Thank you for another honest video! Sure, Zen is not some form of self-therapy, but... if everything in the world is OK exactly as it is, than our presumed illusion that we can change the world and ourselves and our desire to act accordingly must be OK as well. If someone tells you to just sit back and accept reality exactly as it is without doing anything to change it, they are contradicting themselves. The are NOT accepting that part of the world (i.e. ME!) that does not want to just sit back and accept reality as it is. To accept yourself means to change yourself. Only the one who changes teh world truely accepts the world.
dang. so glad i finally started watching this channel. it's nice to see some Zen teachers who aren't afraid of personality (like you and brad warner). Also: Sling Blade is one of the greatest. Mustard and biscuits. Also: I like the dogen quote, 'practicing compassion like mindlessly reaching for a pillow in the middle of the night', or something like that. And by meditating and doing buddhist stuff, we are clearing a path for ourselves to "do good" effortlessly, without those pesky little "good intentions" that always seem to ruin things.
Not long ago I had an experience, it was great, love joy, the unity of universe and more. During that state I wondered about the role of evil, and it became clear evil comes from ignorance of our true nature, and hate of evil doesn't make sense because everything is one. But, I came to rhe conclusion that even coming from ignorance, evil is wrong, and we have to deal with it, at the same time, being everything one, we should deal with it without hate. I know it's easier said than done, but we at least shoud try to act this way if we want to follow the path.
As a psychotherapist who is also a Buddhist (of sorts), I would like to comment about the issue raised in the first part of your thoughtful video, specifically, the relation between psychotherapy and spirituality. While both are concerned with elimination of suffering, these projects are not necessarily at odds. As Freud said, it is the goal of psychoanalysis to eliminate neurotic suffering so that we can deal with the true/real suffering of life. And dealing with true/real suffering is the area with which spirituality is concerned. In this way psychoanalysis can serve as a prerequisite to true spiritual work, whatever that might be. And as your video demonstrates, this is no easy question to answer.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Over the years I’ve come to think that any Zen practice that is at odds with therapy is not a true Zen practice, and vice versa.
I think a lot of people would benefit from therapy, even enlightened individuals are not immune from needing guidance and help at times. Therapy can help you strengthen your own reflection of your mind. A good therapy will help you see the errors in your thinking, and a bad therapy will make you blame your parents, etc. Both Buddhism and therapy have been beneficial to reduce the suffering of this life, and find meaning in the suffering. Seeing suffering as another part of the path to wisdom. Suffering is like coal, wisdom and time create diamonds from it.
For me, going to see a therapist is like taking my car to the garage because it needs fixing. And just as I see my car as an instance that I can use to deal with the aspect of transport in the physical world. I also see my car as an agent that helps me to take advantage of opportunities, for example to take my neighbour to visit her grandparents. It's the same with the self, which is constantly being re-created every time I interact or don't interact with my environment and vice versa. The thing is, I have suffered from recurrent depression for most of my life. I'm in my 40s now and have only recently discovered the possibility that my depression is a symptom of a traumatic event from my childhood. However, in my opinion, a self suffering from such a condition is like a black hole trying to eat itself. So in order to stop the Self from circling around itself and causing more unnecessary suffering, I need a specialist to help me patch things up. For me, therapy is a tool to help me refocus on my journey. It's easier when all the wheels are rolling in the same direction. I once said to a Buddhist friend about my depressed self: "I have to take care of it before I can get rid of it".
Thanks so much for sharing this. It sounds like the perfect reason to do therapy within a meditative context. I think you’re right, I’ve also often thought that in order to lose the self, you have to have a somewhat unified self. Otherwise you’re losing this broken self that’s all over the place, can’t be done!
