Zen Buddhism: Discipline, Liberation, and the Illusion of Self

Zen Buddhism aims to dissolve the illusion of a separate self through a dialogue that exposes the futility of seeking control.

### Zen Buddhism: Exploring the Art of Being Genuine
* 🎎 Zen Buddhism, a form of Buddhism found in China and Japan, has had a **profound influence** on Japanese culture and arts, particularly Zen Buddhism.
* 🧘 Zen, pronounced from the Chinese word "Ch'an" and derived from the Sanskrit word "dhyana," is challenging to translate into English but is essentially about **active contemplation**.
* 🤯 Zen masters often ask the question "Who are you?" to challenge students to show their **genuine self**, a task that's akin to trying to **bite an iron bull like a mosquito**.
* 🎭 Zen discipline often involves putting students in double binds, such as being asked to be **genuine when sincerity cannot be forced**.
* 👥 Zen's emphasis on being genuine and present without the ego's influence helps practitioners **navigate the world unselfconsciously**.
* 🏯 In Japanese culture, which is highly ritualistic and concerned with propriety, Zen offers an outlet and a way to be at ease in a society where **everyone is always watching**.
* 🤹 Zen's dialogical nature, where the teachings are merely opening exchanges in a dialogue, challenges the concept of a **separate ego** and aims to expose the **illusion of the self**.

the kind of Buddhism that is found in China and Japan, and the kind of Buddhism of which Zen Buddhism in particular is a subsect. And we are rather particularly concerned with Zen since it has had such a fundamental influence in the shaping of Japanese culture and the arts of Japan. And since we are in the course of this informal tour, going to be visiting a good deal of Zen monasteries and seeing a great deal of Zen-formed works of art, architecture, and so on. So I want to lead now tonight from Buddhism in general, or Mahayana Buddhism in general, to Zen in particular. Now, because then it plays a little game with you whenever anybody like myself or Dr. Suzuki talks about Zen, all the other people say, because they talk about it, they don't understand it. Those in the words of Lao Tzu, who know do not say, those who say do not know. And yet, he said that you wrote a book of several 80 chapters or so to explain the Tao and the dairy its power, and nobody could

help themselves. They've got to talk. Human beings are a bunch of chatterboxes, and when we've got something in our minds that we want to talk about, we talk. Now, poetry though, is the great language, because poetry is the art of saying what can't be said. Every poet knows this; they're trying to describe the indescribable. And every poet also knows that nothing is describable, whether you take some sort of ineffable mystical experience at one extreme, or whether you take an ordinary rusty nail at the other. Nothing is really describable. In the words of the famous Count Kurbsky, Whatever you say something is, it isn't. We used to have a professor at Northwestern who would produce a match booklet in front of his class and would say to them, What is it? And they would say, Match booklet. He'd say, No, no, no. 'Match booklet' is a noise. Is this a noise? What is it? And so to answer this, he'd throw it at them. That's what it is. So in this way, you see, nothing can really be

described, and yet on the other hand, we all know perfectly mean well what we mean when we talk. If you know if you shared an experience with somebody else, then of course you can talk about it. We can all talk about fire and air and water and wood because we know what it is, and there's no mystery. So, in the same way, when it comes to discussing something so esoteric as Zen, it can be discussed. Only Zen people play games with each other. They play little tricks, they test each other out by saying to somebody, I remember when I met Paul Reps for the first time, who wrote that lovely book Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. And he said to me, Well, he said, you've written quite a number of books by now. You must think you're pretty fancy. I said, I haven't said a word. Oh, this is a Zen game, and people sort of feel each other out. There's a poem which says, When two Zen masters meet each other on the road, they need no introduction. Thieves recognize one another.

instantaneously. So now, having got that out of my chest, it's a save. And if I were to give you a really proper and really didn't truly educated talk about Zen, I would gather you round here and sit here in silence for five minutes and leave. And in a way, this would be a much more direct exposition of it than what I'm going to do instead, which is talk about it only. I have a feeling that you would feel that you were disappointed and somewhat cheated by this kind of behavior, by this left and five-minute silence. So then, this word Zen is Japanese way of pronouncing the Chinese word Chung, which in turn is the Chinese way of pronouncing the Sanskrit word Gianna. And Gianna is a very difficult word to translate into English, if not impossible. It's been called meditation. Meditation in English generally means sitting quietly and thinking about something, and that's not what Sam is. Contemplation might come a little nearer if you use the word in a very technical sense, the sense that it was used or still is used.

