I love this idea that explanations are comfort food for the journey to them. "People like explanations." They sure do. They insist on them. They value them according to the conviction and care you show in their composition and discussion. They do not have to make much sense. They are required foreplay. I do computer systems for big companies. This is my life. The main power of a new system is just that you REVISIT. You revisit yourself. It is like how they used to copy books. You copy from an old copy with paper faded and discolored by age, ash and oil onto new fresh bright paper and new ink. PRESTO! You have a new clean copy with obvious spelling errors and ink blobs removed.
Thanks for keeping it real Brad. You explain your perspectives in a way that seems authentic rather than flowery or pontificatorial (if that's not a word it should be). I don't think I understood why I should be doing Zazen when I first started, kept expecting something to happen. Well something happened but I didn't even notice it, love the quote that all Buddhism is a footnote to Zazen. Keep up the great content!
I read zen texts not so much for an "explanation," but as another way to point to the buddhist way of thinking late at night when I'm prone to anxiety. It usually helps. I do zazen in the morning and read zen texts before bed. (And in between, I often watch your videos. Thank you!)
My goal is 40 minutes, but sometimes I cut it short and do 33 or something. I really try to do at least 30. I think when I sit for a longer period, my mind has more of a chance to quiet down. It’s more time away from excitement and therefore more time to experience some of the “clarity” Zazen and not just the crazy inner chatter Zazen. I’m still not really sure if the content of your Zazen experience really matters and if so, how. I read a lot but I don’t understand a lot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That might be another reason why I push myself to do longer Zazen lol
I consider 40 minutes my absolute minimum. But that's because in the dojo I go to, a zazen session is 2x40. In my experience 40-45 minutes is a good length of time for the mind to go through its agitation and wandering patterns and have a chance to settle down. Frequency is more important than length, so sitting for 50-60 is probably overdoing it.
If you can build up to sitting longer periods you can really get deeper into it. I sit in the morning for 50 to 60 minutes then later in the day I sit 20 minutes. Then before bed I sit another 20 minutes. It really makes a difference.
What Do You Need to Know to Do Zazen? : "Fukanzazengi" , after reading that you'll get 500+ questions for your teacher including the koan: "Think of not thinking". Once you sat for 7-10 years in all the painful postures trying to get into some mental state or get something and only getting boredom you'll realize Dogen was right !..It's Just Sit !!.....And you'll never be able to get into Prajñāpāramitā like Avalokiteshvara did and realize something real meaningful like Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
I have what’s probably a silly frivolous question but do you ever sit zazen with a song stuck in your head? I’m a musician and record collector and almost always have some kind of music on a loop in my head, inescapably so. This morning during my zazen it was “ save a prayer” by the Eagles of death metal.
Buddhism has a materialistic side to it. Only, they weight is shifted, relative to the counter-point of so called "objective" materialism: The materiality is ascribed to "ideas" (or "eidei=dharmâ" plus a manifold of more complex phenomena or "selves"), which are conceptualized quite mechanically. Some call this approach---in the Indian context traceble back to the times of Vedes and Upanishads---an "objective subjectivism". Early sinitic varieties/play-forms can also be found. The difference, made up between "materialists" and "idalists", looks (to me) rather like an ideological device, designed to separate "ideologial camps" from each other, respectively to clear "front-lines". Every serious (proto-)science has vital space-time (pre)set as one of the basic starting points, which means: Give some due regard to the void/free-play aspects of time-being, whereby time---or at least one aspect of this "familiar stranger" (J.T. Fraser)---here is understood as kinda anti-thesis of the (supposedly static) space (G.W.F. Hegel)! Way-bound Dharma-heir "Primordial Way" was socialized into the Buddhist matrix, yet also a child of his times, living in a world we, nowadays, don`t easily understand in many respects. To propagate "Only mind sitting!" may, for one, be read as a counter-measure or antidote against the leading "esoteric" schools, which operated intensively (respectively too much) with "magic", "exclusivism", "charisma", "obscurantism", and so forth, thereby often really only creating as much new illusions as destroying some older ones (all judged according to Buddhist "measures", to be sure, by Dôgen and his adversaries). Master Dôgen wanted, so another hypotheses, to make "wisdom" (welling out of "bodhi") more "catholic" (i.e., something that concerns all people), in accordance with the doctrines of (universal) "Buddha-nature=original enlightenment". What is basically needed---"for whom it may concern" (--> Indra`s net, "utmost exertion" based on a "total dynamism", see: S. Heine, etc.)