From another cognitive therapist/buddhist perspective: This seems to be a problem with thinking in all-or-nothing extremes: That you either have to struggle and suffer endlessly with hating and not accepting the evil things going on in the world, or you have to make deep peace with it, accept it, and give up on changing it at all. Reality is almost always on some spectrum between 0% and 100%. Acceptance is not the enemy of change. Accepting the suffering people create doesn't mean that you give up on trying to change it. It just means you give up your god-like demands that things SHOULD or MUST be the way you want them to be. You stop rejecting the way things are and stop "musterbating" all over the place. Demanding that humans SHOULDN'T kill each other and create suffering is like saying volcanoes shouldn't erupt. THAT'S WHAT THEY DO. It is in their nature. Humans seem to have quite the talent for killing and creating suffering! In fact, it would make much more sense to say that humans SHOULD kill each other, because that's the way humans are! However, you don't have to like it. In fact, you can hate it with every fiber of your being. It is healthy to dislike things that cause you suffering and have strong desires to ensure that you and others act in ways that avoid that suffering. However, it is quite unreasonable to demand things SHOULD be the way you want them to be. The gods of chaos giggle in your face and say, "Why should they?" There's also some problems here with overgeneralized labels like being "broken." There's no such thing as a "broken" person. There are certainly people who have flaws, shortcomings, and a load of problems that make living their life difficult... but that doesn't make them "broken." Try to come up with a definition of what it means to be a "broken" person. You'll usually find that this definition is nonsensicle, cruel, or it will rely on some arbitrary cutoff point. For example, is a "broken" person someone who fails some of the time or all the time? If some of the time, then we're all broken because we all fail at some point or another. If all of the time, then no one is broken, because it's impossible to literally fail at everything all the time. It is unrealistic to try and paint the entirety of someone from a small subset of flaws out of their other millions of actions and traits. It is also entirely a matter of cultural and subjective morals. Nearly everything that someone says is "wrong" with you, I can point to the same thing and explain why it is what's "right" with you. You've got crippling social anxiety? That's great! Humans are one of the top causes of suffering for other humans, so to me, your anxiety is totally justified. In the same vein, "Evil" is a vague, abstract, overgeneralizing label. It's definition is subjective, cultural, and ever-changing. What is evil to one person may be good to another. Viewing the world in extreme good-vs-evil / all-or-nothing terms is prime-time suffering because it is not reality. No matter how you try to sit down and define what is makes someone "broken", "good", or "evil", you'll end up with a deeply flawed definition. In reality, there are only traits, tendencies, and behaviors. We are all very flawed humans. We all have impermanent tendencies to act in ways that create suffering and to relieve it, sometimes doing both, but often doing neither. In all practical terms though, we generally want to be minimize suffering/pain and maximize peace/pleasure. Our overgeneralizations and "Musterbation" , even if distorted or self-defeating, have many social benefits that ensure our society can function properly.
If the problem of zen is suffering, and separation is an illusion then responding with compassion to the suffering of others is a true expression of the Dharma. It's the middle way, zen/buddhism asks us to have one foot in the objective world and one in the other shore. I don't think being an enlightened being who is unaffected by all the world's suffering is useful to anyone but you. There's a lot to unpack here and lots of perspectives to consider. Thanks for posting the video.
If you get a broken leg, should you see a doctor or meditate? When it comes to ptsd, the problem isnt what happened in the past, the problem is that the traumatic memory hasnt been processed and so the mind keeps trying and failing to integrate it. If 'letting go of the story' allows someone to do that then im glad that works for them. If not, then im glad psychology has some answers. Its impossible to be above human concerns. Even if you have an enlightenment experience, it doesnt just go on forever. If we are meant to accept everything as being okay, then maybe we need to accept that it is okay to not be able to accept some things. Maybe we dont have control over our relationship to our own suffering either and zen can help us gain perspective on that. Zen is the kind of thing that can be joined to almost any other discipline - there were people saying zen was most useful for combat like takuan even though buddism is generally against murder, so saying it can be useful in combination with psychology is like saying it can be useful in combination with playing piano.
Thanks Shozan, here are some of my scattered thoughts on the video. I think Zen is unique among other schools because it removes a lot of what I call “world building”, and pushes us towards holding a more agnostic view on things. I think we suffer when we try to make too much sense of the world. Practicing radical acceptance key in this. My concern, respectfully, is that there may be too much aloofness in some of your sentiments. I think there are phenomena that hinder (or possibly outright prohibit) people’s ability to achieve/seek out enlightenment, and this should be something distressing to anyone, especially us Buddhists. To use your example, I would not be surprised if some of the victims of the attacks are left with irreversible PTSD, and it maybe impossibly for them to seek a spiritual path. To accept the world as it is does not mean we can’t strive to make it better. An analogy I heard a while ago was that the Buddhist view (in contrast to a fatalist view, which would argue all phenomena is like a record on a turntable, waiting to be played) is that all phenomena is like a live free-jazz performance. Just in the ways that the players inherent the tempo, key, etc., we inherit the world around us, and just momentarily, we are forced to make our next move. We can’t control what came before, we were stuck/forced to proceed with what was given. All this said, I am one of those who found Buddhism at my rock bottom, and I’m forever grateful for the practice because it alone was the one thing that helped. It was like a bucket of cold water. Maybe too much wisdom, not enough compassion.
If you want to sing out, sing out. If you want to be free, be free. 'Cause there's a million ways to be, ya know that there are. If you want to be high, be high. If you want to be low, be low. 'Cause there's a million things to do. Ya know that there are. - Cat Stevens, 1970
My understanding is that you can try to improve the world as long as you understand that improving the world won't make you happy. Self-improvement, on the other hand, just seems contradictory.
From my perspective of being an extreme zen newbie, I need some clarification. Does being ok with the whole cosmos equate not doing anything then to alleviate the suffering in our world? In my thinking that would do nothing but increase the suffering in our world, including our own.
