No, I’m asking for evidence of some of the claims being made. If Zen were as useful a tool as being vaguely implied, I’d expect more than a handful of celebrities who have dabbled in it - I’d not unreasonably expect practitioners to be disproportionately represented at the peaks of various Zen-improving pursuits.
Thanks (in your face, moderator-boy), though I’m trying to give Diogenes much more serious treatment than buttonjockey, because the former somewhat deserves it and latter somewhat does not.
Ultimately, I guess, I’m giving the claims about Zen the same scrutiny other members have given lekatt’s claims about near-death experiences, though I’m not expecting to lose patience and start lashing out in frustration, as lekatt often inspires.
What claim do you think I’m not supporting?
No such implication was intended. It’s utility is --such as it is – is rarely more thn incidental. My claim was not intended to say anything about deliberate practice but to point out an example where the state of consciousness I’m talking about occurs spontaneously in just about anybody. Just about all professional athletes know what it’s like to be in the zone. Whether they’re Buddhist has nothing to do with.
It’s not a western practice so it should not be expected that you would see much practice by western celebrities. You DO see it in Eastern celebrities
Why would you expect it to be dosproprtionate. Meditative techniques are only one tool that can be used to improve performance. It’s not a magic elixer.
Oh…I just remembered someone else. Tiger Woods practices Buddhist meditation (his mother is a Buddhist). Is he dominant enough for you?
Well, that’s why I asked originally about the Olympics and chess; international competitions.
Does it allow a, say, ten percent improvement over time (lest this be unclear, I’ll specify that an already-talented person fully versed in Zen will see a 10% lower failure rate)? Five percent? Anything that can be quantified?
Hey, good for him. Has he made any public statements about Zen that you know of? Interesting, if anecdotal, reading. Incidentally, is Buddhism now relevant? You seem contradictory on this point (“I never specified Buddhism anyway.”), or perhaps I’m not sufficiently enlightened.
Besides, how not being tripped up by one’s own self-consciousness is linked to trees falling the in woods remains unclear.
I’m not claiming anything paranormal or supernatural. I’m only claiming that a.) teher exists an empirically verified, heightened state of awareness/altered consciousness which has a subjectively pleasant to profound, even life-changing effect on the subject (it ranges in intensity) and b) many (if not all) religions have developed various methods for both accessing and interpreting this state of consciousness. No religion or belief or method is required, however nor can any belief or method guarantee that it will happen.
I don’t think it’s magic, I think it’s brain chemistry but that doesn’t mean it’s not subjectively postive or that it can’t be personally illuminating.
Fine, but why does it have be described in such cryptic terms as one hand clapping?
I don’t know anything about the Olympics or chess. I don’t follow them. I have no idea how Buddhists perform at them I am sure, however, that top Olympic performers will tell you they know what the “zone” is.
I doubt that anyone has ever tried to study this but looking for the correlection between performance and belief practice would be a mistake. The beliefs/practices won’t necessarily put anyone into that heightened state of consciousness, and the heightened state happens all the time to people who lack such beliefs or practices altogether. If it were possible to identify when an athlete was “in the zone” and monitor his performance during that altered state of awareness, I think you’d see a quantitative difference but as of now, I believe the evidence is all anecdotal.
He practices Thai Buddhism, not Zen. He does comment on it occasionally and says it keeps him calm. He also wears a small gold Buddha on a chain around his neck (I think it’s usually under his shirt, though). If you google “Tiger Woods Buddhism” you’ll turn up a few odd quotes or references but I don’t know if he’s given any extended discourses about it.
The flag koan is intended to knock you out of your normal state of awareness and jar you into looking at things from a different cognitive perspective. It’s not meant to brng about an intellectual realization but an actual physiological brain change. If it doesn’t work, that’s ok. Koans usually don’t truly work for anybody, even serious students of Zen. The flag koan doesn’t really work for me either. I understand the kind of angle it’s supposed to jar me into but it doesn’t really get me there. My realizations or “glimpses” or whatever have never really come from koans. The people who really “get” the “sound of one hand clapping” or why the question of whether a dog has a Buddha nature is answered with “Mu” are the exception rather than the rule. Zen doesn’t promise Enlightenment, only that zazen sometimes works for some people (it’s still a useful practice even if you don’t get enlightened, though. I do it myself).