among Catholic mystics perhaps that's something a bit like Zen. But again, contemplation as we normally use the word has a sense of inactivity, a sense of not doing anything, of being completely still and passive. Whereas Zen is something highly active. So, we really don't have an English word for jhana Qian Zhen, but I would say that we do know what it is because we do all sorts of things every day of our lives in this spirit. When, for example, you drive a car, most Americans, at any rate, drive a car since they were teenagers and are very expert drivers. And when they drive a car, they don't think about it, they're one with the car. Or when a rider of a horse is one being with the horse, when you watch a good cowboy or cavalry rider, he's glued to the horse, he's like a centaur almost as the horse moves, he moves, which is in control, is the horse riding the man or the man riding the horse, you practically don't know. Same way when you have an excellent dancing partner.

who leads, who follows. It seems as if you are one body and you move together. That is then, that is Gianna. And so, in a wider sense, when a person doesn't react to life on the one hand or try to dominate it on the other, but when the internal world of one's own organism and the external world of other people and other things move together as if they were, and indeed are, one and the same motion, that is then. So, you could say in a very simple way that the real concern of Zen is to realize, not really to think, but to know in your bones that the inside world inside your skin and the outside world outside your skin, going out as far as anything can go into galaxies beyond galaxies, is all one world and all one being oneself, and you're it. And once you know that, then you have completely abolished all the problems that arise as a result of feeling that you are a stranger in the world, that you are set down in the middle of a hostile and alien domain of.

nature or people who are not you this whole sense strange man foreignness to the world is overcome in Zen now let me illustrate this little before we go into Zen in any kind of technical way by a few rather superficial but nevertheless significant facts out of Japanese culture and the place of Zen in Japanese culture. Japanese culture is, as you may have noticed or was, as you may have noticed, extraordinarily ritualistic. There is a right way of doing everything, a good form, a proper style, and nowhere is this more apparent than in such practices as the tea ceremony, arranging flowers, knowing how to dress, or knowing how to organize a formal dinner. The punctiliousness, the skill of these people in doing these things is quite remarkable, but in the same measure as they are very skillful of doing this thing, they are very worried about it. The whole question, for example, of bringing presents to somebody else, have they given us more than we've given them, did we remember this occasion, did we remember that occasion, these weigh very

heavily on the Japanese soul. The debt which you owe to your parents, the debt which you owe to your country, and to your Emperor, immeasurable infinite debt never can be paid. All these weigh very heavily, and therefore in Japan, until the sort of break away of modern youth with its westernized ideals, this is a very nervous culture turned about whether one is playing the ritual corrector. A culture like that needs an outlet, needs a safety valve, needs a way out of this thing, and then provides just that. And so, by contrast, when you meet a Japanese who is thoroughly trained in Zen, he is a different kind of personality altogether. For modern era Japanese, he is in manners not studiedly courteous, nor is he brusque, but he simply at-teams. He gives you his whole attention so long as you give him your whole attention. If you start wandering and frittering, he's got work to do and he promptly leaves. But so long as you are wanting to talk to him, he is there for.

you and for nobody else. And he sits down and he really sits. I know he doesn't worry about whether he ought to be somewhere else. And so, unable to sit with complete serenity in one place. You know if you have half an idea that you ought to be worrying about something out in the garden. Or that you ought to be cooking dinner. Or you ought to be done in your office or something. You can't sit where you are. You're not really there. You're kind of gas balloon that keeps wanting to wander up. But these people, when you'll see as you meet people connected within even they sometimes. The most neophyte novice of a priest is as this atmosphere of knowing how to live in the present and not to be fidgety and giggly and worrying about whether he's done the right thing. That's very much Zen style even though at the same time. The Zen people do have a very exacting and demanding disciplined. The function of this discipline is rather curious is to enable you to be.

comfortable. It's an aid to enable you, for example, to sleep on a concrete sidewalk on a cold, wet night and enjoy it, to relax completely under any situation of hardship. You see, ordinarily, when you sit on a you're out in the cold, you start shivering. Why? Because you're resisting the cold, you're tightening your muscles against the cold, and you get the staggers. But you were taught, if you'd learn Zen discipline, not to do that. Take it easy, go with the cold, relax. And all those monks in those monasteries here, there's cold as hell in winter, and they simply sit there most of the time. And there we would be frozen to death and miserable and have influenza in the great Siberian age. But they simply relax and learn how to take the cold. So there's nothing about Zen discipline which is masochistic. It isn't to beat your body because your body is bad and the creation of the devil or something. It has nothing to do with that. It is how to be comfortable under all circumstances.

