A (therefore purpose defeating?) possibly adequate concise definition of Zen

This page is no striving at a work or expression of, or arrival at, the Zen, only a writing upon a specific topic, merely a writing about the Zen

 

Introduction

 

To the Zen, practice is more important than Philosophy and theoretical discourse, the proverbial proof in the metaphorical pudding. Indeed, the stock defense to all reasoned criticism of the Zen, is that clearly the critic has not practiced, and thus remains bereft of direct Empirical knowledge thereupom. Guilty as charged! But is this not the proverbial cart before the metaphorical horse? Does not reasonable question precede the undertaking of any one lifelong rigorous practice among all myriad possibilities? First of all, how well can one actually rely upon the promised outcomes of Zen practice? And more to the point, why would one even want them? That remains the central question of the present work.

 

A prime distinction of rational falibilism, is the rejection of despair over the admitted impossibility of perfect certainty or the recovery of innocence, both so vastly overrated. All struggle for perfection, innocence and certainty, all thereby become at best superfluous, at worst pernicious. Nothing can be more plain and profane.

 

A stock rejoinder to all such reasoned criticism and question of the Zen, is Ad Hominem blanket dismissal of all reason as emanating from the ego. Again, I readily concede the point that reason is indeed a feature of the self aware ego, yet questioning the relevance of that observation, and the appeal at all, to begin with, of all so blithely acetic Zen Mystical contempt for ego and exhortation to non attachment, sublime apathy and Nirvana Principle of ending suffering by reducing one's needs. For in the biting words of Kathleen Norris: "When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?" 

 

Striving with complete focus to still an ocean of sorrow, who will spare so much as a glance to notice any dawning ray of hope? It is a misguided quest for inner peace, much less world peace, that seeks first to quell or exhaust individual capacity for suffering which is, after all, a sign of life and the bad taken with the good. In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.”  Therefore beware cult mind control methods including brainwash, meditation, trances, prolonged and repetitive thought stopping rituals, dances and chanting. Typically, the resultant emotional breakdown will be packaged and touted as a purging spiritual awakening and enlightenment in elimination of some or other false and unwanted self, such as the much maligned ego. But quite the opposite from all such strenuous systematic invalidation, grieving and catharsis by giving vent, will actually acknowledge, validate and legitimize individual grievance. Moreover, a healthy ego needs love too! "RESISTANCE IS not FUTILE .

Zen origins: 

Zen is usually associated with, yet distinguished from, Buddhism. Or else Zen is said to have come forth in Japan from the merger of Indian Buddhism and Taoism in China, which is called Ch'an. But others regard Taoism as distinct, and even a dilution of, Zen. Or else Zen may be regarded as a school of Mahayana Buddhism having developed in China in the 6th and 7th centuries from the meeting of Dhyana Buddhism and Taoism.

Or even perhaps Zen is Taoism disguised as Buddhism, such being 'The Tao of Zen.'

Zen, after all, remains a field of inquiry and controversy within which different views even as to the nature of Zen itself are known to clash, spark and contend.

And whereas Taoism constituting a body of reference recommending serene contemplation in quest for egoless and effortless harmony with all endeavor, abides, likewise, in emptiness, even in deepest meditation Zen remains expressly concerned with the journey, experience of such unexpected fiery inspiration, satori, as even the Taoist formulae may only seek for and indicate.

For ego and effort are regarded as disharmonious in Zen. And in the Zen, indication to show the way to direct experience is exalted over explanatory analytical comprehension scorned by the Zen as indirect and distorted. But we shall return to all of that later.

Of course, though paradox and contradiction are regarded by Zen no less than Tao as merely illusory, perhaps uninspired failure of Gestalt synthesis, nevertheless electric Zen elevates such inner struggle that the serene Tao seemingly rejects as pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity.