---, is: Lift the veil in order to really, fully awaken (--> dream-metaphoric)---via "non-doing" (--> Yoga-physiology: play of vagus and sympathicus)! Only against this doctrinal background, against the general matrix of the way-bound Big Loom, makes the "easy way" of "Just sit!" fuller (positive) sense: as tip of the ice-berg---against the general horizon of the "world" as the (blurredly) sensed totality of all everyday-lifeworlds. The world of pre-modern Japan resembled in many ways an "enchanted garden" (Max Weber`s "Zaubergarten"), and one of its (partially surely also critical) inhabitants was Master Dôgen. Now, in synopsis, why did Master "Primal Way" start to propagate: "Only mind sitting!"? And what would, e.g., the alternative "narratives" of modern positivistic, experimental psychology/social-psychology tell us about it: Does it really, according to current scientific standards, work the way(s) advocates (or apolegetics) suggest? Is it "in reality" just a form of psychological suppression, which sometimes may even become dangerous by creating disharmonies, and other Zen-ailments)? Is it a kind of brain-washing? Is it a form of auto-hypnosis? Is it a device to create Communitas? Is it just a healthy way of living (or "nurturing life")? ... Lots of stuff for further reflecting and discussing, for whom it may concern; anyway, thanks for sharing!
'dogen wrote a massive book about his experiences in zazen' - but....really there is no such experience (it is 'just sitting' ie whatever happens is what happens...or rather is what you are given) - so he was writing about what (?) nothing (?) - this is just a sideways way of saying that i think you got a bit mixed up there when you were talking about materialism (ie mind and matter are the same...??)...poetry (truthful speech) is a way of meeting each other (which is not easy)...somehow writing and truthful speech make no sense but they do make sense and it is good that they make sense...
the problem with talks given after "meditation" is they are too imprinting, the barriers are down and the brain is in a suggestable state, its effectively brain washing it takes years to get that billshut out of your hair, let's be honest , decades i think the view everybody has is that we are actors in a larger sphere of operation that continues in our absence and we must extrapolate and project to maintain a 'safe" position in it, we are good at accommodating error within our way of looking at things, but malfunctional when it comes to changing our way of looking at things to be more "error-free" so i t hink ultimately, this is what "mystical endeavor" is about, changes in the way we think to improve the accuracy of our ideas about "how things are" and as part of that, we will gravitate to more solipsist views that improvement of accuracy is fundamental and you don't get it from religions, you do get it somewhat by extensive quality reading and a lot of solitude/meditative inquiry the babble of the "pretenders" is unfortunately the norm and everywhere
Thanks for this video, but I think you're wrong about materialism being the predominant worldview of our time. In my experience most people take what's going on in their heads as the ultimate reality. They interpret everything they encounter in the 'oustside world' through that set of believes and assumptions. So it is a kind of idealism really. Even natural science only quite recently (about 100 year or so) came to the conclusion that our senses and experiences of the world are not the last word on the question on what is real. Quantum physics is the buzzword here, I think. For the general population there is really not much doubt that what we think and sense is ultimately real. One could argue that materialism itself is also a kind of idealism, because it is just another made up concept of the world. And so 'real' materialists, that is people with an absolute machanistic worldview, are quite rare. Even Karl Marx (who for many is THE materialist) knew that every philosophy is just an interpretation, and only action is real (quite the Buddhist, ol' Charlie!). He even stated that that it absolutely impossible to reproduce the world in our heads, so there is no absolute truth to be had in the realm of thought. Sounds a bit like Nishijima Roshi :) My point is: even people like Marx or a physicist are not really materialists.
Yeah... I know what you mean. It's really complicated. I guess the real point is that we have a worldview that we take to be true and unquestionable. Whether it's materialistic or idealistic, we think that our senses perceive the real world and that the thoughts we have based on those senses are reliable.
Once again, you show a wisdom far beyond your years. I have learned so much from you. Your applying zen to daily living is amazing.
Aw. Thanks.
Nah, he only looks much younger than he is. 😉
I love this idea that explanations are comfort food for the journey to them. "People like explanations."
They sure do. They insist on them. They value them according to the conviction and care you show in their composition and discussion. They do not have to make much sense. They are required foreplay. I do computer systems for big companies. This is my life.