Central to the main question of Zen, I said, these end people as you meet them and as you get to know their style of personality are at ease in a culture that is not at ease in a culture that is chronically concerned with protocol and is it just right. That is indeed a terribly self-conscious culture where everybody is always watching and having therefore second thoughts about everything. And so, the discipline of Zen is to enable you to act without watching yourself. We would say unselfconsciously. The Japanese are as terrified of this as we are. They think and we think if I don't watch myself, I'll make a mistake. If I don't hold a table over myself, I'll cease to be civilized and become a barbarian. If I don't discipline myself with all sorts of down on Tom's passions of yours, you will become like the month of Siberia who burst from his cell and devoured the father superior. So this is basic mistrust and so on in one's own spontaneity makes it makes us wonder.

that if the Zen people are really spontaneous and they don't plan and premeditate and hold clubs over themselves well, they become very very dangerous people socially when they go out and rape their mothers and daughters and murder their grandmothers to inherit their fortunes and so on and so forth. And then people just don't do that and yet they are perfectly spontaneous. So then let me try then and indicate how this discipline called Zen actually works. This will involve a little bit of letting the cat out of the bag but can be helped. Let's go back to what I told you was fundamental to Buddhism. Buddhism is unlike other religions in that it does not tell you anything. It doesn't require you to believe in anything. Buddhism is a dialogue and what I call the teachings of Buddhism are nothing more than the opening phrases or opening exchanges in the dialog. Buddhism is a dialogue between a Buddha and an ordinary man or rather someone who insists on defining himself as an ordinary man and thereby create the problem. I quoted you this

morning. Our saying that anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. And in exactly the same way in this culture anybody who goes to a guru, a spiritual teacher, or a Zen master, or whatever, ought to have his head examined. Or as the old Chinese master Toklas on put it, if you ask any question you get thirty blows with my stick, if you don't ask any question you get thirty blows. Does the same. In other words, what the hell are you doing around here defining yourself as a student and defining me as a teacher? In other words, you have to raise the problem. And in the way of training of Zen, this is very clearly emphasized. If you go to a Zen teacher and you approach him in the traditional way, the first thing he will do is to say, I haven't anything to teach, go away. Well, you say, What are these people doing around here? Aren't they your students? You say, Well, they were with me, but unfortunately we're very poor these days. We don't have enough rice really to go round and make ends.

meet and and we can't take on anybody else in this community. So you have to insist to be taken in every postulant for Zen training assumes immediately that the teacher has given him the brush-off in order to test his sincerity. In other words, if you really want this thing, you've got to work for it. That is it from the real point. The point is that you've got to make such a fuss to get in that you cannot withdraw gracefully after having made such a fast to get in because you put yourself on the spot and you define yourself as somebody needing help or somebody with a problem who needs a master in order to be helped out of the problem. So then when you've done this in the old days, of course, and it's still the formal rule among the Zen monasteries here, that when you are a postulant and you want to come in, you have to sit outside at the gate for a week or maybe only five days in a position of supplication with your head on earth bow down on the steps and they

let you in at night because they must give our hospitality to any wandering monk. But you expect not to go to sleep any of those five nights, but to sit there in meditation. And they give you food, but now you sit and you sit and you sit there, and you make a damn fool of yourself saying, I insist on getting into this thing. I insist on learning. I want to know what the secret of this master here is. And he's told you from the start that he doesn't have a secret of it. He doesn't teach anything. But you insist that he does. See, that is the situation of everybody who feels that life is a problem to be solved. Whether you want psychoanalysis, whether you want integration, whether you want salvation, whether you want Buddhahood, whatever it is you define yourself as wanted, you created the problem. What is the real problem that everybody brings to these teachers? What is it all about? It's basically this, isn't it, teacher? I want to get one up on the universe. I feel a stranger in this world. I feel