Zen, then, is all agitation in endless courtship of the ground state of the Tao,

 

"The opposite of a true statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”   — Niels Bohr

A prime distinction of rational falibilism, is the rejection of despair over the admitted impossibility of perfect certainty or the recovery of innocence, both so vastly overrated. All struggle for perfection, innocence and certainty, all thereby become at best superfluous, at worst pernicious. Hence, popularly, from a falibilistic perspective, even Post Modern Nihilism becomes no more than an emphasis upon noninherency in rejection of privileged or intrinsic definitions or states, for example, conceptually, masculinity being no less contingent upon femininity than vice versa, likewise crooked or criminal and straight and upstanding, and even, in physics, not only Heisenberg principle of inevitable interference even from sheer observation, but solidity of any one object entirely contingent upon the solidity of other objects, hence relative, otherwise meaningless. All concepts and conditions are thus merely modified forms via Socratic participation in other forms in varying degree, even of their dualistic opposites, yin and yang. Indeed, returning to straight and upstanding versus crooked or criminal, what is authority and the law of the land, but fire to fight fire, coercion curtailing coercion? Indeed, behold the vigilante violating the law of the land actually in striving for preservation and enforcement thereof.

No less than East and West, feminine and masculine, Tao and Zen are reciprocally mirrored Yin and Yang, at the same time both interdependent and on every level in conflict, complementary and yet also in  opposition and contradiction with each other, all in accordance with the law of unity of opposites which asserts the reciprocal inclusion and incorporation even among completely opposite abstract concepts and actual circimstances, describing as a matter of perspective, the underlying unity as well as the manifest polarity of things, events and processes, even divination, including the very point and relevance of Zen immediacy in the face of the idealism of Tao, historically, rhetorically, transitory politically and societally, iconoclastic individual independence in rebellion declared against established order but so often quickly aligning with and cultivating some new order of conservative cult authority, institution, comforting and inspirational mythology, hypocrisy and ultimately entrenched betrayal of all high minded principle. For indeed, how can that which is so transitory in the mind and too personal for transmission attain permanence in the very traps and trappings of this world?

Indeed it would seem that the Mystical doctrine of the Zen, so immoderate yet extolling moderation, so ultimately Manichean, nevertheless incorporates as prime tenet, such an ultimate caution against Manichean polarizational thinking. This is not paradox, but contradiction, and at best controversy. Alas, extol of the unity of opposites, tends to condemn controversy in and of itself, as unenlightened and unenlightening mere abstraction, inferior to the true Zen discourse. But moderation demands the softening of that condemnation in turn. Such much, bah humbug! In the famous admonition of J.R.R. Tolkien: “Never ask an elf for advice for he will say both yes and no.”

• Pollen Blossom: Zen and Taoism as One Entity
• Tao and Zen  
• historical linguistics  
• Suffering, unease, or: dukkha
• Ways to permanent happiness - An Introduction to Buddhism
• The Root Cause of Unhappiness spoiler: it's ego, consciousness, the mind itself intrinsically, thought at all. Happiness is just spacing out!   
• Concise critique plus comparison to Christianity
  

Zen context:

 
“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
gf vc

— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

 

 

"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us from.”   — Marcel Proust

Experiential apprehension, the only important thinking by the poetical sensibilities of Zen enigma, is mercurial and elusive because everything depends upon context. But experiential Zen context remains transitory. Thus, to the Zen wise sacred fool, the world is chimerical, particularly as regards human interaction, wherein each individual consciousness, the Zen states of multiple human elements, are so variable (especially given all combinatorial optimization left to chance).

Hence, even usage of the very word: 'Zen' also in the sense of broadest apprehension, approach, or body of howsoever intuitive ways.

Zen dialogue?

Satori even in the face of Wittgensteinean paralysis... ?

"Trying to speak about the ultimate reality is like sending a kiss through a messenger.”   — Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Zen is a deliberately inscrutable teaching, made even more enigmatic by its interpreters in countless years of innumerable writings upon as they insist, the utterly inexplicable, all under the same famous caveat of Lao Tzu: "they who tell do not know; they who know do not tell."

Truth seldom lies buried in the data and therefore knowledge is not simply an end product of induction by Empirical packrats. Massive unsorted garbage in, bloated and obscure garbage out. Esoteric knowledge, prescriptive and calculatingly encoded and camouflaged into intentional obscurity or else however entirely ingenuous and descriptive, is fundamental yet derived only via careful comparison of diverse knowledge from many fields with keen attention and sagacity. While the ineffable, even knowable, even transmissible, nevertheless defies explanation or description. Indeed, according to the TRIZ theory of inventive problem solving, only pioneering discoveries are more rare and precious than cross-disciplinary solutions, knowledge imported from one discipline into another. And relevant living knowledge (as opposed to knowledge that is rightly called: inert), serving renewal and vitality, is growth, the experience of change put into practice, learned behaviors never immutable but ever subject to re-adaptation, emergent in collective interaction, tacit, highly charged and redolent, profoundly with the sensibility of drama, may even skirt the ineffable, often defying ready articulation let alone routine management via knowledge-driven Epistemology.

