Also it is important to remember that this is one view amongst many. I feel you can absolutely engage with the world without losing your calm and focus. Activism isnt hysteria.
Thanks for that cherry pep-talk Jack! Lol Agree about activism and Zen often causing even more suffering, esp in the current vitriolic political climate.🙏
Brad Warner says in one of his books, maybe somewhat jokingly, that a certain teacher phrased that as "sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them... from myself"
I've found that with regard to modes of activisim, many of the meditation schools of Buddhism point back to the Chinese concept of Wu Wei, i.e.effortless doing or doing without doing. Taking the egoic mind, earning of merit or virtue signalling out of the equasion.
Hey Steve! Great video, one question at around the 7 minute mark where you caution us to not get attached to a point of view. Couldn’t the same thing be said about the statement you just made. Is “attached” the point of interest here? Am I to take what you said on the basis of trust and then personal discernment gained from my practice?
Good point. I think maybe a better way of putting it, at least in my own experience, is that when I hold a point of view lightly, suffering diminishes, but when I start clinging, that’s a warning sign for me.
@ thank you for your reply, is that to say you hold the Zen point of view lightly as well? I guess what I’m trying to understand is what does “lightly” mean?
Lightly in the sense of not clinging for dear life, you know? Gently, and ready to lose, and be ok with it. To be more open to experience and what is than "getting things right". Bravery. It takes bravery and strength to find the right balance between not holding or trying at all and holding on too tightly, trying too hard. In my experience...
I watched this rant/tantrum with a detached half smile. Because IM ENLIGHTENED DAMMIT!!! Joking aside, what do you think of Thich Nhat Han's "active Buddhism "
@@zenconfidential25 Well, he was the first teacher I started following. I read one of his books called "fragrant palm leaves" its very much kinda a memoir about his early life, like your first book and Brad's first book. He became a zen monk at a young age in Vietnam. It starts off a few years before the US begins sending troops. Zen was looked down upon by the big Buddhist groups in Vietnam so they had to be very stealthy. For awhile he lives in a small zendo super deep in the jungle, a hurricane comes and destroys it. Somehow they get a little temple in the city and a ton of people start showing up. This brings the attention of the authorities and since he won't support or go against the war, they exile him for 30 years. There is one section where he is waiting for the plane to take him away, and he is lamenting the situation, when he notices an American GI sitting close by sobbing and freaking out. This guy's mind had snapped for the horrors of war. So Thich sat next to him and started slowly showing the soldier mindful breathing and the man calmed down. I think the whole "mindfulness " trend started with him. He also convinced MLK to keep his protests nonviolent. MLK petitioned for Han to get the Nobel peace prize for this. I forget why, but he didn't get it. I found it really interesting because it was an example of a type of zen tradition that was molded in the devastation, and horror of modern warfare... Sorry I'm rambling. Basically it is kinda a laid-back hippie Soto style. No koans or anything just zazen, shikantaza, and mindful EVERYTHING. I don't think they do sesshin either. From what I could gather "engaged Buddhism " ( in my first note I wrote active Buddhism, but the term he coined is engaged) is attempting to deal with the world's problems using the 8 fold path, not totally investing into one ideology or another. Spreading compassion through example, and always being mindful that everything is one. You, me, them, us, the planet, the cosmos, all interconnected. Harming others and the planet ultimately harms you. We are all connected. TL;DR: Laid-back not very structured Soto style Zen that wants to engage with worldly problems through the eight fold path, and the mindfulness that everything is interconnected... Basically. They have a UA-cam channel with like a million dharma talks. It's called Plum Village. I hardly watch the hour and a half talks, mostly because the talks are titled things like mindfulness and climate change. It gets a little hippie and repetitive for me. Personally I like the Old Chan masters and the structure of rinzai.
@@zenconfidential25 Also, I'm reading Single White Monk, I'm only a couple chapters in but I really like it so far. I thought the introduction was done exceptionally well. I was very impressed with your first book. I hope you keep writing!
Activism is often a dysfunctional form of religion followed by people who have no roots in a healthy spiritual life🙏 P.S. I am writing from a 100° September day in sunny Bakersfield🤠
@@jerryalder2878Budha himself was an activist. Without weekends (spare time to just be or do non-work exploration) there is no sangha. Weekends didn't fall out of coconut tree. That was result of activism. Ive complained this space has more julius evola than rob burbea. Its convenient.