The main power of a new system is just that you REVISIT. You revisit yourself. It is like how they used to copy books. You copy from an old copy with paper faded and discolored by age, ash and oil onto new fresh bright paper and new ink. PRESTO! You have a new clean copy with obvious spelling errors and ink blobs removed.
Thanks for keeping it real Brad. You explain your perspectives in a way that seems authentic rather than flowery or pontificatorial (if that's not a word it should be). I don't think I understood why I should be doing Zazen when I first started, kept expecting something to happen. Well something happened but I didn't even notice it, love the quote that all Buddhism is a footnote to Zazen. Keep up the great content!
Thanks!
I read zen texts not so much for an "explanation," but as another way to point to the buddhist way of thinking late at night when I'm prone to anxiety. It usually helps. I do zazen in the morning and read zen texts before bed. (And in between, I often watch your videos. Thank you!)
Thank YOU!
Speaking of explanation, when it comes to frequency, has anyone notice any difference in 2-20 min session vs 1-30 min session daily?
My goal is 40 minutes, but sometimes I cut it short and do 33 or something. I really try to do at least 30. I think when I sit for a longer period, my mind has more of a chance to quiet down. It’s more time away from excitement and therefore more time to experience some of the “clarity” Zazen and not just the crazy inner chatter Zazen. I’m still not really sure if the content of your Zazen experience really matters and if so, how. I read a lot but I don’t understand a lot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That might be another reason why I push myself to do longer Zazen lol
I consider 40 minutes my absolute minimum. But that's because in the dojo I go to, a zazen session is 2x40. In my experience 40-45 minutes is a good length of time for the mind to go through its agitation and wandering patterns and have a chance to settle down. Frequency is more important than length, so sitting for 50-60 is probably overdoing it.
@@edgepixel8467 Thanks for that, I’m going to redouble my effort to stay still for 40 minutes!
If you can build up to sitting longer periods you can really get deeper into it. I sit in the morning for 50 to 60 minutes then later in the day I sit 20 minutes. Then before bed I sit another 20 minutes. It really makes a difference.
What Do You Need to Know to Do Zazen? : "Fukanzazengi" , after reading that you'll get 500+ questions for your teacher including the koan: "Think of not thinking". Once you sat for 7-10 years in all the painful postures trying to get into some mental state or get something and only getting boredom you'll realize Dogen was right !..It's Just Sit !!.....And you'll never be able to get into Prajñāpāramitā like Avalokiteshvara did and realize something real meaningful like Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
Would the explanations not be more effective with a long white goatee?
They might be. And I could probably grow one these days.
I have what’s probably a silly frivolous question but do you ever sit zazen with a song stuck in your head? I’m a musician and record collector and almost always have some kind of music on a loop in my head, inescapably so. This morning during my zazen it was “ save a prayer” by the Eagles of death metal.
It's good to know there is room for extremely flowery verbose intellectual noodles such as myself
What do we need to know? Just drop it, let lit go. And when you've let it all go, drop it. Zazen is too simple for many people to understand.
Buddhism has a materialistic side to it. Only, they weight is shifted, relative to the counter-point of so called "objective" materialism: The materiality is ascribed to "ideas" (or "eidei=dharmâ" plus a manifold of more complex phenomena or "selves"), which are conceptualized quite mechanically. Some call this approach---in the Indian context traceble back to the times of Vedes and Upanishads---an "objective subjectivism". Early sinitic varieties/play-forms can also be found.
The difference, made up between "materialists" and "idalists", looks (to me) rather like an ideological device, designed to separate "ideologial camps" from each other, respectively to clear "front-lines".
Every serious (proto-)science has vital space-time (pre)set as one of the basic starting points, which means: Give some due regard to the void/free-play aspects of time-being, whereby time---or at least one aspect of this "familiar stranger" (J.T. Fraser)---here is understood as kinda anti-thesis of the (supposedly static) space (G.W.F. Hegel)!
Way-bound Dharma-heir "Primordial Way" was socialized into the Buddhist matrix, yet also a child of his times, living in a world we, nowadays, don`t easily understand in many respects.
To propagate "Only mind sitting!" may, for one, be read as a counter-measure or antidote against the leading "esoteric" schools, which operated intensively (respectively too much) with "magic", "exclusivism", "charisma", "obscurantism", and so forth, thereby often really only creating as much new illusions as destroying some older ones (all judged according to Buddhist "measures", to be sure, by Dôgen and his adversaries).
