Ch’an is the Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit ‘dhyana’ which means ‘meditative absorption’. The Japanese version is the more familiar ‘Zen’. The goal is Prajñāpāramitā or ‘transcendental wisdom’, or awakening, satori. It is neither religion in the Western sense, nor yet science. It is a unique tradition and lineage of spiritual awakening which can only be learned by doing.

Ch’an/Zen Buddhism has beliefs, but it is not about belief, it’s about unrelenting and strict discipline (sadhana) which is practiced in a highly controlled and disciplined setting according to the traditional monastic discipline (vinaya). It uses logic, but its aim transcends logic. Of course as it has now been transmitted to Western culture through several generations of books, teachers, proponents and enthusiasts, both real and fake, it has many meanings not all of which are true to the tradition that gave rise to them. There are now many popular books on the Zen of Golf, or Gardening, or Business, or [insert topic here].

At least, nowadays, there are credible representative teachers and organisations in the Western world, and the parent organisations in Japan have pretty good websites for those seeking more info, including https://global.sotozen-net.or.jp/eng/index.html and http://zen.rinnou.net/ . There are many others also. It is still a thriving and vital spiritual movement.

:up: Thanks.

Wayfarer is "The Man" when it comes to subjects like this. Not that I'm qualified to judge, but his knowledge on such subjects seem exhaustive.

Interesting.

The key is to avoid depersonalization disorder (see Google for symptoms) as one travels the spiritual path

depersonalization disorder — Gregory

Mind if I pick your brain on this subject. It's quite close to my heart in the sense I sometimes feel as if I don't exist or, more accurately, as if I exist only to not exist. A puzzle that's so close to home that I'd probably commit every possible fallacy in the book. Thanks.

It's rooted in either something that happened to you or a chemical imbalance. So figuring yourself on this is first key, and if that doesn't help and you feel stuck Zoloft or ketamine infusions can help.

It's rooted in either something that happened to you or a chemical imbalance. So figuring yourself on this is first key, and if that doesn't help and you feel stuck Zoloft or ketamine infusions can help. — Gregory

:smile: I'm trying to avoid chemical interventions but I smoke :grin:

Ch’an/Zen Buddhism has beliefs, but it is not about belief, it’s about unrelenting and strict discipline (sadhana) which is practiced in a highly controlled and disciplined setting according to the traditional monastic discipline (vinaya). — Wayfarer

Belief (faith) is fundamental, though, as Açvaghosha's Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahâyâna attests.

Who would go through "unrelenting and strict discipline (sadhana) which is practiced in a highly controlled and disciplined setting" without believing that doing so would, or at least could, lead to "Prajñāpāramitā or ‘transcendental wisdom’, or awakening, satori."? And until one had attained such a state one would have no foundation for believing that the discipline would, or even could, lead to it.

And even then one would have no inter-subjectively corroborable reason for believing anything at all about what the teachings of Buddhism claim (karma, rebirth etc.). The whole phenomenon could be explained merely in terms of brain chemistry for all we can tell.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with having groundless faith; we all inevitably do it. The point is that it should be acknowledged, not obfuscated by further groundless appeals to "direct knowing" as if that could prove anything about the nature of reality!

In other words the very idea that humans can directly know the nature of reality is itself an article of groundless faith, no matter how "enlightened" a person, or some tradition, finds that person to be. Intellectual honesty demands that this be acknowledged, and yet it so seldom is by adherents.

Like I said - it has beliefs but it is not about belief. It is nearer to a form of gnosticism than to doxastic religions. In a similar way that Plato differentiated between doxa and pistis, on the one hand, and dianoia and noesis, on the other, I think doxastic and gnostic religious cultures can be differentiated.

The aspirant also has glimpses of satori, which are validated by the teacher. According to Edward Conze, who is a notable scholar of Buddhism, it is essentially a gnostic school - the word 'gnosis' comes from the same root as 'jn-' in the Sanskrit 'Jñāna' and has a similar meaning. The foundational texts of Zen Buddhism, such as the Lankavatara Sutra, are deep philosophical treatises on the realisation of the faculty of Prajñāpāramitā - 'transcendental wisdom', or 'the realisation of emptiness'.

In other words the very idea that humans can directly know the nature of reality is itself an article of groundless faith — Janus

It's not groundless to Buddhists, as 'the Buddha' is 'one who knows' - it's what the honorific 'Buddha' means. Of course, for you that might be a matter of belief. And in practice for Buddhists at some point it often requires acceptance on faith, with the proviso that it can ultimately be seen directly by them also.