I have heard that Zen has some answers but I don't know.. Being a Buddhist seems a little bit like sentencing yourself to prison. I've never understood what the answers are though. Zensters are kind of cagey about it. They play those cards pretty close. I listen to some Zen teachers online and I never seem to find one who is not wrapping themselves up in a little bit of what they think is cool or Zen-like but it always feels a little bit like Zen role-playing to me.. That seems to be common, at least among Zen white men. That is just my impression of course and sometimes I'm sure I miss the forest for the Zen props. Anyway, I like your talks and came back to this one.
Can you help me with 1 question, please? The President of my country started a war against the neighbouring country and declared the cultural war against the Western World, and I feel deeply depressed and hell bad about it. I feel like being captive to the maniac, along with a whole lot of other people. It is real dukha. Is this dukha because of my attachment to ideas?
Don't worry, science is busy demonstrating that meditation is on the whole beneficial - there are neurologists that meditate - and I haven't heard Sapolsky rant against meditation, in fact I use his theories as an aid to explain the problem of the conditioned self (the sufferer) and the illusion of free will - which seems to be a theory that allows us to accept the death of the ego.
I follow my karma which is to be an ordinary being who must mind the suffering of my family, be diligent in my work and practice and respect my teachers. A civil rights activist is born somewhere and they must be that fully. An artist is born somewhere and they must follow that. Same with a Zen master, etc. I am willing to support the causes I think right but getting increasingly involved in changing an ever burning world means forgetting my close responsibilities and living a life of agitated delusion. This is just my personal take and I am perfectly fine if anyone disagrees. I can’t be otherwise. May we all find enlightenment and end the suffering. 🙏 P.S your girlfriend seems extremely wise and you should let her do a video. I found Sapulsky’s very good at explaining a scientific version of Dependent Origination.
Thanks for this! Such a timely talk with the insanity going on here (I'm in California). I read the Sopolski book and agree with what you say here. He's factually correct but wrong, if that makes any sense.
I don't even know if he's factually correct. Sapolsky himself has believed that free will doesn't exist from a young age. How much of what he's accumulated is confirmation bias? He's a neurologist wading into the territory of philosophy and religion with insufficient understanding of what already exists there.
I remember the "Negative Dialektik" of Adorno & Horkheimer not to clinge to ideologies. But because the everyday life of many people is more or less affected by ideologies of their rulers, ideology is a not neglectable power. Any political debate has an ideological flavour. So I think that Zen is quite nihilistic in relation to our western way of life. Most of the ideologic activists consider their ideology more as an enlargement of their self than as a way to make the world a better place.
Is what you are doing, in producing videos, not actually a form of activism? In the 90's I and others spent quite a lot of time occupying ancient trees which were earmarked for destruction to make way for new freeways. I would call that environmental activism and I see it as totally in tune with my Buddhist perspective.
I consider it more a form of entertainment, spiritual entertainment, a kind of engagement for the mind for people who are too tired or bored to watch a full Dalai Lama video, but don’t want to sit down in front of who’s your daddy or Joe Rogan et al. I’m not sure if that’s activism, but maybe?
Dongshan Liangjie would agree with you. From - Taigen Dan Leignton (2015) “Just This Is It”; "Dongshan challenged his monks in an even more immediate, personal manner in another story, which appears in both the Recorded Sayings and as case 43 of the Blue Cliff Record koan collection. A monk inquired, “How does one escape hot and cold?” Dongshan retorted, “Why not go where it is neither hot nor cold?” When the monk asked where that place was, Dongshan confided, “When it’s cold, you freeze to death; when it’s hot, you swelter to death,” or in another translation, “When it’s cold, the cold kills you; when it’s hot, the heat kills you.” Here Dongshan is challenging his monks not merely to avoid all of the worldly affairs described somewhat abstractly via the metaphor of grasses, but to go beyond their own personal comfort zones. This is elemental and physical, not theoretical. First he says to go to a place with no heat or cold, both of which may have been intense at times at his monastery up in the mountains. Even more, Dongshan says, to accomplish this the monks must be willing to give up their very lives. Such letting go of self can be seen as an expression of the bodhisattva practice of generosity."
I'm a behaviorist (quite a bit of Skinner with a nice dash of Pavlov), so determinism is kinda my whole thing. I'm also a secular zen practitioner, and haven't had any trouble reconciling the two. One of the ideas that helped sell me on Buddhism was the concept of dependent origination, as I saw this as compatible with my deterministic view of human behavior. Behavior doesn't arise from nothing, but from a history of interaction with our surroundings.