Master Dôgen wanted, so another hypotheses, to make "wisdom" (welling out of "bodhi") more "catholic" (i.e., something that concerns all people), in accordance with the doctrines of (universal) "Buddha-nature=original enlightenment".
What is basically needed---"for whom it may concern" (--> Indra`s net, "utmost exertion" based on a "total dynamism", see: S. Heine, etc.)---, is: Lift the veil in order to really, fully awaken (--> dream-metaphoric)---via "non-doing" (--> Yoga-physiology: play of vagus and sympathicus)!
Only against this doctrinal background, against the general matrix of the way-bound Big Loom, makes the "easy way" of "Just sit!" fuller (positive) sense: as tip of the ice-berg---against the general horizon of the "world" as the (blurredly) sensed totality of all everyday-lifeworlds.
The world of pre-modern Japan resembled in many ways an "enchanted garden" (Max Weber`s "Zaubergarten"), and one of its (partially surely also critical) inhabitants was Master Dôgen.
Now, in synopsis, why did Master "Primal Way" start to propagate: "Only mind sitting!"?
And what would, e.g., the alternative "narratives" of modern positivistic, experimental psychology/social-psychology tell us about it: Does it really, according to current scientific standards, work the way(s) advocates (or apolegetics) suggest? Is it "in reality" just a form of psychological suppression, which sometimes may even become dangerous by creating disharmonies, and other Zen-ailments)? Is it a kind of brain-washing? Is it a form of auto-hypnosis? Is it a device to create Communitas? Is it just a healthy way of living (or "nurturing life")? ...
Lots of stuff for further reflecting and discussing, for whom it may concern; anyway, thanks for sharing!
Just wanted to throw this out there. Does doing Zazen encourage passivity when dealing with other people's negative actions ?
I wouldn't say that. But it does seem to make it easier to ignore them.
'dogen wrote a massive book about his experiences in zazen' - but....really there is no such experience (it is 'just sitting' ie whatever happens is what happens...or rather is what you are given) - so he was writing about what (?) nothing (?) - this is just a sideways way of saying that i think you got a bit mixed up there when you were talking about materialism (ie mind and matter are the same...??)...poetry (truthful speech) is a way of meeting each other (which is not easy)...somehow writing and truthful speech make no sense but they do make sense and it is good that they make sense...
There is no mind-basis for all.
the problem with talks given after "meditation" is they are too imprinting, the barriers are down and the brain is in a suggestable state, its effectively brain washing
it takes years to get that billshut out of your hair, let's be honest , decades
i think the view everybody has is that we are actors in a larger sphere of operation that continues in our absence and we must extrapolate and project to maintain a 'safe" position in it, we are good at accommodating error within our way of looking at things, but malfunctional when it comes to changing our way of looking at things to be more "error-free"
so i t hink ultimately, this is what "mystical endeavor" is about, changes in the way we think to improve the accuracy of our ideas about "how things are" and as part of that, we will gravitate to more solipsist views
that improvement of accuracy is fundamental and you don't get it from religions, you do get it somewhat by extensive quality reading and a lot of solitude/meditative inquiry
the babble of the "pretenders" is unfortunately the norm and everywhere
Thanks for this video, but I think you're wrong about materialism being the predominant worldview of our time. In my experience most people take what's going on in their heads as the ultimate reality. They interpret everything they encounter in the 'oustside world' through that set of believes and assumptions. So it is a kind of idealism really.
Even natural science only quite recently (about 100 year or so) came to the conclusion that our senses and experiences of the world are not the last word on the question on what is real. Quantum physics is the buzzword here, I think.
For the general population there is really not much doubt that what we think and sense is ultimately real. One could argue that materialism itself is also a kind of idealism, because it is just another made up concept of the world. And so 'real' materialists, that is people with an absolute machanistic worldview, are quite rare. Even Karl Marx (who for many is THE materialist) knew that every philosophy is just an interpretation, and only action is real (quite the Buddhist, ol' Charlie!). He even stated that that it absolutely impossible to reproduce the world in our heads, so there is no absolute truth to be had in the realm of thought. Sounds a bit like Nishijima Roshi :)
My point is: even people like Marx or a physicist are not really materialists.
Yeah... I know what you mean. It's really complicated. I guess the real point is that we have a worldview that we take to be true and unquestionable. Whether it's materialistic or idealistic, we think that our senses perceive the real world and that the thoughts we have based on those senses are reliable.
@@HardcoreZen True. Funny little apes we are :)