that it's a problem. In that having a body means that I am subject to disease and change and death. Having emotions and passions means that I am tormented by feelings, which I can't help having. And yet, it's not reasonable to act on those feelings without creating trouble. I feel trapped by this world, and so I want to get the better of it. And is there some wise man around who is a master of light and who can teach me to cope with all this? So that's what everybody is looking for in a teacher. The man who is the Saviour and we can show you how to cope with the Zen teacher says, I don't have any answers. Nobody believes that because he seems to be so competent. When you look at him, you can't believe that he has no answers. And yet, that's the consistent teaching of them that it has nothing to say and nothing to teach. A great Chinese master of the Tong dynasty called dingy in Chinese or rims I and Japanese said Zen is like using a

yellow leaf to stop a child crying. A child is crying for gold, and the father takes an autumn leaf with yellow and says, Go, or he said, It's like using an empty fist to deceive a child. See, you've got a closed fist, and you say to the child, How did I got here? and the child says, Let me see, Oh, which is behind your back, and the child becomes more and more excited to know what the devil's in that field and fights and fights and fights and finally is impressively in tears, and then suddenly you finally opened the fist and there's nothing inside. So in exactly the same way, the person who is under the impression that there is something that we ought to get tsiolis is dressed up in a big way to be a Buddha, to know the answer, to finally solve the problem, to get the message, to get the word, or however you put it, in other words, to be in control of your fate and of the world. Would you like it if you could have it?

and so all these powers are projected upon the Zen master. He is a Buddha, he is a master of life, and if he is, the reason why he is is that he has discovered the unreality of the whole problem. And so all these powers are projected upon the Zen master. He is a Buddha, he is a master of life, and if he is, the reason why he is is that he has discovered the unreality of the whole problem. There is not life on the one hand, a new on the other. It's all the same. But you see, you can't tell people that and just by telling get them to see it adjusting in exactly this way. You, the people who know that the earth is flat, can't be reasoned with. People who believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, absolutely impossible to reason with them at all because they know it is so. So in the same way, we tend to know that we are all separate, poor little mean, and that we are in need of salvation or something, and we know this so and so somebody says.

well you are not really that you know that that feeling of separateness is an illusion. Well, that's all very nice in theory of it. I don't feel it so what will you do? What will you do with the person who is convinced that the earth is flat? No way of reasoning with him. If it's for some reason important that he discovered that the earth is round, you've got to play a game with him. You want to play a trick on him. You tell him, Great, the earth is flat. Let's go and look over the edge. Wouldn't it be fun? Of course, if we're going to look over the edge of the earth, we must be very, very careful that we don't go round in circles or we'll never get to the edge. So we've got to go along consistently along a certain line of latitude westwards, and then we're going to come to the edge of the earth. Just so long as we're consistent. In other words, in order to convince a flat artist that the world is round, you've

got to make him act consistently on his own proposition and go consistently westwards to find the edge of the world. Now at last when he, by going consistently westwards, he comes back to the place where he started, he's been convinced that the earth is at least cylindrical, and he may believe. You then take it on faith that if he goes along a line of longitude, the same thing will happen. But you see what you did was to make him persist in his folly. Now that's the whole method of Zen: to make people become perfect, be good, and so explode the illusion of the separate ego. So what happens in effect then in the discipline of Zen when you finally convince the master that you are stupid enough to be accepted as a student, because you've persisted and because you've defined yourself as someone having a property. He has warned you well in advance that he has nothing to teach, but he says, Now I will ask you a question. In many ways of asking this question, but they all boil down to one.