I understood that nihilism could be a 'sickness of emptiness' where a misunderstanding of certain Buddhist teachings leads to a view that 'nothing really matters as everything is empty'. In recent weeks in the UK (including in my home city) racist mobs attacked hotels where asylum seekers were being housed. A range of people perceived to be 'different' were intimidated and sometimes attacked. If you are not subject to racism, homophobia, transphobia or general prejudice then you are in a fortunate position.
Do you think the grooming and raping of English girls and women (for years swept under the rug by authorities and media), and terrorist attacks, perpetrated mainly by muslim minority men, have anything to do with the current reactions (sometimes violent) by native brits? Or is it all racism, homophobia, transphobia or general prejudice as you put it?
@@jakubsowa2047Two wrongs don't make a right. You know this. Do not attempt to excuse the bad behavior of one group by pointing to the behavior of another group. Even if a causal relationship can be inferred, the outcome is not justified.
@@zenconfidential25I didn't perceive the xenophobic protests as nihilist, or empty of anything. I saw them to be filled with a passionate sense of purpose. Very very wrong but passionately felt.
I’m sorry, but you need a better definition of what Buddhist mean by ‘emptiness,’ to work with. Here’s one from the “Sutra of Complete Enlightenment”: “Like a person seen in a dream who cannot be found when the dreamer awakens, awareness is like empty space. It is IMPARTIAL and EQUAL, and EVER UNMOVING. When enlightenment PERVADES all ten directions, the Buddha Path is accomplished.” To see others impartially and as equal is the very nature of emptiness! It is not nihilistic. But insisting that everyone else should act that way is simply unrealistic. - The quote is from: Master Sheng Yen (1999) “Complete Enlightenment: Translation and Commentary on The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment”. Translated from the Chinese of Buddhatrata by Ven. Guo-go Bhikshu
Max Weber might have classified classic Zen as “jenseitsweltliche Askese“--missing the “diesseitsweltlichen“ turn, following a certain paradigmatic turn inside the sinitic Mahayana; which, again would mean some “positive turn“ towards a less classical rhetorics of “annihilations“ (which certainly sounds quite nihilistic to many ears).--Could it be, You read some Dogen-texts recently, like the Zuimonki, which quite resonat, so my “recall“, with what You said (like rhe great topic: “Life,death us the big affair; time flies, isn't it regrettable, use it,,,!“). It surely isn't just “obscurantism“, but also some kind of “phenomenology“...
PS.: ... forgot to mention that Dogen Kigen's version of “Ars longa, vita brevis!“ (Hippokrates) also makes his approach of “primordial-(trans)remembrace via fore- and farmost sitting-in-dhayna“ quite a bit more understandable, seems to me.--And his “ur-motivation“ seems to lie in his childhood, but that's a slightly different story.
So, I'm not all caught up in the global warming scare. We only really have about one hundred years of climate data. Hardly enough to tell anything. Also they have been telling me we are all going to die in five years for about fifty years now. Pretty natural to have doubts I think. That said I do think we need to do a better job taking care of our home and lots of changes could be made. Let's just make sure the cure is not worse than the disease.
@@zenconfidential25 I hope I am too. If I'm wrong it's already to late. If the US and Europe completely stop all emissions it won't even matter. India and China pollute more than enough and neither seems to care much at all. But, in the end, the planet will be fine. We just wont be here anymore.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Also it is important to remember that this is one view amongst many. I feel you can absolutely engage with the world without losing your calm and focus. Activism isnt hysteria.
That's a perfect point, thank you.
@@zenconfidential25 its not really but thank you 🙂
Thanks for that cherry pep-talk Jack! Lol
Agree about activism and Zen often causing even more suffering, esp in the current vitriolic political climate.🙏
Amen brudda.
Wow, Jack! What a great video!
Thank you very much.
Glad you liked it!
Love it!! another great one :)
Thank you! Cheers!
how is this comment "11 days ago" but the video is posted toda... somethings AFOOT
sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them... sounds like activism to me 😆
That's a good point! I never did like that vow. I think it's probably a deep suggestion with many meanings.
Brad Warner says in one of his books, maybe somewhat jokingly, that a certain teacher phrased that as "sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them... from myself"
I like to think of it as a team effort that's never ending.
That's a great line.
I've found that with regard to modes of activisim, many of the meditation schools of Buddhism point back to the Chinese concept of Wu Wei, i.e.effortless doing or doing without doing. Taking the egoic mind, earning of merit or virtue signalling out of the equasion.