The whole phenomenon could be explained merely in terms of brain chemistry for all we can tell. — Janus

I once saw an interesting talk by a neuroscientist who had investigated Zen and joined a Zen order - Zen and the Brain, James Austin. I don't think he would have thought you can 'explain' Zen in terms of brain chemistry, but he was interested in the correlations. You'll find a long lecture by him here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEIXijQctlQ . (He's not a scintillating speaker though.)

Oh, and there's also The Buddha's Brain, by Rick Hanson. Saw him speak too. And the neurology of religious belief, by Andrew Newberg. Not to forget the excellent David Brooks OP from many years ago on The Neural Buddhists (of which I'm probably one.)

It is nearer to a form of gnosticism than to doxastic religions. — Wayfarer

Gnosticism is the belief that certain kinds of experiences tell us something about the nature of reality. That cannot ever be anything more than a belief or feeling, no matter how convincing the experiences may be. So you see, belief is fundamental after all.

It's not groundless to Buddhists, as 'the Buddha' is 'one who knows' - it's what the honorific 'Buddha' means. Of course, for you that might be a matter of belief. And in practice for Buddhists at some point it often requires acceptance on faith, with the proviso that it can ultimately be seen directly by them also. — Wayfarer

Here again, the notion that what I'm seeing is direct seeing or knowing is itself groundless, or at best grounded on a conviction based on a feeling, perhaps even a feeling of utter certainty. But even feelings of absolute certainty are not rational warrants for beliefs. I realize you don't want to admit that, but you have no rational justification for denying it.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying you shouldn't believe such things, I'm saying that intellectual honesty demands that you acknowledge that they are beliefs that, unlike empirical beliefs, cannot ever be inter-subjectively confirmed, because there is nothing that can be presented as evidence. In one way or another we all believe things like that.

*

Cannot be, eh? You know this, how? — Wayfarer

If you think it could me more, then you should be able to explain how it could be. Note, I'm not claiming that peak experiences don't tell us anything about the nature of reality, but simply that we have no way of knowing that they do, no matter how certain we may feel that they do. In any case they don't tell us anything determinate about the nature of reality, because if they did we would be able to say exactly what they tell us.

The disagreement about the nature and origin of the cosmos and of the soul and the nature of the afterlife in the various religions is enough to show that religious experience cannot tell us anything definite. If all religions agreed, the case might be different, but they don't.

there is nothing that can be presented as evidence — Janus


Entire cultures have been built around them. — Wayfarer

Obviously I am speaking about what we would consider counts as evidence. Other cultures may have different criteria as to what would be accepted as evidence. European culture considered scripture to constitute evidence for the longest time; but that criterion is no longer convincing to most intelligent people.

Liberal secularism is itself a violent regulator of ‘private’ belief. You can believe whatever you like, provided you do not believe that your personal beliefs are actually objectively true, or matter in any public way.


You see why I quoted this to you? You act like an enforcer of this outlook on this forum. — Wayfarer

This is not correct. How could subjective beliefs possibly be "objectively true"? Even what are considered to be scientific truths are not. Why should anyone think that their personal beliefs carry any inter-subjective weight, beyond being able to convince others of their truth?

Others can be convinced either by compelling rational argument or by rhetoric. How could you give a compelling rational argument that your peak experience has given you insight into the nature of reality that ought to be believed, not just by yourself, but others? Believing that others should believe as you do on account of your "higher experience" or revelation is a form of elitism that may lead to far greater abuses than any liberal secularism.

Your personal beliefs being objectively true or not, and their mattering "in any public way" are totally different subjects. I didn't say your personal beliefs don't matter in any public way, insofar as they affect your behavior to others, of course they matter.

I'm tired of being accused by you of 'intellectual dishonesty'. I studied an MA in Buddhist Studies, it cost me $20 grand to do it, and I didn't do it for any material gain. Of my final thesis, the thesis supervisor said it was of good enough quality to include in his teaching material. But if that's your belief, you're welcome to it, and I'm done arguing about it with you.

The Spirituality of Secularity

The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Many assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed. Yet that is the secular view of secularity, its own self-understanding... The secularity we presuppose must be "de-naturalized" in order to realize how unique and peculiar such a worldview is...

Western secularity, including its capitalist economy, originated as the result of an unlikely concatenation of circumstances. To survive within the Roman Empire, early Christianity had to render unto Caesar what was Caesar's, and keep a low profile that did not challenge the state; spiritual concerns were necessarily distinguished from political issues. Later struggles between the Emperor and the Papacy tended to reinforce that distinction. By making private and regular confession compulsory, the late medieval Church also promoted the development of a subjective interiority that encouraged more personal religiosity. New technologies such as the printing press made widespread literacy and hence more individualistic religion possible.