"Inventing new ways to be stupid," was a phrase a friend often used. I don't think we should use the Dharma to bypass common sense. BTW, the simplest way to deal with US taxes when living overseas is through the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. You get a tax credit on US income tax for the foreign income taxes you paid for income earned overseas. There are more complicated ways of doing this but that's what I used when I lived in Canada.
Great video ❤ I am writing it already in the middle ;-) so when you talk about therapy and changing the world. I would only not ignore the news. Balance between silence and illumination, practiced during zazen can work here too; it is not about not knowing and cutting ourselves off.
@@zenconfidential25 I'd very much like to ask you a bit more, see, I know a teacher who says that psychotherapists do harm and Buddhist psychotherapists are the worst kind of people, because they sooth suffering, so the great motivation, thus disabling their patients from reaching the root of suffering, while knowing (as Buddhists) that it would be possible otherwise. My view: obviously, if you can just let go of a story, there is no problem. But what if you can't? Moreover, often you don't even know what stories drive you, it's psychotherapy that allows you to uncover them. You said "big questions and no answers" for activism, but I wonder what do you think about that teacher's view and psychotherapy itself in the context of practice? As you do all these healing practices, I am guessing you would have an answer here.
"Things just are." The world just is. It's like the Daoist "Who is to say what is good, or what is bad," story. The world just is, and we ascribe or do not ascribe value to it. And that value may and probably will change at some point. And you will judge, your brain judges, that's what it is designed to do. This, though is not the Self.
@zenconfidential25 I'm not particularly familiar with Zen other than pop-Zen, but are the principles of Dharma/Artha/Karma/Moksha in Zen? I assume Dharma/Karma/Moksha are, to a similar degree that they are in Sanatana Dharma. These are important to look at, I think, as it may be someone's Dharma and possibly Artha to change the world. I think Buddhism, at least what I've seen in the West, overlooks these concepts and aims directly at Moksha, to the detriment of the individual and lay person. If the Universe is the way that it is, and no one ever does anything about it, or no one is supposed to do anything about it because it's pointless, then Buddhism becomes Nihilistic. If, though, these things are applicable, and action needs to occur, then Buddhism becomes dynamic and lively, and anti-Nihilistic. So I suppose then, you've got to answer the question for yourself: is your form of Buddhism nihilistic and we should just retreat and not affect change, or do we affect change, and by way of that action create and spread compassion and joy? Thanks for responding to my earlier comment, BTW, it's cool to interact with creators.
Basically, essentially, fundamentally, the bottom line is, my final offer, this is no bs, I kid you not... There is nothing in our self-interest. There is nothing against our self-interest. Everything works out to be as it is and what is, is. If you want to be blue be blue. If you want to sing out sing out. Whatever you do will be done. There's a million ways to be. You know what you are. Are we cool?
Great vid. Thanks, I needed to hear that. I'm always trying to square this circle, or solve the problem of evil and suffering. It's in our nature to need answers and it's in the universe' nature to keep presenting questions and problems. I had a profound moment of experiencing it all as being manifest neutrality - neither malevolent nor benign. Which made sense at the time but now seems confusing again! And that's how it goes!!😂 Namo Amida Bu!
Here is something that really happened in my life: Years ago I was called to go save the life of an inmate at a facility. I lost sleep, but due to my excellent skill and focus (after years of buddhist and medical training) succeeded in diverting certain death in another. Some months later I learned that same inmate had murdered several innocent bystanders and was subsequently killed in a gun fight with the police. My question: did I do good or evil that night?
Phew. I'm not sure this one is about you one way or another. You were part of something, you did your job, and then that led to something else happening. Thank you for sharing this. What do you think?
@@zenconfidential25I think but that doesn't get me far. I haven't an answer. I can only point. 😌 Camus whose writing you have covered earlier does get down to answering but ultimately gets to a similar wall. Certain Catholic practices(St. Benedict, St. Francis, among others) do help but require unconditional faith, which is extraordinary and rare! There is a field that does clarify and "enlighen" ...circling the field is a moat...
Causality and assigning blame is a tricky thing. You could question every person and action that led to this inmate killing others. Did their mother do evil by birthing them? Did their teachers do evil by not teaching them enough? Did all the people who failed to help adjust them back into society do evil? Did all the other tens of thousands of people who have sustained the life of this person do evil? Did the person who called on you to save the inmate's life do evil? And so and so forth. If you subscribe to the idea that we do not have free will, and causality is just the universe unfolding following the laws of physics, then you had no choice to save that person, and that person had no choice but to kill. Most people don't like that view though. A common solution is to focus on the mind and intent. Did you intend to save this person's life so they could go and kill again? I'd wager the answer is no. However, you can still contribute to the evil in the world without any intention of doing so. Such as working as an engineer for a military drone company that ends up selling their goods for war without you knowing. Should you be blamed for this? It's not clear. It gets even fuzzier when you start looking at people as a mix of both capability of creating and relieving suffering. There are many doctors who are also serial killers. They've saved thousands of lives, but also killed many as well. There are people who can do both tremendous good in the world and tremendous evil. For some religions, it was God who created Hell.