common theme and that is who are you. You say you have a problem. You say you would like to get out of the sufferings of life. You say you would like to get one up on the universe. I want to know who's asking this question. Show me you and only they put it in such way sirs before your father and mother conceived you. What was your original nature questions like that and they will say now look I want that. I want to be shown. I don't want a lot of ideas about who you are. I don't want to know who you are in terms of a social role. You know that you have such degrees or you have such professional qualifications and such a name and such a family. Well, that's the past. I want to see you genuinely now. It's like saying to a person now don't be self-conscious. See, I want you right this minute to be completely sincere karna. Well, nothing is better calculated to make a person incapable of sincerity since when relatives come and aunts and

uncles and was a little child, and they wanted to review this child and see it, and the parent save the child, darling come on now in flavors the and the poor child is completely nonplussed doesn't know what to do because you cannot play on demand now what is the Zen teacher doing in saying to a person you must answer this question by coming before me in in fact a rather formal situation for you the kind of context in which a Zen master interviews his students is very formal and there he sits sort of enthroned tiger he's definitely in this culture a sensei a authority figure and so the last kind of person you can be fronting it with because you feel that he knows him through and through and that do you know I've ever read that story of von Kleist about a man who has a fight with a bear the bear is a mind reader and always knows what moves he's going to make so the demand can never conquer the bear unless he makes a move which he doesn't think about further how

will you do that? And they'll get the same feeling with relationship to a Zen master. You feel that he is absolutely aware of everything funny about you that he reads you like a book but that you can't find a way of being not funny. Think about this a little. You see it's we can arrange a group session. And this is a little game that's being played by lots of people. It's a kind of psychotherapy. We can arrange a group session in which the gimmick is this that when anybody says anything or does anything, the group or some section of the truth of the group challenges its sincerity and says why are you coming on so strong? Are you trying to dominate us? And you see anything that you deem can be interpreted in that way because the moment a group of people becomes starts making comments on its own behavior, it is setting up a situation within the beam which is analogous say in a TV studio to turning the camera on the monitor. When we start thinking about thinking, being aware of being where this is what.

is called in Japanese the observing self. I watch myself all the time think you're in hopeless mess but this is the price that human beings pay for having become self-conscious anxiety and killed anxiety because and I sure that I thought this out submission to carefully when I left the house. Did I turn off the gas stove and incidentally I remember turning it off but can I trust my memory. I would love to think about memory now and I wonder if I can trust it maybe I better go back and look. I went back and I looked but did I really see. I'm thinking about my site and whether whether this is quite authentic did I did I look properly because you know how the unconscious can alter your senses and so I better go and look again see you soon now. I've got into a sort of vicious circle where I'll never get away from the house this you always sort of getting mixed up is the penalty we pay for the advantageous gift of being able to know that we know it was a young man.

who said though it seems that I know that I know what I would like to see is the eye that knows me when I know that I know that I know and so this is the Zen trick. It's to put you into this situation in a very crucial way to think about thinking about thinking about thinking about or just the same thing to make a very strong effort not to think. That's zazen sit, let your senses operate and be responsive to whatever they may be around but don't think about. But now this is already thinking. I'm thinking about not thinking. How will I stop thinking about not thinking? So there you are see you're all caught up. It's like somebody came to you and they put tar in one hand or molasses feathers in the other slap the two hands together and rub them around said now pick off the feathers. So you see what happens the teacher is well aware that he's played this trick on you and he's going to see what will happen if you act and he's

going to help you to act consistently on this foolishness now you see what he's done is he simply made a special case of what society does to us all anyhow and this is true of most cultures. The high cultures of the world, whether they're of things or whether they're of the west, play a game on every new member. They don't know they're playing this game because their forefathers played it on them and they are still its hopeless victims. The game is called the double bind and the formula under which under whose auspices everybody comes into this world is as follows: you are required to do something which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily. You must love me, you must go to sleep, you must be natural, you must be free. Listen to that, you must be free. Now what happens, you see, society, the community into which every child enters, defines the child. We know who we are as other people reactors. So the other people say to us, you're an independent agent, you're

responsible. You are a freely acting individual, but this is a commandment, and we obey it because we can't help it. Child has no way of criticizing us or of seeing something phony about it, so the child has to be free because he is commanded to be so by the community. Now then, the community sets itself the problem: having defined the child as an independent agent and having got the child to believe that he's an independent agent because he isn't, in other words, he wouldn't believe this if he were independent, it then has trouble getting him to behave as the community wants him to behave. So they feel, and there's something ornery about all children. They're born in original sin and they're their refractions and so on. Of course, they are because they've been defined in a self-contradictory way. So when the he says to a person, You must be free, or when we are in a family relationship in which the members of the family are saying to each other, You must love me.