All that made the Reformation possible. By privatizing an unmediated relationship between more individualized Christians and a more transcendent God, Luther's emphasis on salvation-by-faith-alone eliminated the intricate web of mediation—priests, sacraments, canon law, pilgrimages, public penances, etc. — that, in effect, had constituted the sacred dimension of this world. The religiously-saturated medieval continuity between the natural and the supernatural was sundered by internalizing faith and projecting the spiritual realm far above our struggles in this world. "These realms, which contained respectively religion and the world, were hermetically sealed from each other as though constituting separate universes". The medieval understanding of our life as a cycle of sin and repentance was replaced by the more disciplined character-structure required in the modern world, sustained by a more internalized conscience that did not accept the need for external mediation or the validation of priests.

As God slowly disappeared above the clouds, the secular became increasingly dynamic, accelerating into the creative destruction to which today we must keep readjusting. What often tends to be forgotten in the process is that the distinction between sacred and secular was originally a religious distinction, devised to empower a new type of Protestant spirituality: that is, a more privatized way to address our sense of lack and fill the 'God-shaped hole'. By allowing the sacred pole to fade away, however, we have lost the original religious raison d' etre for that distinction. That disappearance of the sacred has left us with the secular by itself, bereft of the spiritual resources originally designed to cope with it, because secular life is increasingly liberated from any religious perspective or supervision. When religion is understood as an individual process of inner faith-commitment, we are more likely to accede to a diminished understanding of the objective world "outside" us, denuding the secular realm of any sacred dimension.

The basic problem with the sacred/secular bifurcation has become more evident as the sacred has evaporated. The sacred provided not only ritual and morality but a grounding identity that explained the meaning of our life-in-the-world. Whether or not we now believe this meaning to be fictitious makes no difference to the metaphysical security and ultimate foundation that it was felt to provide. A solution was provided for death and our God-shaped sense of lack, which located them within a larger spiritual context and therefore made it possible to endure them. Human striving and suffering gained meaning; they were not accidental or irrelevant, but served a vital role within the grand structure of things.

What may be misleading about this discussion of an enervated sacral dimension is that it still seems to suggest superimposing something (for example, some particular religious understanding of the meaning of our lives) onto the secular world (that is, the world "as it really is"). My point is the opposite: our usual understanding of the secular is a deficient worldview (in Buddhist terms, a delusion) distorted by the fact that one half of the original duality has gone missing, although now it has been absent so long that we have largely forgotten about it.

This may be easier to see if we think of God and the sacral dimension as, most broadly, symbols for the "spiritual" aspect of life in a more psychological sense: that is, the dimension that encompasses our concerns about the meaning and value of human life in the cosmos. The sacred becomes that sphere where the mysteries of our existence—birth and death, tragedy, anxiety, hope, transformation—are posed and contemplated. From this perspective, the secular is not the world-as-it-really-is when magic and superstition have been removed, but the supposed objectivity that remains when "subjectivity"—including these basic issues about human role and identity—has been brushed away as irrelevant to our understanding of what the universe really is. In the process our spiritual concerns are not refuted; there is simply no way to address them in a secular world built by pruning value from fact, except as subjective preferences that have no intrinsic relationship with the "real" material world we just happen to find ourselves within.

Bolds added.

From Terror in the God-Shaped Hole: A Buddhist Perspective on Modernity's Identity Crisis, David Loy.

See also The Strange Persistence of Guilt, Wilfred McClay, Hedgehog Review.

Gnosticism is the belief that certain kinds of experiences tell us something about the nature of reality. That cannot ever be anything more than a belief or feeling, no matter how convincing the experiences may be. — Janus

So my experience of sitting at this table can never be anything more than a belief or feeling?

Note, I'm not claiming that peak experiences don't tell us anything about the nature of reality, but simply that we have no way of knowing that they do, no matter how certain we may feel that they do. — Janus

The solution to this could be to embrace the experiences for their own value, and don't bother trying to translate them in to some collection of abstractions. Personally, I tend to see the abstractions and conclusions etc as being sort of a waste product of the experiences. We eat a nice dinner, and then perhaps we have to go to the bathroom.

Or, if one is incurably philosophical and simply can't avoid creating the pile of abstractions, then it might be wise to carry them lightly, with a wink and a smile. Like watching clouds blow by. There's a pretty one! And now it's gone. Here comes another one. Etc.

Example: Some people report they have experienced God. Often this seems to be a positive experience. So far so good. And then they may begin to insist it was God they experienced and not something else, thus opening the door to centuries of pointless conflict that goes endlessly round and round to nowhere.

The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in.

Yes, thus the so very common assumption by forum atheists that they bear no burden of proof, that this is the other fellow's burden exclusively.

So my experience of sitting at this table can never be anything more than a belief or feeling? — Hippyhead

Why would you say that? Others can see you sitting at the table and thus confirm your belief in your experience of sitting at the table.