I would differentiate between the universe and human civilization, the Kosmos and us as living beings within it, the microcosm that within it reflects the Natural Macro Kosmos and human societies. Simply put, life and society. The living in the now and our adaptation to society. With nature, in nature...what little is left of it...I have no problem. On the other hand, with a cruel and murderous fellow...I begin to think with my whole body. If that fellow is a government, an institution, I start to get uneasy.... The things of Samsara are confusing, and have nothing to do with the original mind, but with the conditioning of the country and the time, with the socialization that you have had. Anyway...the things of this "social world" cry out to heaven as unfair.... We will have to help to change them... How about demanding a couple of commandments to the institutions and the government...? No killing...no war.... We have to get involved... The universe does not need us... But in the human aspect we are worse than in the feudalism of the Middle Ages .... psychologically speaking... there were no 📱
Is it possibly the case that when answering this question we tend to do it with the intellect. But actually our answer is in what we do, not what we should do. Also then isn’t Being attached also OK. Isnt it also part of the world and might ‘not being attached’ also possibly strengthen the sense of ego and separateness.
I think caring and being concerned is okay for sure. For me, being attached is when I fixate that care and concern and somehow that involves ego again, and that causes suffering. I think the attachment is the problem, the fixation.
Always very skeptical of "removing human suffering", by any means. Enlightenment - if it is the removal of human suffering - sounds boring, at least after a while. Buddhism helps I think with the kind of injury to the self that, without Buddhism, is terrifying and alienating. It is a buffer against atomisation and TOTAL dispair and helplessness. But human suffering, uncertainty, doubt, not-having-all-the-answers - i don't WANT to be without those things. You cannot find love without it's opposite, for example. You cannot find calm, without comparing it to a storm, etc. The key i think is that psychiatry deals with symptoms - symptoms being the key word. People deserve and need to be aleviated from certain symptoms, anyone with an anxiety disorder will truly know the meaning of "symptom" - the repetative manifestation of a particular psychological process that is incredibly painful. Buddhism, in my view, and from personal experience, is the lesser option to treat such symptoms. It can certainly help, but if a person needs therapy, they need therapy first, I would say. This is why i like the strand of Zen that says that enlightenment is impossible/doesn't exist. Truly think about what it would be like to be without human suffering and doubt and it kinda becomes a bit terrifying. I didn't sign up to be a dewy eyed know it all. I find reading philosophy that is very much outside of Zen or nondualism a perfect counter balance. There are plenty in Buddhist circles who think they truly have worked out the answer to the endlessly complex and unanswerable issue of "human suffering."
Reminded here of the famous quote of "zazen is good for nothing" which is to say that zen itself is good for nothing. If the answer of your spirituality to the "problem" of evil is a radical reconceptualization of all reality, that's a very tough sell, especially to people who have been victimized by human hatred. This is a reason why zen, though well known, has few serious adherents these days.
For what it's worth, one of the reasons I withdrew from the world of Zen, after decades of practice (and I still practice on my own) is the way therapy has taken over Western Zen. My view is that the Buddha was not a therapist and neither was Dogen and that's because Zen is not a form of therapy. The therapeutic paradigm constricts the world of Zen and, in a way, makes Zen pointless (why do Zen when you can just go to a therapist?). Like I say, for what it's worth, that's how I see it. // Regarding seeing the precepts as upaya, I think that is a misunderstanding. The precepts are not instrumental, like a raft you can discard after landing on the 'other shore'. They are qualities of what it means to be a Bodhisattva; in other words the practice of the precepts aligns the practitioner to ultimacy; you become the precepts. Thanks for posting on these difficult topics.
Yes but do you know how to become the precepts? Do you know how to become compassion? It's not something that you have to exercise, it happens instantly when you align with right view. I can point it out if you like or you can tell me..
Thank you for another honest video! Sure, Zen is not some form of self-therapy, but... if everything in the world is OK exactly as it is, than our presumed illusion that we can change the world and ourselves and our desire to act accordingly must be OK as well. If someone tells you to just sit back and accept reality exactly as it is without doing anything to change it, they are contradicting themselves. The are NOT accepting that part of the world (i.e. ME!) that does not want to just sit back and accept reality as it is. To accept yourself means to change yourself. Only the one who changes teh world truely accepts the world.
That's a great point, thank you Muho-san.
There's no point to being attached to withdrawing, either.
Agreed.
Thanks for showing emotion. It's important to feel the world, which is lost on some Zen teachers.
I appreciate this feedback very much, thank you.
dang. so glad i finally started watching this channel. it's nice to see some Zen teachers who aren't afraid of personality (like you and brad warner). Also: Sling Blade is one of the greatest. Mustard and biscuits. Also: I like the dogen quote, 'practicing compassion like mindlessly reaching for a pillow in the middle of the night', or something like that. And by meditating and doing buddhist stuff, we are clearing a path for ourselves to "do good" effortlessly, without those pesky little "good intentions" that always seem to ruin things.