Knowledge can be of information, cases, skills and processes, abilities ingrained to second nature. "Factual" [sic.] or declarative information is often the easiest to state and to assess and simply therefore often preferred, even though no less often of least practical importance, skills often being found the most difficult to articulate and of greatest practical importance along with processes and cases.

Hence, ever mistrustful and contemptuous of any verbal exchange of anecdotes and likewise the religious writings left behind by others, Zen spits forth many extremely harsh words against words at all, a reoccurring theme in many lands and times. Indeed, aside from a characteristic silly-clever discredit of arguments without the trouble of genuine refutation, the practice of analytic Deconstruction, Zen like, points to context and the lack of inherency, the relative conditionality, of constructed factitious language, without the foundation of supposed transcendental meaning or inherent clarity in even the simplest basic arbitrarily "privileged" and therefore unexamined expressions. But all such must come as little upset to Hypothetico-Deductive Method wherein science begins from unfounded conjecture, and thereafter problems are confronted as they arise, ambiguity ever seeking improved resolution and truth via closer correspondence with observable reality.

Relevance is to any external object or purpose. Otherwise, internal or inner processes, no matter how adept, no matter how efficient, are inherently irrelevant. Intrapsychic Mysticism is likewise therefore inheritably irrelevant. The Empiricism of Mysticism is timid and introverted, whereas the Empiricism of science is bold and extroverted. They could not be more opposite! Mysticism claims that deepest truth is ineffable. Mysticism is predicated upon Wittgensteinean paralysis, the Empirically refuted claim that subjective meaning cannot be shared because words fail and then become meaningless in grappling with their own imitations, thus rendering miscommunication repair impossible. But in actuality, Dialectics of Miscommunication Competence and Conversational Adequacy, however imperfect of course, are repeatedly observable in ongoing practice, teaching, learning and improvement, only every day! There is even a name for the use of language in discussion of language itself: Metalanguage. And metalanguage is put to good use, only every day. Wittgensteinean paralysis, then, is nothing more than another craven anti-intellectual copout.

Nevertheless, Mysticism continues to bemoan the limitation and futility of learning and communication in quest of truth. Mysticism contends that no one can impart truth to another, not by any means of reasoning or communication. Mysticism therefore advocates lone self-reliance in cultivation of experiential methods. Whereas Didacticism strives to discover, clearly express and to share discoveries of good logic and sound reasoning, thereby adding to and improving upon the sum of human knowledge, something which Mysticism cannot do. Truth is correspondence to reality in assertioms. Reality is singulars. Truth is therefore likewise singular. Verisimilitude means approximation coming closer to truth. But actual truth cannot be so ambiguous, much less as ineffable as poetry or meditation that defies clear expression in order to share whatever purported understanding or insight. An assertion in order to be true, must first be clear. Popper therefore advocates abandonment of the quest for intersubjective meaning. Subjective meaning is relevant, if at all, only to some external reality. Hence Karl Popper emphatically recommends: rather than quibbling over meaning at all, in the event of substantive disagreement, instead investigate whatever real phenomena (lower case) or circumstances in question. Even questions of linguistics may be settled by external investigation of actual usage. Whereas meditation has no Epistemological application at all. There is no special truth to be found in meditation. As the saying goes: Anyone may remain silent and pretend some secret wisdom! But then in such cases, it is only that very silence which separates different people from shared understanding.

In surreptitious retreat from ever more indefensible Mysticism, a lesser claim for meditation, is that meditation cultivates perspective. Such much. There are many and perhaps better paths to perspective, even didactically or Dialectically. All the above then leaves the way open for any more viable hypothesis as to the nature and purpose of meditation.