Very well put and a good insight, thank you.
Hey Steve! Great video, one question at around the 7 minute mark where you caution us to not get attached to a point of view. Couldn’t the same thing be said about the statement you just made. Is “attached” the point of interest here? Am I to take what you said on the basis of trust and then personal discernment gained from my practice?
Good point. I think maybe a better way of putting it, at least in my own experience, is that when I hold a point of view lightly, suffering diminishes, but when I start clinging, that’s a warning sign for me.
@ thank you for your reply, is that to say you hold the Zen point of view lightly as well? I guess what I’m trying to understand is what does “lightly” mean?
Lightly in the sense of not clinging for dear life, you know? Gently, and ready to lose, and be ok with it. To be more open to experience and what is than "getting things right". Bravery. It takes bravery and strength to find the right balance between not holding or trying at all and holding on too tightly, trying too hard. In my experience...
@@zenconfidential25 thank you very much. I appreciate the response 🙏🏼
I feel like all of Jack's videos have a part where he's laying awake late at night lol
That is a very keen and correct observation! ;-)
I watched this rant/tantrum with a detached half smile. Because IM ENLIGHTENED DAMMIT!!!
Joking aside, what do you think of Thich Nhat Han's "active Buddhism "
I don't know much about his active Buddhism, truth be told. What do you think about it?
@@zenconfidential25 Well, he was the first teacher I started following. I read one of his books called "fragrant palm leaves" its very much kinda a memoir about his early life, like your first book and Brad's first book. He became a zen monk at a young age in Vietnam.
It starts off a few years before the US begins sending troops. Zen was looked down upon by the big Buddhist groups in Vietnam so they had to be very stealthy. For awhile he lives in a small zendo super deep in the jungle, a hurricane comes and destroys it. Somehow they get a little temple in the city and a ton of people start showing up. This brings the attention of the authorities and since he won't support or go against the war, they exile him for 30 years.
There is one section where he is waiting for the plane to take him away, and he is lamenting the situation, when he notices an American GI sitting close by sobbing and freaking out. This guy's mind had snapped for the horrors of war. So Thich sat next to him and started slowly showing the soldier mindful breathing and the man calmed down.
I think the whole "mindfulness " trend started with him.
He also convinced MLK to keep his protests nonviolent. MLK petitioned for Han to get the Nobel peace prize for this. I forget why, but he didn't get it.
I found it really interesting because it was an example of a type of zen tradition that was molded in the devastation, and horror of modern warfare... Sorry I'm rambling.
Basically it is kinda a laid-back hippie Soto style. No koans or anything just zazen, shikantaza, and mindful EVERYTHING. I don't think they do sesshin either.
From what I could gather "engaged Buddhism " ( in my first note I wrote active Buddhism, but the term he coined is engaged) is attempting to deal with the world's problems using the 8 fold path, not totally investing into one ideology or another. Spreading compassion through example, and always being mindful that everything is one. You, me, them, us, the planet, the cosmos, all interconnected. Harming others and the planet ultimately harms you. We are all connected.
TL;DR: Laid-back not very structured Soto style Zen that wants to engage with worldly problems through the eight fold path, and the mindfulness that everything is interconnected... Basically.
They have a UA-cam channel with like a million dharma talks. It's called Plum Village. I hardly watch the hour and a half talks, mostly because the talks are titled things like mindfulness and climate change. It gets a little hippie and repetitive for me.
Personally I like the Old Chan masters and the structure of rinzai.
@@zenconfidential25 Also, I'm reading Single White Monk, I'm only a couple chapters in but I really like it so far. I thought the introduction was done exceptionally well. I was very impressed with your first book. I hope you keep writing!
I think the phrase "engaged Buddhism" has been more commonly used, both by Thich Nhat Hanh and others
@@michigandersea3485 are you a reddit mod?
Activism is often a dysfunctional form of religion followed by people who have no roots in a healthy spiritual life🙏 P.S. I am writing from a 100° September day in sunny Bakersfield🤠
Man there it is! I miss Bakersfield and California!!!
Do you consider Martin Luther King Jr somehow 'disfunctional' ?
@@jerryalder2878 MLK JR was acting of a mature Christian faith. That is very different from your typical BLM hood
@@jerryalder2878Budha himself was an activist.
Without weekends (spare time to just be or do non-work exploration) there is no sangha. Weekends didn't fall out of coconut tree. That was result of activism.
Ive complained this space has more julius evola than rob burbea. Its convenient.