it's your duty to love me. What a bunch of rot. Supposing you one day you get up and you say to your wife, Darling, do you really love me? And she replies, But I am trying my very best to do so. Is that the answer you wanted? No, you wanted her to say, Darling, I can't help loving you. I love you so much I could eat you. You don't want her to try to love you, and yet that is what you put on people in almost any marriage ceremony: that you shall love this person. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. This is a double bind, and anybody who lives under the dominance of a double bind lives in a state of chronic frustration because he is devoting his whole life to solving a meaningless, nonsensical problem. Let's take the double bind that is the deepest of all: you must go on living. Now living is a spontaneous process, and to say to it, You must happen, is exactly the same thing as saying to

any kind of creative artist, you must come through with good tonight. You must give the superb performance, and above all, you must be unselfish. Well, this is being done to us all the time, and the object of the Zen discipline is that instead of doing this to people unconsciously as parents do it, and as teachers do it to children, and as the children's tears do it to their own peer members. In Zen, the double bind is put on you deliberately, knowing how skillfully good the teacher is, well aware of everything he's doing and what tricks he's playing on you because he has behind it all the compassionate intent of getting you into such a fierce double bind that you will see how stupid it is. So then what happens is this: he gives you the double bind, Be genuine. I want to see you do something that is the real. I had a friend who was studying Zen, and he was given some cohen like this to work on. And when he was one day going for his interview, he walked through the garden.

that connected the SoDo or the monk's study quarters with the master's place, and there was a big bullfrog. Bullfrogs in this country, a rather tame people don't eat them, and so he swept up the bullfrog and dropped it into the sleeve of his kimono. And when he got in front of the teacher to answer the cone, that is to say, to do spontaneously produce his genuine self, he produced the bullfrog. The teacher looked at it and shook his head and said, Mmm, too intellectual. First, we might say, too contrived, too studied. That's not yet you. How do you see the bind in this? It's like being told that everything is alright at this moment so long as you don't think of a green elephant. So try not to think of a green elephant now. As he works at this, as he tries to produce the genuine you, the teacher really strings him out on this and makes him work and work and work over a period of many months until he comes to the point of seeing this.

there is nothing you can do to be genuine. the more you do, the funnier you are. but at the opposite extreme, there is nothing you can not do. that is to say, you cannot give up trying to be genuine. you can't relax, you know, and be completely passive and say, well, let's forget about it, let's think about practical matters and forget all these spiritual concerns. the moment you do that, your abandonment of trying is itself an insidious form of trying. for example, it was a very interesting Hindu teacher by the name of Krishnamurti, but many of you may know about. and he tells people, you know, that all their religious inquiry, their yoga practices, they're reading religious books and so on, is nothing but a form of perpetuating one's egocentricity. but on a very refined and highbrow level. so he gets a kind of disciple who studiously avoids reading any kind of philosophical or edifying book. they are reduced to reading mystery stories. they become devoted non-disciples. see what a clever bind that is. it's the same.

as the Zen technique you can't in other words let go of you. We've seen in my point was at the beginning. We saw that the way of Buddhism is to let go of yourself to see that you live in a universe, which in which nothing can be grasped, therefore stop grasping. So here's the problem. I come and say to the teacher, teach me not to grab. You say, why do you want to know? And he shows you that the reason why you want to stop grasping is that it's a new form of crafting. You feel that you will beat the game by being unattached. It's horrible to grieve when somebody you love dies. There may be by being unattached to that person, I can avoid brief critic. Maybe you see by not having an ego when life comes and bangs on me, if there's nobody there, it'll be alright. So that's why I want non-ego state, that's phony. All this is a new way of safeguarding and protecting the ego so.