As to the function and limitations of human expression as in the use of language: In context primarily of elementary particles and such, the quantum physicist Richard Feynman declared that we cannot say what anything is, only say various different things about it. In other words: Incompleteness, even prior to every obstacle of linguistic intersubjectivity and Wittgensteinean paralysis. And we find much the same notion as expressed by Feynman but most broadly applied to life since antiquity in Buddhist thought, often as an Epistemological invalidation of individual being, identity (the much maligned ego), subjective Phenomenal perception, affect, comprehension and even reality to begin with, and a harrowing Existential dilemma besides! Incompleteness seems implicitly taken as gravely inadequate. But to what impossibly high standard and what allegedly unmet need or purpose? This conclusion is never made explicit, no matter how the initial supporting points are belabored at length. Implicit is that from acceptance of our Epistemological and Existential circumstances, the corollary is acquiescence to the futility of rational and sensory investigation, leaving thus the alternatives being either any meditation claimed to be more profound, sublime apathy, or any synthesis of the two.

“Abide not with dualism,
Carefully avoid pursuing it;
As soon as you have right and wrong,
Confusion ensues, and Mind is lost.”

 

— Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures

Indeed, in answer to the apparent non-problem of 'Practical Zen,' chapter VI of 'AN INTRODUCTION TO ZEN BUDDHISM,' one cannot but agree that words that indicate their descriptive definitions are therefore all necessarily incomplete because they only reference infinite Existential modalities of being beyond finite enumeration. And awe is inspired, even via the artifice of the fable pointing, for the ineffable vastness of the territory howsoever woefully inadequately mapped, is truly beautiful.

Nevertheless, how then does assertion and recommendation of a higher apprehension via wordless silence, follow therefrom, when the above perfectly Didactic initial assertion, again: that words indicate their descriptive definitions which, in turn. are all necessarily incomplete, is already crystal clear Didactic?

Zen here struggles quite unnecessarily. For in this instance, true correspondent dichotomous understanding of an intrinsic dichotomy is far simpler and more ordinary, plain and profane. -And as with all such didactic fundamentals, with no mischief in the repetition! Didacticism is the answer, not the problem.

For though the range of possible untruth remains infinite, there remain always many different strategies for adequate or better expression, comprehension let alone communication, of truth, featuring: selected details, emphasis and perspective, all towards howsoever adequate representations of reality; but never, outside the hypothetical mind of God, any actually comprehensive Zen meditation upon, let alone communicative transmission, of any totality of being, the senses of objectivity remaining, or so we must hope, ever distinct. 

Indeed, if expression were possible such as to embrace any totality of being, would this even be desirable? Certainly, if such were not only possible but Zen mandatory, what good would that do? In truth, anything salient ever to be said of anything or anyone, must be howsoever selective particular to whatever necessarily narrowed context. Therefore, it is better to celebrate than to mourn or to deny even howsoever mere limited and specific human understanding and fallibility.

Indeed, leave us never forget the utter failure of Inductivism which strives to be comprehensive or representative, given the manifest impossibility of completeness. Likewise Zen, here in quest for totality as well as ever, futility, has at least achieved aimlessness! But such, or so it might seem, remains futility merely as an esthetic value or consideration, which is to say: simply by even somewhat arbitrary taste, and hence again: hopefully, at least, for art's sake and the serenity of appreciative amusement. Yet it remains all so often the Didactic which is plain and profane where Zen is even deliberately most obscure and even somewhat smug.

Bah, humbug! Being is not exclusive to any ineffable totality of being. Being is of innumerable aspects impermanent, unfolding, ever anything to look forward to. And in acceptance of things as they are, that a person, senses, ponders, discerns and changes as a person is just perfect for being and growing as a person, under the indisputable Epistemological circumstances of he human condition, that trouble no one so greatly, who has not been one way or another been indoctrinated to decidophobic perfectionism to begin with! So, there: Problem, what problem?  Much like Theology, Zen only manufactures unreal conundrums in order to wrestle with. 

Does our cultural involvement in Psychology and Psychotherapy only make us all the more morbidly neurotic? Well, it's not as though people have no problems before seeing a shrink! But can the same be said of religion or Theology?

Psychiatric illness of obsession consists of whatever initial trauma in the past or issues in the present, compounded by the vicious cycle spawning layers of reaction formation, obsessive and ambivalent patterns of struggle and denial misguidedly arising in order to cope, but only steadily worsening. Each layer of reaction formation, failing and creating further suffering, both internally and by self sabotage externally, inspires ever more of the same harm, suffering and futility. That is why the success of psychotherapy indeed depends upon the breakdown of the adaptation and upon despair, the loss of all hope in maladaptive reaction formation. Only then can issues be addressed and traumas released cathartically.