I have heard that Zen has some answers but I don't know.. Being a Buddhist seems a little bit like sentencing yourself to prison. I've never understood what the answers are though. Zensters are kind of cagey about it. They play those cards pretty close. I listen to some Zen teachers online and I never seem to find one who is not wrapping themselves up in a little bit of what they think is cool or Zen-like but it always feels a little bit like Zen role-playing to me.. That seems to be common, at least among Zen white men. That is just my impression of course and sometimes I'm sure I miss the forest for the Zen props. Anyway, I like your talks and came back to this one.
Thank you my friend.
Can you help me with 1 question, please? The President of my country started a war against the neighbouring country and declared the cultural war against the Western World, and I feel deeply depressed and hell bad about it. I feel like being captive to the maniac, along with a whole lot of other people. It is real dukha. Is this dukha because of my attachment to ideas?
Don't worry, science is busy demonstrating that meditation is on the whole beneficial - there are neurologists that meditate - and I haven't heard Sapolsky rant against meditation, in fact I use his theories as an aid to explain the problem of the conditioned self (the sufferer) and the illusion of free will - which seems to be a theory that allows us to accept the death of the ego.
Zen-Buddhism often is/seems close to nihilism, sciences often are/seem close to nihilism, therefore my caveat: Handle with care!
Handle with care and drop easily!
Oh no! Because right behind the studies that med. is useful . . . will be the meditation is a waste of time studies!!
I follow my karma which is to be an ordinary being who must mind the suffering of my family, be diligent in my work and practice and respect my teachers. A civil rights activist is born somewhere and they must be that fully. An artist is born somewhere and they must follow that. Same with a Zen master, etc. I am willing to support the causes I think right but getting increasingly involved in changing an ever burning world means forgetting my close responsibilities and living a life of agitated delusion. This is just my personal take and I am perfectly fine if anyone disagrees. I can’t be otherwise. May we all find enlightenment and end the suffering. 🙏 P.S your girlfriend seems extremely wise and you should let her do a video. I found Sapulsky’s very good at explaining a scientific version of Dependent Origination.
Thank you! And...she's making her vids over on Instagram at Catalogue of Suffering, check it out!!
@@zenconfidential25 interesting title “ Catalogue of Suffering” thank you for the suggestion
When there's nothing left
zazen until there's nothing
left then zazen
Speaking of, join us for Zazen this Sunday!
Thanks for this! Such a timely talk with the insanity going on here (I'm in California). I read the Sopolski book and agree with what you say here. He's factually correct but wrong, if that makes any sense.
Factually correct but wrong, that is really interesting. I need to process that and then use it myself!! ;)
I don't even know if he's factually correct. Sapolsky himself has believed that free will doesn't exist from a young age. How much of what he's accumulated is confirmation bias? He's a neurologist wading into the territory of philosophy and religion with insufficient understanding of what already exists there.
Interesting !
I remember the "Negative Dialektik" of Adorno & Horkheimer not to clinge to ideologies. But because the everyday life of many people is more or less affected by ideologies of their rulers, ideology is a not neglectable power. Any political debate has an ideological flavour. So I think that Zen is quite nihilistic in relation to our western way of life. Most of the ideologic activists consider their ideology more as an enlargement of their self than as a way to make the world a better place.
Ah very good points, thank you.
Is what you are doing, in producing videos, not actually a form of activism? In the 90's I and others spent quite a lot of time occupying ancient trees which were earmarked for destruction to make way for new freeways. I would call that environmental activism and I see it as totally in tune with my Buddhist perspective.
I consider it more a form of entertainment, spiritual entertainment, a kind of engagement for the mind for people who are too tired or bored to watch a full Dalai Lama video, but don’t want to sit down in front of who’s your daddy or Joe Rogan et al. I’m not sure if that’s activism, but maybe?
Buddha lived in a hot humid climate country. The key to enlightment! Lol
You might be right!! Here's come the Big E!!
Dongshan Liangjie would agree with you.
From - Taigen Dan Leignton (2015) “Just This Is It”;
"Dongshan challenged his monks in an even more immediate,
personal manner in another story, which appears in both the
Recorded Sayings and as case 43 of the Blue Cliff Record koan
collection. A monk inquired, “How does one escape hot and cold?”
Dongshan retorted, “Why not go where it is neither hot nor cold?”
When the monk asked where that place was, Dongshan confided,
“When it’s cold, you freeze to death; when it’s hot, you swelter to
death,” or in another translation, “When it’s cold, the cold kills you;
when it’s hot, the heat kills you.”