Thank you my friend. Also...Sling Blade IS one of the greatest.
Your compassion here is palpable. This is as genuine as it gets. So yes, the Zen approach. ❤ bowing
Wow, thank you.
Bowing back to you.
Not long ago I had an experience, it was great, love joy, the unity of universe and more. During that state I wondered about the role of evil, and it became clear evil comes from ignorance of our true nature, and hate of evil doesn't make sense because everything is one. But, I came to rhe conclusion that even coming from ignorance, evil is wrong, and we have to deal with it, at the same time, being everything one, we should deal with it without hate. I know it's easier said than done, but we at least shoud try to act this way if we want to follow the path.
That makes a ton of sense. And has a lot of wisdom, I think. Evil is maybe almost like a technical problem of the heart, or heart-mind.
thank you..important big questions right now🙏
Nin-san, I miss you!! I hope you are well.
Often it is important to remember that the first teaching of the Buddha is The Middle Way. Thank you for this video. I will certainly listen to more.
Well said! you.
As a psychotherapist who is also a Buddhist (of sorts), I would like to comment about the issue raised in the first part of your thoughtful video, specifically, the relation between psychotherapy and spirituality. While both are concerned with elimination of suffering, these projects are not necessarily at odds. As Freud said, it is the goal of psychoanalysis to eliminate neurotic suffering so that we can deal with the true/real suffering of life. And dealing with true/real suffering is the area with which spirituality is concerned. In this way psychoanalysis can serve as a prerequisite to true spiritual work, whatever that might be. And as your video demonstrates, this is no easy question to answer.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Over the years I’ve come to think that any Zen practice that is at odds with therapy is not a true Zen practice, and vice versa.
I think a lot of people would benefit from therapy, even enlightened individuals are not immune from needing guidance and help at times. Therapy can help you strengthen your own reflection of your mind. A good therapy will help you see the errors in your thinking, and a bad therapy will make you blame your parents, etc. Both Buddhism and therapy have been beneficial to reduce the suffering of this life, and find meaning in the suffering. Seeing suffering as another part of the path to wisdom. Suffering is like coal, wisdom and time create diamonds from it.
Well put, thank you.
For me, going to see a therapist is like taking my car to the garage because it needs fixing. And just as I see my car as an instance that I can use to deal with the aspect of transport in the physical world. I also see my car as an agent that helps me to take advantage of opportunities, for example to take my neighbour to visit her grandparents.
It's the same with the self, which is constantly being re-created every time I interact or don't interact with my environment and vice versa.
The thing is, I have suffered from recurrent depression for most of my life. I'm in my 40s now and have only recently discovered the possibility that my depression is a symptom of a traumatic event from my childhood.
However, in my opinion, a self suffering from such a condition is like a black hole trying to eat itself. So in order to stop the Self from circling around itself and causing more unnecessary suffering, I need a specialist to help me patch things up.
For me, therapy is a tool to help me refocus on my journey. It's easier when all the wheels are rolling in the same direction.
I once said to a Buddhist friend about my depressed self: "I have to take care of it before I can get rid of it".
Thanks so much for sharing this. It sounds like the perfect reason to do therapy within a meditative context. I think you’re right, I’ve also often thought that in order to lose the self, you have to have a somewhat unified self. Otherwise you’re losing this broken self that’s all over the place, can’t be done!
I just really,really don't know.
same
From another cognitive therapist/buddhist perspective: This seems to be a problem with thinking in all-or-nothing extremes: That you either have to struggle and suffer endlessly with hating and not accepting the evil things going on in the world, or you have to make deep peace with it, accept it, and give up on changing it at all. Reality is almost always on some spectrum between 0% and 100%.
Acceptance is not the enemy of change. Accepting the suffering people create doesn't mean that you give up on trying to change it. It just means you give up your god-like demands that things SHOULD or MUST be the way you want them to be. You stop rejecting the way things are and stop "musterbating" all over the place. Demanding that humans SHOULDN'T kill each other and create suffering is like saying volcanoes shouldn't erupt. THAT'S WHAT THEY DO. It is in their nature. Humans seem to have quite the talent for killing and creating suffering! In fact, it would make much more sense to say that humans SHOULD kill each other, because that's the way humans are! However, you don't have to like it. In fact, you can hate it with every fiber of your being. It is healthy to dislike things that cause you suffering and have strong desires to ensure that you and others act in ways that avoid that suffering. However, it is quite unreasonable to demand things SHOULD be the way you want them to be. The gods of chaos giggle in your face and say, "Why should they?"