The way I understand it, koans are designed to force the intellect to sort of break down. The hope is that the analytical mind will short circuit and cause the brain to default to more abstract or intuitive cognitive affect. You’re brain gets tired of trying to solve the riddle intellectually (you’re supposed to meditate on these things for days on end), it sort of gives up and then BAM,another level of awareness breaks through. Since the analytical, intellectual part of the brain is the obstacle to a more objective, “higher” level of awareness, the koan is designed to confound the intellect and neutralize it. It’s a monkeywrench in the wheels.
Right, and I think that can be very useful. Meditation and koans can force you to reconsider what you do know and how you know it. People in general - and, I think, Dopers in particular - have the tendency to want to lock the facts down and be very sure of what is going on. Something that disrupts that certainty, and the assumptions it rests on, can be very helpful.
The Zen koan is best thought of as a sort of tool designed, not to have any meaning in and of itself, but to help others achieve the proper state of conciousness.
Personally, I think it isn’t necessarily a very useful tool in our particular culture. Its use seems to me to derive from the great respect teachers and masters are accorded in Japanese society - so that being presented by such a master with a seemingly “unanswerable question” causes lots of stress on the student, and (ultimately) a psychological breakthrough leading to the enlightenment state.
Since in the West we tend not to accord “teachers” and “masters” such intense respect, the koan is less likely to produce the same effect. We need other tools to get us there.
And that was really my only point (thank you for helping me make it, Diogenes). I did not mean to become the joke I have by injecting the “fortune-cookie nonsense” that the flag koan inspired in Mr. Ekers.
In early study, this koan caused the exact reaction it was meant to in me, and for someone like Mr. Ekers, who seeks answers, I figured this might be a good place to start.
As you and Malthus both point out though Diogenes, koans are less than effective in our society where respect for teachers and masters is not as profound as it is in Eastern cultures (for two reasons IMO, one is because they often behave in ways that prove they do not deserve the respect, and two because westerners are madly self-obsessed).
The concept of being “enlightened” is not one of absolutes Mr. Ekers. In as much as there are finite laws and rules that govern a goodly portion of the known universe, the ability of the mind to expand into and beyond its’ known borders or limitations is at the absolute heart of the search for enlightenment.
No one with any credibility at all claims supernatural powers or abilities exist post-enlightenment, but rather on the extreme end, claims of a sort of “hyper-control” of the body using the strength and depth of the mind are often proven (and often disproven too, because frankly, it doesn’t always work). The wood and water koan is an excellent illustration of this, however I will spare you that, lest I be further ridiculed.
The facts of enlightenment are plainly evident to those who seek them and are willing to accept the mind has more capacity and ability than previously conceptualized or understood, even outside of scientific circles. You wish to place the concept you have of enlightenment into a small sterile compartment where it is easily examined, probed and deconstructed. I submit to you that because of the variables that exist within the mind, not only from person to person, but within one mind, that this cannot be done.
The circumstances that lead to enlightenment for, say, Diogenes will be different than they are for me, and different again than they are for anyone seeking enlightenment. You cannot reproduce the circumstances that lead one person to enlightenment, and expect those same things to work on someone else.
They may work, yes, but they will likely not work consistently, which by itself is evidence that enlightenment is a physical state, reached sometimes by sitting zazen, sometimes by chewing peyote, and sometimes by simply falling asleep.
Actually, I wasn’t describing the koans themselves as “fortune-cookie nonsense” but statements like:
…which would seem entirely not out of place printed on a piece of paper contained in a post-dinner sweet. We’re intelligent, literate people, here, button. You don’t have to describe the benefits of Zen (and/or Buddhism, and/or meditation - please note that I’m trying to cover all bases, here) in flowery terms.