Similarly, the religion of Christianity replete with both the repressive and obsessive struggle with sin, and the release of the confessional, exists both to incubate and to treat the guilt complexes so characteristic of Christianity, And similarly, Mysticism the likes of the Zen, as with many Holistic treatments, consists of the exacerbation of the course of the illness, specifically, the obsessive struggle with the conundrums of Zen, until a controlled breakdown occurs, and thus the attainment of futility promising the peace of sublime apathy, by means of inducing overall behavioral extinction called: Zen cessation, a Draconian response to the challenges of stimulus struggle.

But much as Christianity is of little appeal to Hedonism and the embrace of healthy desire, likewise the Zen can only be that much less compelling to anyone who, for whatever reasons, simply does not find the abstract conundrums of Zen particularly dystressing, emotionally, even though the Zen effectively pathologies by far so much more than its own obsessive process, the somewhat draconian treatment, by demonizing en toto, the ego. Zen perfectionism seeks to end all suffering by crushing the spirit, by quashing all hope, not just sinful desire as in Christianity, or misguided hopes as of reaction formation in Psychology and Psychotherapy. Indeed, whereas in Psychotherapy compassion and understanding are seen as aiding transference and catharsis, Zen futility is such cold comfort because any expression of sympathy or compassion for the crisis of futility attained, might undermine intrapsychic self-reliance. 

Sadly, fewer seek to sell their souls at any price, than simply to be rid of them at all, relieved thereof and grateful for it. So, who would actually sally forth in order to have their spirits broken and discarded as such an obstacle? Alas that all too many are so desperate for peace and acceptance on any terms. And there is never any shortage of ever the same cult snake oil from phony gurus and fakirs, Zen Masters and Behaviorists, all ever eager to oblige. Such is the most vile exploitation. Beware!

One way or another, the path to liberation is frequently illuminated by a dawning awareness of the Existential Absurdity of things hitherto considered of utmost importance. Zen Nihilistic value destruction simply assumes that if some is good and true, more can only better and more profound; hence adamantly resolving that all is Existential Absurdity and therefore nothing matters. That this enders even the Zen itself pointless and Existentially Absurd, Nihilism too, is often taken as no contradiction or refutation, but as profound insight of mere internal consistency. But from Zen moderation along the famous middle road of Siddhartha, a better recordation comes from Yamaoka Tesshu. Quoth he: "Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap." In other words, indeed the Zen value even of Zen itself, must needs be recognized as transitory, in order to be liberating rather than merely obsessive and Existentially Absurd mischief of repetition.  

Zen prescribes unselfconsciousness together with aware mindfulness in activities and tasks, while along with self-awareness, reflection and ego, anti-intellectual deionization by the same token, of intellectual discipline which, after all, is only mindfulness as applied and manifest appropriately and even meditatively in observational or reflective critical thinking rather than merely towards external behavior, thereby inescapably undermining the very Zen quest for transcendent acquiescence to all things that the very habit of criticism and even the most entirely appropriate dissatisfaction in the Zen deemed so threatening to begin with. According to Freud, the conscious and aware ego exists for the sake of impulse formation into the execution of strategy, serving the drives of the id within constraint of conscience which is an aspect of superego. But the Zen rejects completely, any escapism afforded by the unique features of the idle human mind, being: insight, especially into another's thinking, imagination and cooperation.

Indeed, as to the value of words, again, Axiology  being the study of values, remains quite distinct from Epistemology and never derivable from Ontology in the first place, any more than from first principles. In the words of Kahlil Gibran: "You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts..."  And expression thus motivated relieves distress and cultivates eustress. And isn't that a good thing? Well, never good enough, given extremely high standards of inner peace as only ever signified in the serene passage of silence. But then again, does not Zen controversy also prize and even seek to perpetuate the sparking clash in the mind, over human problems that must honestly stick in ones craw, impossible neither to swallow and stomach nor to expel? 

Not merely in sheer Reductionism rests the failure of phoneme theory, but in the Phenomena of memory association and the nature of communication as a human behavior, after all consisting not merely in description, instruction and assertion, all variously Ontological reference, striving nigh transcendentally for precision and clarity in the quest for truth, but also of expression and intention, ambiguity, inner response to life without distinct objective external correspondence.