There's also some problems here with overgeneralized labels like being "broken." There's no such thing as a "broken" person. There are certainly people who have flaws, shortcomings, and a load of problems that make living their life difficult... but that doesn't make them "broken." Try to come up with a definition of what it means to be a "broken" person. You'll usually find that this definition is nonsensicle, cruel, or it will rely on some arbitrary cutoff point.
For example, is a "broken" person someone who fails some of the time or all the time? If some of the time, then we're all broken because we all fail at some point or another. If all of the time, then no one is broken, because it's impossible to literally fail at everything all the time. It is unrealistic to try and paint the entirety of someone from a small subset of flaws out of their other millions of actions and traits. It is also entirely a matter of cultural and subjective morals. Nearly everything that someone says is "wrong" with you, I can point to the same thing and explain why it is what's "right" with you. You've got crippling social anxiety? That's great! Humans are one of the top causes of suffering for other humans, so to me, your anxiety is totally justified.
In the same vein, "Evil" is a vague, abstract, overgeneralizing label. It's definition is subjective, cultural, and ever-changing. What is evil to one person may be good to another. Viewing the world in extreme good-vs-evil / all-or-nothing terms is prime-time suffering because it is not reality. No matter how you try to sit down and define what is makes someone "broken", "good", or "evil", you'll end up with a deeply flawed definition. In reality, there are only traits, tendencies, and behaviors. We are all very flawed humans. We all have impermanent tendencies to act in ways that create suffering and to relieve it, sometimes doing both, but often doing neither.
In all practical terms though, we generally want to be minimize suffering/pain and maximize peace/pleasure. Our overgeneralizations and "Musterbation" , even if distorted or self-defeating, have many social benefits that ensure our society can function properly.
If the problem of zen is suffering, and separation is an illusion then responding with compassion to the suffering of others is a true expression of the Dharma. It's the middle way, zen/buddhism asks us to have one foot in the objective world and one in the other shore.
I don't think being an enlightened being who is unaffected by all the world's suffering is useful to anyone but you.
There's a lot to unpack here and lots of perspectives to consider.
Thanks for posting the video.
Thank you, my friend. There is indeed a heck of a lot to consider.
If you get a broken leg, should you see a doctor or meditate? When it comes to ptsd, the problem isnt what happened in the past, the problem is that the traumatic memory hasnt been processed and so the mind keeps trying and failing to integrate it. If 'letting go of the story' allows someone to do that then im glad that works for them. If not, then im glad psychology has some answers. Its impossible to be above human concerns. Even if you have an enlightenment experience, it doesnt just go on forever. If we are meant to accept everything as being okay, then maybe we need to accept that it is okay to not be able to accept some things. Maybe we dont have control over our relationship to our own suffering either and zen can help us gain perspective on that.
Zen is the kind of thing that can be joined to almost any other discipline - there were people saying zen was most useful for combat like takuan even though buddism is generally against murder, so saying it can be useful in combination with psychology is like saying it can be useful in combination with playing piano.
Thanks Shozan, here are some of my scattered thoughts on the video.
I think Zen is unique among other schools because it removes a lot of what I call “world building”, and pushes us towards holding a more agnostic view on things. I think we suffer when we try to make too much sense of the world. Practicing radical acceptance key in this.
My concern, respectfully, is that there may be too much aloofness in some of your sentiments. I think there are phenomena that hinder (or possibly outright prohibit) people’s ability to achieve/seek out enlightenment, and this should be something distressing to anyone, especially us Buddhists. To use your example, I would not be surprised if some of the victims of the attacks are left with irreversible PTSD, and it maybe impossibly for them to seek a spiritual path.
To accept the world as it is does not mean we can’t strive to make it better.
An analogy I heard a while ago was that the Buddhist view (in contrast to a fatalist view, which would argue all phenomena is like a record on a turntable, waiting to be played) is that all phenomena is like a live free-jazz performance. Just in the ways that the players inherent the tempo, key, etc., we inherit the world around us, and just momentarily, we are forced to make our next move. We can’t control what came before, we were stuck/forced to proceed with what was given.
All this said, I am one of those who found Buddhism at my rock bottom, and I’m forever grateful for the practice because it alone was the one thing that helped. It was like a bucket of cold water.
Maybe too much wisdom, not enough compassion.
Thank you my friend.
If you want to sing out, sing out.
If you want to be free, be free.
'Cause there's a million ways to be, ya know that there are.
If you want to be high, be high.
If you want to be low, be low.
'Cause there's a million things to do. Ya know that there are.
- Cat Stevens, 1970
My understanding is that you can try to improve the world as long as you understand that improving the world won't make you happy. Self-improvement, on the other hand, just seems contradictory.
From my perspective of being an extreme zen newbie, I need some clarification. Does being ok with the whole cosmos equate not doing anything then to alleviate the suffering in our world? In my thinking that would do nothing but increase the suffering in our world, including our own.
Would being ok with the cosmos necessitate not doing anything to alleviate the suffering?