this is the way in which Buddhism is a dialogue so you see if you go back to fundamental primitive Buddhism people say to the Buddha I want to escape from suffering perfectly honest statement all right realize that suffering is caused by desire try not to design so the student goes away and tries to eliminate desires by controlling his mind and practicing yoga comes back to the teacher and says is pretty difficult but I have managed at least to get rid of some desire teacher says to him but you're still desiring to get rid of dinner what about that one and then the student sees that if he tries to stop desiring to get rid of desire but then he's got to stop desiring to get rid of not desiring to derive and suddenly he finds himself once more with molasses in one hand and feathers in the other absolutely tied up in a vicious level [Music] so he realizes there is nothing I can do about it and there's nothing I cannot do about it

and this predicament in zen is called a mosquito trying to bite an iron bull. A position of such cyclic extremity that nothing can be done about it. Now the point here is, what does this situation mean when you find yourself in that kind of a trap? What's the meaning of the trap? Why, that's very simple. If there's nothing you can do, and also nothing you cannot do about a given situation, it means that you are phony. That in other words, what we call a separate ego isn't there. 'Cause it can't do anything, because it is not an agent. And by virtue of the fact that it can't do anything, equally, it can't not do anything. It's completely phony. So what has happened is to expose the fiction of there being a separate ego, either to force its actions upon the world, or to have the action of the world forced upon it as a puppet. This thing just doesn't exist, except as a figment of the imagination, or except as a game rule. Let's pretend everybody is responsible, is independent, is separate.

sure, that's a great game. But it's a game. And so, the whole object of the Zen dialogue between the teacher and the student is to carry the game of being the separate ego to its logical conclusion, to its reduction ad absurdum, so that as Blake said, the fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Alan Watts - Be Comfortable Under Any Circumstances

Words Of Wellbeing

The Significance of Zen Buddhism in Japanese Culture

Zen Buddhism has had a fundamental influence on shaping Japanese culture and arts.

Zen is difficult to describe, as it is based on the concept of active contemplation, which is different from the traditional idea of meditation.

Zen practitioners engage in active activities with a sense of oneness, similar to being one with a car while driving or being completely in sync with a dancing partner.

The Essence of Zen Philosophy in Japanese Culture

Zen philosophy emphasizes the unity of the internal and external world, aiming to abolish the feeling of being a stranger in the world.

Japanese culture's ritualistic nature creates a heavy sense of debt and worry, but Zen training transforms individuals into serene and present personalities.

The discipline of Zen is focused on enabling comfort and relaxation under any circumstances, rather than being masochistic.

The Discipline of Zen and the Dialogue of Buddhism

Zen discipline aims to enable people to act unselfconsciously and spontaneously, in contrast to the self-conscious and second-guessing nature of modern culture.

Buddhism is seen as a dialogue between a teacher and a student, emphasizing the problem of defining oneself as an ordinary person and seeking solutions or enlightenment.

Zen training requires sincere determination, with teachers initially rejecting students to test their commitment, creating a sense of needing help and putting themselves on the spot.

The Search for Enlightenment in Zen Teaching

People seek a wise teacher to help them cope with the challenges of life, but Zen teachers claim to have no answers, which is hard for their followers to believe.

Zen masters are projected with powers of being a Buddha and a master of life because they have realized the unreality of the problem.

The teaching of Zen is to address the illusion of separateness, but it's challenging to convince others of this, so a different approach, like playing a trick, is often needed.

The Zen Method of Challenging Self-Perception

The Zen discipline aims to shatter the illusion of the separate ego by challenging a person's true nature.

The master's question "who are you" is designed to evoke sincere self-reflection beyond social roles and past experiences.

The formal and authoritative setting of the Zen master creates a unique dynamic where students feel deeply seen and understood.

The Paradox of the Observing Self in Japanese Philosophy

The concept of the "observing self" in Japanese philosophy explores the internal struggle of self-consciousness and anxiety.

It delves into the unending loop of self-doubt and the struggle to trust one's own perceptions and memories.

This philosophy highlights the double bind game that society plays on every individual, commanding them to be free and independent while also expecting them to conform to societal expectations.

Being told or expected to love someone creates a double bind, leading to chronic frustration.

In Zen discipline, the deliberate use of double bind is meant to show the futility of trying to force genuine feelings or actions.

The story of a Zen student trying to produce his genuine self, only to realize that trying or not trying both lead to the same result, illustrates the impossible nature of the double bind.

The Zen Dialogue on Letting Go of the Ego

The Zen technique focuses on letting go of the ego and the futility of trying to escape suffering through detachment.

In the dialogue, the teacher exposes the fakery of the separate ego and the endless cycle of desire.

The ultimate goal is to lead the student to the realization of the fiction of the separate ego.