As illustrated in sophisticated dialogue with subtext, understanding one another then, may often only be conjectural, approximate and verisimilitudinous at very best. But then, what knowledge isn't?  Allowing the indulgence of metaphoric Pathetic Fallacy, science, on this score, remains sanguine, cheerfully confident, optimistic and content if not actually somewhat smug.

But what of the Zen? Now, there can be a Zen of any solitary art, archery, motorcycle maintenance, or anything else. But can there be a Zen of graceful interactions, especially such as by which people are ever thought to relate to one another? Indeed, is the cultivation of conduct within  dharma just such, a quest for the same insight of spontaneous authenticity and good faith striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals?

In Transactional Analysis, like unto the Zen Master, similarly the practitioner of Transactional Analysis in hoped for deliverance from the snares of Ulterior Transactions or: headgames, aims at providing the patients a liberating satori of futility, in Transactional Analysis called the Antithesis. But where Zen promises private Mystical enlightenment, Transactional Analysis quests for honest Existential good faith defined and realized in human interaction.

• Transactional Analysis and the Antithesis.

So, is Transactional Analysis a properly dharmic liberation from karma? Or is the cultivation of conduct within dharma only a questing for impersonally cold-blooded and even shallow perfection in dealing with others? Indeed, must Zen prize or reject the same insight of spontaneous authenticity and good faith striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? Indeed, strictly speaking, can Zen ever even recognize as possible any insight of spontaneous authenticity and good faith striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? After all, bypassing, talking at cross-purpose, exchange which is not genuine communication because it lacks sufficient intersubjectivity and does not carry at all the same meanings or even purpose, intention or point at all between the participants, is all there really is, according to the Zen, traditionally.

 Attachment theory was the foundation for an influential psychological theory of loneliness developed by the sociologist Robert S. Weiss. Weiss identified six social needs that, if unmet, contribute to feelings of loneliness. Those needs are attachment, social integration, nurturance, reassurance of worth, sense of reliable alliance, and guidance in stressful situations. As would be predicted by attachment theory, Weiss maintained that friendships complement but do not substitute for a close, intimate relationship with a partner in staving off loneliness.

—   Encyclopedia Britannica

Just as with logic, without supporting Empirical observation, linguistics cannot discover truth which is correspondence to reality in assertions. Therefore Wittgensteinean paralysis and the problem of subjective meaning remains moot. Subjective meaning may vary, but objective reality ever remains singular. Therefore according to the recommendation of Karl Popper, the best way to achieve intersubjectivity is by Empirical investigation of whatever the thing or ephemera itself, not the word that names it, linguistics and subjective meaning be damned! Even ever given any lucid explanation of nonattachment distinct from detachment, clear and intelligible examples of detachment can be cited from observation, any time anyone puts aside their own strong feelings in order to pursue rational analysis or in order to empathize with entirely different situations of others. And the phenomena of denial is common place, thanks to Freud plain and profane, not only clearly enough understood for reference, but so often manifest in reality. Likewise for such blithely acetic behavioral extinction, with Zen cessation as an extreme case. But can anything similar be said of fabled nonattachment? Not only is definition unintelligible, but the only examples are people subjectively claiming nonattachment, whatever that is, often with all manner of unclear qualification, metaphor with no clear object, even dire warnings of the attachment to nonattachment pursued with all the ardor of questing for divine grace! And what does any hypothesis of nonattachment even explain? It all seems like a solution in search of a problem. Indeed, as Nietzsche complains: “Mystical explanations are considered profound. The truth is that they are not even superficial.” Moreover, and most importantly, is any application as in mystical practice, even desirable? This remains, though seemingly taken as self-evident, most questionable and unclear of all. 