"Inventing new ways to be stupid," was a phrase a friend often used. I don't think we should use the Dharma to bypass common sense. BTW, the simplest way to deal with US taxes when living overseas is through the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. You get a tax credit on US income tax for the foreign income taxes you paid for income earned overseas. There are more complicated ways of doing this but that's what I used when I lived in Canada.
Love your clip
thank you!
Great video ❤ I am writing it already in the middle ;-) so when you talk about therapy and changing the world.
I would only not ignore the news. Balance between silence and illumination, practiced during zazen can work here too; it is not about not knowing and cutting ourselves off.
Truth be told I def. don't ignore the news. I just try not to feed the news junkie beast within! ;)
@@zenconfidential25 I'd very much like to ask you a bit more, see, I know a teacher who says that psychotherapists do harm and Buddhist psychotherapists are the worst kind of people, because they sooth suffering, so the great motivation, thus disabling their patients from reaching the root of suffering, while knowing (as Buddhists) that it would be possible otherwise.
My view: obviously, if you can just let go of a story, there is no problem. But what if you can't? Moreover, often you don't even know what stories drive you, it's psychotherapy that allows you to uncover them.
You said "big questions and no answers" for activism, but I wonder what do you think about that teacher's view and psychotherapy itself in the context of practice? As you do all these healing practices, I am guessing you would have an answer here.
Good questions, that highlight our confusion. Of course, there is no possible separation between us and the world.
That sums it up, thank you.
"Things just are." The world just is. It's like the Daoist "Who is to say what is good, or what is bad," story. The world just is, and we ascribe or do not ascribe value to it. And that value may and probably will change at some point. And you will judge, your brain judges, that's what it is designed to do. This, though is not the Self.
Thank you, that makes sense to me.
@zenconfidential25 I'm not particularly familiar with Zen other than pop-Zen, but are the principles of Dharma/Artha/Karma/Moksha in Zen? I assume Dharma/Karma/Moksha are, to a similar degree that they are in Sanatana Dharma. These are important to look at, I think, as it may be someone's Dharma and possibly Artha to change the world. I think Buddhism, at least what I've seen in the West, overlooks these concepts and aims directly at Moksha, to the detriment of the individual and lay person. If the Universe is the way that it is, and no one ever does anything about it, or no one is supposed to do anything about it because it's pointless, then Buddhism becomes Nihilistic. If, though, these things are applicable, and action needs to occur, then Buddhism becomes dynamic and lively, and anti-Nihilistic. So I suppose then, you've got to answer the question for yourself: is your form of Buddhism nihilistic and we should just retreat and not affect change, or do we affect change, and by way of that action create and spread compassion and joy? Thanks for responding to my earlier comment, BTW, it's cool to interact with creators.
Thanks.
You're welcome my friend.
Basically, essentially, fundamentally, the bottom line is, my final offer, this is no bs, I kid you not...
There is nothing in our self-interest. There is nothing against our self-interest.
Everything works out to be as it is and what is, is.
If you want to be blue be blue. If you want to sing out sing out. Whatever you do will be done. There's a million ways to be. You know what you are.
Are we cool?
We cool.
We cool.
Great vid. Thanks, I needed to hear that. I'm always trying to square this circle, or solve the problem of evil and suffering. It's in our nature to need answers and it's in the universe' nature to keep presenting questions and problems. I had a profound moment of experiencing it all as being manifest neutrality - neither malevolent nor benign. Which made sense at the time but now seems confusing again! And that's how it goes!!😂
Namo Amida Bu!
That IS how it goes, thank you!
Here is something that really happened in my life: Years ago I was called to go save the life of an inmate at a facility. I lost sleep, but due to my excellent skill and focus (after years of buddhist and medical training) succeeded in diverting certain death in another. Some months later I learned that same inmate had murdered several innocent bystanders and was subsequently killed in a gun fight with the police. My question: did I do good or evil that night?
Phew.
I'm not sure this one is about you one way or another. You were part of something, you did your job, and then that led to something else happening. Thank you for sharing this. What do you think?
@@zenconfidential25I think but that doesn't get me far. I haven't an answer. I can only point. 😌
Camus whose writing you have covered earlier does get down to answering but ultimately gets to a similar wall. Certain Catholic practices(St. Benedict, St. Francis, among others) do help but require unconditional faith, which is extraordinary and rare!
There is a field that does clarify and "enlighen" ...circling the field is a moat...
Causality and assigning blame is a tricky thing. You could question every person and action that led to this inmate killing others. Did their mother do evil by birthing them? Did their teachers do evil by not teaching them enough? Did all the people who failed to help adjust them back into society do evil? Did all the other tens of thousands of people who have sustained the life of this person do evil? Did the person who called on you to save the inmate's life do evil? And so and so forth.
If you subscribe to the idea that we do not have free will, and causality is just the universe unfolding following the laws of physics, then you had no choice to save that person, and that person had no choice but to kill. Most people don't like that view though.