And, frankly, that whole “you assume there was a flagpole” didn’t help your case either. Whatever the metaphorical flag was metaphorically hanging from; it had no relevance to my (admittedly irreverent) question.
Enlightenment doesn’t have to be cryptic. If we look at the men who truly influenced billions of people we can find what enlightenment looks like. Some of these men are: Siddartha, Jesus, Confusus, and Lao Tzu. These men did not found religions, but others did found religions based on their teachings. Enlightened teachings which later became immersed in dogma.
The path of love, compassion, and caring for all others is the path of enlightenment. You can reach enlightenment by walking that path.
The Koans do have a place, in fact anything that will break through the thinking process to get someone to think and perceive in a different way is helpful.
One lesson in the Course that asks the student to look at a telephone and say this telephone has no meaning to me several times.
Well this quote:
Was from the first Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. Granted, it COULD be used like that, but it hardly takes away from the weight of the quote. In attempting to describe Zen, I could have been less cryptic I suppose, but I don’t think I was exactly flowery, but I get your meaning.
You’re right about the flagpole thing though, it’s tempting to engage in those little circular dichotomous exchanges that seem meant to confuse. It’s exciting to realize that you have a grasp, albeit a small one, on the seeming vastness of Zen and that you can think as the teachers thought, and create your own puzzles, but if they do not engage your subject, they are, as you point out, irrelevant.
Buttonjockey, post#71 is very nicely put. The concept and mechanics of enlightenment and enhancement of mind are being studied at a high level; through the auspices of the Dalai Lama, trained with Tibetan techniques in mastery of mind, but he has a great enthusiasm for Western Science in understanding that mental technology, and is eagerly open to sharing it. Several conferences with Tibetan teachers and Western neuroscientists have been held in the past decade, with good understanding and dialogue. Here’s an exerpt from the linked article:
A site dedicated to that research is The Mind Life Institute, some info on what is being done there.
My own experience with enlightenment is mere glimpses, and can hardly comment on it as an expert (ha!). I have found, through direct teaching, techniques learned, and experience with Tibetan Buddhist teachers, that they have a realm of understanding the human mind that is just coming to the West, and adapting that teaching to the way our Western minds work, quite generously.
If you read the above links, it’s well apparent that the Dalai Lama is greatly interested in Western Science, and enthusiastic about all of us learning what were closely held secret techniques in the last century. Buddhism is good pragmatic technique, sometimes hard then, because it requires self-responsibility, and a cutting reason. What they know, and we don’t, is states of mind we just haven’t developed as a culture. Yet. But, it’s coming, as we share the technique of understanding human mind.
The path which is written is not the true path.
The path which is followed is not the true path.
The path does not lead to the destination.
One must take the path as one finds it, and seek only the next step.
The journey is the destination.
Tris
Have you been reading the Tao Te Ching?
The way that can be followed is not the eternal way.
The name that can be spoken is not the eternal name.
Well, not recently, no. But yes, the American English restatement of the insight of Lao Tsu is a very useful thing to keep in one’s view of the universe.
Tris
I’m replying to this so that interested folks don’t just read and say, “WTF does that all mean?” I’ll take a stab at it, and, a small minded attempt at that.
It refers to taking your own capacity of mind, and not just following what someone else says. This is a point I admire about Eastern religions, that a path laid down by an astute, is an example, but not a hardcore way to be absolutely. You still have to do your own personal work; your path is unto you as an individual, so Pay Attention! Your enlightenment is your own work, and follow your heart with it, and be discerning in it, pay attention to your self; utilise, but don’t be bound by other’s past experience. Use your own Now temporal experience to gain insight and knowledge. This is greatly amplified by good teachers, who encourage individuals to get knowledge within their own abilities.
A good site is this , about Lao Tsu, elaborating on what Tris said.
I read the link and enjoyed it. I have not extensively studied every religion, but I believe all religions converge on the same path. I asked my spiritual teacher which religion is right, he replied: “none is right, but Buddhism is the closest to being right.” Buddhism was chosen for its peace and harmlessness to all things. I think one can follow the core teachings of any religion and find the Unity of all things. I usually say Oneness.