuckyBalls were taken off the market, due to government harassment. (While this is upsetting, at least marijuana is still legal, I think.) I got mine just under the wire. I'm pretty sure you can still get knock-offs from China.

Chill (Part 2)

Watch out for mobs of Mayans doing last-minute Christmas shopping...

Chill

The Ancestral Teacher’s coming from the West only means that winter is cold and summer is hot, night is dark and day is light. It’s just that you vainly set up meaning where there is no meaning, create concern where there is no concern, impose “inside” and “outside” where there is no inside or outside, and talk endlessly of this and that where nothing exists.

from Swampland Flowers: The Letters and Lectures of Zen Master Ta Hui

Zen Master Dae Kwang on Compassion

Poker: unpardonably neglected

In the NY Times article No More Bluffing, James McManus writes about poker's connection to the risk-taking elements in the American DNA. "Nearly all of us are descended from immigrants, a self-selecting group that is disproportionally inclined to take chances."

Individuals have an inner thermostat, which makes us uncomfortable whenever there's too much or too little risk in our lives. People will speed on the highways... but only until the danger of this behavior hits their thermostat's set point. When laws are passed requiring drivers to wear seat belts, some drivers will find that the speed they'd been driving no longer feels right; it's not quite risky enough. So they'll drive a little faster till they again reach the set point.

Europeans who came to America in centuries past tended to be those with higher risk-appetites. Once in the New World, the people who moved further and further West were those with the highest need for and tolerance of risk. It's no coincidence that poker is considered a game quintessentially suited to America, and particularly to the American West.

Casino gambling in general is a way to satisfy risk-appetite in a meticulous way. On-line poker rooms offer games where the betting starts at one cent, and other games with bets of $1000 or more. Compare that to ordinary-life behaviors that involve risk (mainlining heroin, having children, etc), which are often all-or-nothing choices. Gambling is a way to calibrate more precisely the level of risk that fills our inner need.

When people tell me that they don't gamble, I sometimes reply that getting out of bed in the morning is a gamble. As is staying in bed. We don't have the option of avoiding risk, but we can manage the type of risks we do take. 

The McManus article ends by quoting Mark Twain. "There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a ‘flush.’ It is enough to make one ashamed of one’s species."

Consistency

Just once, I'd like to see one of those gymnasts fall off the balance beam, and tell the interviewer, "I place all the blame on God." It's only fair, right?

Sam Harris: Religion vs Morality

My favorite atheist stating the obvious. "[God] visits suffering on innocent people on a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath..."