Here Dongshan is challenging his monks not merely to avoid all of
the worldly affairs described somewhat abstractly via the metaphor
of grasses, but to go beyond their own personal comfort zones. This
is elemental and physical, not theoretical. First he says to go to a
place with no heat or cold, both of which may have been intense at
times at his monastery up in the mountains. Even more, Dongshan
says, to accomplish this the monks must be willing to give up their
very lives. Such letting go of self can be seen as an expression of
the bodhisattva practice of generosity."
Thank you this is great.
I'm a behaviorist (quite a bit of Skinner with a nice dash of Pavlov), so determinism is kinda my whole thing. I'm also a secular zen practitioner, and haven't had any trouble reconciling the two. One of the ideas that helped sell me on Buddhism was the concept of dependent origination, as I saw this as compatible with my deterministic view of human behavior. Behavior doesn't arise from nothing, but from a history of interaction with our surroundings.
I understood that nihilism could be a 'sickness of emptiness' where a misunderstanding of certain Buddhist teachings leads to a view that 'nothing really matters as everything is empty'. In recent weeks in the UK (including in my home city) racist mobs attacked hotels where asylum seekers were being housed. A range of people perceived to be 'different' were intimidated and sometimes attacked. If you are not subject to racism, homophobia, transphobia or general prejudice then you are in a fortunate position.
Take care of yourself there.
Do you think the grooming and raping of English girls and women (for years swept under the rug by authorities and media), and terrorist attacks, perpetrated mainly by muslim minority men, have anything to do with the current reactions (sometimes violent) by native brits? Or is it all racism, homophobia, transphobia or general prejudice as you put it?
@@jakubsowa2047Two wrongs don't make a right.
You know this.
Do not attempt to excuse the bad behavior of one group by pointing to the behavior of another group. Even if a causal relationship can be inferred, the outcome is not justified.
@@zenconfidential25I didn't perceive the xenophobic protests as nihilist, or empty of anything. I saw them to be filled with a passionate sense of purpose. Very very wrong but passionately felt.
I’m sorry, but you need a better definition of what Buddhist mean by ‘emptiness,’ to work with.
Here’s one from the “Sutra of Complete Enlightenment”:
“Like a person seen in a dream who cannot be found
when the dreamer awakens, awareness is like empty space.
It is IMPARTIAL and EQUAL, and EVER UNMOVING.
When enlightenment PERVADES all ten directions,
the Buddha Path is accomplished.”
To see others impartially and as equal is the very nature of emptiness!
It is not nihilistic.
But insisting that everyone else should act that way is simply unrealistic.
- The quote is from: Master Sheng Yen (1999) “Complete Enlightenment: Translation and Commentary on The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment”. Translated from the Chinese of Buddhatrata by Ven. Guo-go Bhikshu
Max Weber might have classified classic Zen as “jenseitsweltliche Askese“--missing the “diesseitsweltlichen“ turn, following a certain paradigmatic turn inside the sinitic Mahayana; which, again would mean some “positive turn“ towards a less classical rhetorics of “annihilations“ (which certainly sounds quite nihilistic to many ears).--Could it be, You read some Dogen-texts recently, like the Zuimonki, which quite resonat, so my “recall“, with what You said (like rhe great topic: “Life,death us the big affair; time flies, isn't it regrettable, use it,,,!“). It surely isn't just “obscurantism“, but also some kind of “phenomenology“...
PS.: ... forgot to mention that Dogen Kigen's version of “Ars longa, vita brevis!“ (Hippokrates) also makes his approach of “primordial-(trans)remembrace via fore- and farmost sitting-in-dhayna“ quite a bit more understandable, seems to me.--And his “ur-motivation“ seems to lie in his childhood, but that's a slightly different story.
So, I'm not all caught up in the global warming scare. We only really have about one hundred years of climate data. Hardly enough to tell anything. Also they have been telling me we are all going to die in five years for about fifty years now. Pretty natural to have doubts I think. That said I do think we need to do a better job taking care of our home and lots of changes could be made. Let's just make sure the cure is not worse than the disease.
Man I hope you're right. I'm not so worried about the past 100 years of climate data but the future 100 for starters.
@@zenconfidential25 I hope I am too. If I'm wrong it's already to late. If the US and Europe completely stop all emissions it won't even matter. India and China pollute more than enough and neither seems to care much at all. But, in the end, the planet will be fine. We just wont be here anymore.
Unless we reincarnate as cockroaches...