The solution to this could be to embrace the experiences for their own value, and don't bother trying to translate them in to some collection of abstractions. Personally, I tend to see the abstractions and conclusions etc as being sort of a waste product of the experiences. We eat a nice dinner, and then perhaps we have to go to the bathroom. — Hippyhead

I agree with this; I value peak experiences for themselves, not as means to some imagined end. I don't believe any conclusions can be rationally derived from them.

Yes, thus the so very common assumption by forum atheists that they bear no burden of proof, that this is the other fellow's burden exclusively. — Hippyhead

Why would you say that? It is the theist who is claiming that something invisible exists. How could there ever be evidence for such an existence?

I'm tired of being accused by you of 'intellectual dishonesty'. I studied an MA in Buddhist Studies, it cost me $20 grand to do it, and I didn't do it for any material gain. Of my final thesis, the thesis supervisor said it was of good enough quality to include in his teaching material. But if that's your belief, you're welcome to it, and I'm done arguing about it with you. — Wayfarer

I say you are intellectually dishonest because you won't address any of the arguments made against your position, not on account of your holding your faith, but because you won't admit it is a faith like any other.

I don't care what credentials you might have; to cite those is a kind of appeal to authority. I don't care how much those credentials cost you to get either; if they cost a lot all that shows is that they, and/or the studies they were awarded for, were important to you, it says nothing about the veracity or intellectual validity of what you studied. You haven't done arguing about it with me; you haven't even begun to.

It’s simply not worth discussing it with someone whose mind is already made up. It’s a waste of time for both parties.

You haven't done arguing about it with me; you haven't even begun to. — Janus

For years, I have tried to answer questions from you, to be told 'you haven't answered the question' or 'you've changed the subject'. What this means to me, is that you don't understand the answers I have tried to provide. Then you get visibly annoyed with me for not having responded even when I try and respond.

I didn't quote the cost of my MA degree because I thought you should believe what I say, it was simply to indicate the fact that I am sincere and serious in my philosophical quest. I debate on this forum in good faith, and sometimes I give up and walk away, but I usually come back because I'm still interested in the subject. But I've been told over and over by you that I'm lacking sincerity, intellectually dishonest, and so on, to the point where it's simply an insult, and a waste of time. Your intellectual horizons are your own business, but I'm no longer going to try and fit into them.

It’s simply not worth discussing it with someone whose mind is already made up. It’s a waste of time for both parties. — Wayfarer

I'd say it is more the case that your mind is made up than it is that mine is. I actually used to think as you do, but I saw there were holes in it. I am prepared to listen to arguments to support your beliefs but you don't present any. Instead you make appeals to traditions and authority.

What this means to me, is that you don't understand the answers I have tried to provide. — Wayfarer

That's just condescending nonsense to say that if someone doesn't find what you say convincing then they must not understand what you have said. Of course I understand what you are saying; I used to think like you. I in all honesty don't believe that thinking (regarding direct knowing) is rationally supportable, and I think I have good reasons for thinking that.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't believe it; I don't go as far as to say what others should believe; I do say it is an article of faith, but there is nothing wrong with having faith; we all do it one way or another, but we also should not deceive ourselves about what is a matter of faith and what is not.

I try hard to honestly present my arguments and yet you don't address them with counter-arguments. Instead you go off on other tangents and then say I haven't understood what you've said when I point this out.

Why would you say that? — Janus

Because I'm annoying, stupid and stubborn, and insist on saying things that long experience should have taught me will accomplish nothing at all. :-)

It is the theist who is claiming that something invisible exists. — Janus

Space, the overwhelming vast majority of reality, is invisible, and has none of the properties we typically use to define existence. And yet it is real. If you consider yourself to be a person of reason, consider how you may be completely ignoring a fundamental principle of your chosen methodology, observation of reality.

Phenomena which is invisible and has no mass or weight etc can be real. Not a religious doctrine, a fact proven by science. And not a tiny obscure matter, but rather most of reality at every scale.

It is the theist who is claiming that something invisible exists — Janus

So they are. And so they bear a burden for their claim, just as anyone making a claim bears a burden. Atheists are making a similar wildly speculative claim, though most of them seem not to realize that. You might be different though, I don't know.

What is the unproven claim which atheism is built upon?

Others can see you sitting at the table and thus confirm your belief in your experience of sitting at the table. — Janus

That's just their experience. What if they are deluded too?

I don't believe any conclusions can be rationally derived from them. — Janus

It's unknown whether valid conclusions can be derived from such experiences or not.

My point would be that to the degree we feel the need for explanations of such experience, what we're really saying is that the experiences themselves are not enough, a premise which I don't agree with. The irony is that the rush to explanations is in a way a denial of the experience.