A common solution is to focus on the mind and intent. Did you intend to save this person's life so they could go and kill again? I'd wager the answer is no. However, you can still contribute to the evil in the world without any intention of doing so. Such as working as an engineer for a military drone company that ends up selling their goods for war without you knowing. Should you be blamed for this? It's not clear.
It gets even fuzzier when you start looking at people as a mix of both capability of creating and relieving suffering. There are many doctors who are also serial killers. They've saved thousands of lives, but also killed many as well. There are people who can do both tremendous good in the world and tremendous evil. For some religions, it was God who created Hell.
I would differentiate between the universe and human civilization, the Kosmos and us as living beings within it, the microcosm that within it reflects the Natural Macro Kosmos and human societies. Simply put, life and society. The living in the now and our adaptation to society.
With nature, in nature...what little is left of it...I have no problem. On the other hand, with a cruel and murderous fellow...I begin to think with my whole body. If that fellow is a government, an institution, I start to get uneasy....
The things of Samsara are confusing, and have nothing to do with the original mind, but with the conditioning of the country and the time, with the socialization that you have had.
Anyway...the things of this "social world" cry out to heaven as unfair....
We will have to help to change them...
How about demanding a couple of commandments to the institutions and the government...?
No killing...no war....
We have to get involved...
The universe does not need us...
But in the human aspect we are worse than in the feudalism of the Middle Ages .... psychologically speaking... there were no 📱
thank you.
Is it possibly the case that when answering this question we tend to do it with the intellect. But actually our answer is in what we do, not what we should do.
Also then isn’t Being attached also OK. Isnt it also part of the world and might ‘not being attached’ also possibly strengthen the sense of ego and separateness.
I think this is a good point, a kind of answer is in what we do, maybe the most important kind.
I think caring and being concerned is okay for sure. For me, being attached is when I fixate that care and concern and somehow that involves ego again, and that causes suffering. I think the attachment is the problem, the fixation.
Always very skeptical of "removing human suffering", by any means. Enlightenment - if it is the removal of human suffering - sounds boring, at least after a while. Buddhism helps I think with the kind of injury to the self that, without Buddhism, is terrifying and alienating. It is a buffer against atomisation and TOTAL dispair and helplessness. But human suffering, uncertainty, doubt, not-having-all-the-answers - i don't WANT to be without those things. You cannot find love without it's opposite, for example. You cannot find calm, without comparing it to a storm, etc. The key i think is that psychiatry deals with symptoms - symptoms being the key word. People deserve and need to be aleviated from certain symptoms, anyone with an anxiety disorder will truly know the meaning of "symptom" - the repetative manifestation of a particular psychological process that is incredibly painful. Buddhism, in my view, and from personal experience, is the lesser option to treat such symptoms. It can certainly help, but if a person needs therapy, they need therapy first, I would say. This is why i like the strand of Zen that says that enlightenment is impossible/doesn't exist. Truly think about what it would be like to be without human suffering and doubt and it kinda becomes a bit terrifying. I didn't sign up to be a dewy eyed know it all. I find reading philosophy that is very much outside of Zen or nondualism a perfect counter balance. There are plenty in Buddhist circles who think they truly have worked out the answer to the endlessly complex and unanswerable issue of "human suffering."
Very interesting points, I only have one thing to add, which is that I guess it all depends on how you define suffering.
Reminded here of the famous quote of "zazen is good for nothing" which is to say that zen itself is good for nothing.
If the answer of your spirituality to the "problem" of evil is a radical reconceptualization of all reality, that's a very tough sell, especially to people who have been victimized by human hatred.
This is a reason why zen, though well known, has few serious adherents these days.
Very true. I think it probably has always had very few serious adherents.
😊
Did find a few real teachers on fb yet the rest r nuts
For what it's worth, one of the reasons I withdrew from the world of Zen, after decades of practice (and I still practice on my own) is the way therapy has taken over Western Zen. My view is that the Buddha was not a therapist and neither was Dogen and that's because Zen is not a form of therapy. The therapeutic paradigm constricts the world of Zen and, in a way, makes Zen pointless (why do Zen when you can just go to a therapist?). Like I say, for what it's worth, that's how I see it. // Regarding seeing the precepts as upaya, I think that is a misunderstanding. The precepts are not instrumental, like a raft you can discard after landing on the 'other shore'. They are qualities of what it means to be a Bodhisattva; in other words the practice of the precepts aligns the practitioner to ultimacy; you become the precepts. Thanks for posting on these difficult topics.
Thank you my friend, great points.
Yes but do you know how to become the precepts?
Do you know how to become compassion?
It's not something that you have to exercise, it happens instantly when you align with right view. I can point it out if you like or you can tell me..
Gaza!?😑
Gassho
I mean personally I only ordained so I had an upper hand at winning arguments on social media 🫠