Often distinction between detachment and nonattachment in any measure turn upon particular definition, kind and degree of detachment to begin with. According to the Great Ideas in Personality entry upon Attachment Theory: "When a human or non-human primate infant is separated from its parent, the infant goes through a series of three stages of emotional reactions. First is protest, in which the infant cries and refuses to be consoled by others. Second is despair, in which the infant is sad and passive. Third is detachment, in which the infant actively disregards and avoids the parent if the parent returns (Hazan & Shaver, 1987)."  Indeed, in Psychology, emotional detachment in specific refers to apathetic inability or tendency not to connect or engage, as typically resultant in traumatic behavioral extinction so prized and celebrated as Zen cessation. But  detachment more generally refers to dispassionate objectivity if not actually Stoical, as valued by scholars and scientists seeking to remain rational and interested rather than becoming distracted, carried away and mislead, overwhelmed by emotion. In fine distinction from freedom from all desire, nonattachment is often said to relate to acting without expectations as of results so that one can never be disappointed. But is that always possible, practical, self-honest or even always desirable? These questions somehow never arise. Whereas nondirective Psychodynamic Psychotherapy does not seek to cultivate any particular mentality, to force or condition anything as under any Mystical practice, and thereby only exacerbate inner conflict and denial, but rather only to liberate free expression in order thereby to attain relief and insight.

Apologists for Mystical practice decry misunderstanding of fine distinctions lost in translation, insisting that Eastern nonattachment is distinct from Western detachment, much less from even pandemic attachment disorder or traumatic disassociation. To quote Stephen Levine, ‘A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last’: “[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be.” According to Zen Thinking, whereas detachment is apathetic and disinterested, "Non-attachment is essentially a practice of presence and mindfulness. It is not allowing your sense of wellbeing to rely upon anything other than your own presence of awareness. It means to be in the world, but not of the world." Or in a word: dharmic.

But does any such distinction and glittering generality in qualified apathy somehow or other conjoined with qualified engagement ever really obtain? What does it mean? Indeed, how is any of this possible or even desirable? Attachments, detachment, attachment disorder and traumatic disassociation are all distinct and manifest, but can the same be said of nonattachment? What can we really observe of those adepts claiming nonattachment and engagement nevertheless? What little sense is made of any such claims? They are evasive, Mystical, mysterious and ineffable hand waving. Indeed, as Nietzsche complains: “Mystical explanations are considered profound. The truth is that they are not even superficial.”  One conceivable cause for a person to come so stringently to be living only in the moment, might as a desperate psychological defense mechanism of denial, should for whatever reason, encroaching reflection upon painful thoughts and memories simply becomes unendurable. And this is consistent with the unwanted self and castigation of the ego.

Mysticism claims truth that can only be experienced subjectively. Life is suffering, and all varieties of Mysticism including the Zen claim to offer relief from that suffer ding. But any treatment is only as good as whatever objective protocols to determine treatment progress. And there's the rub: To reiterate, Zen apologetics argues the fine distinction between detachment and nonattachment, cautioning that subjective meaning is lost in cross cultural translation, trapped in Wittgensteinean paralysiss. Karl Popper would argue that distinctions in subjective meaning are moot. What matters to science is what can be observed Empirically in reality. Whatever is claimed of nonattachment, is the hypothesis predictive? What are the standards of refutation? knowledge is awareness of truth. Truth is correspondence to reality in assertions. Conceivable possibility may be infinite, but reality is singular. Thus truth likewise is singular and distinct. That which comes closer to truth, is verisimilitude, resemblance to truth, less wrong. Therefore truth cannot be poorly or vaguely stated: Because for any assertion to be true, said assertion first must be clear. And that goes for nonattachment. Is there a clear definition or hypothesis? Not so far as I am aware. distinct There are only endless claims and qualifications of how nonattachment is not apathy but only emotional distance for remaining carefree. I find myself indeed unconcerned with the entire question. The great prize does not sparkle for me, because extreme Mystical claim are the least supportable, while more modest claims of insight become ever more unremarkable or unique. It all leaves me cold.

The typical exposition upon nonattachment stands upon unscientific low standards of explanation and evidentiary support, never mind promise of the efficacy pf Mystical practice. In short, they require considerable starry-eyed faith. Why then should anyone with an ounce of credulity even believe in nonattachment, any more than in God, Santa Clause or any other snake oil? Indeed, what psychologist, knowing so well all our foibles of repressed rationalization and denial, ever the yearnings to be rid of an unwanted self, would not be skeptical of such claims? Even the Zen too, remains ever skeptical thereof, warning of such things as the attachment to nonattachment among other chimera, falsehoods, traps and detours on the path to enlightenment. What Zen skepticism may lack however, are standards of refutation and predictive hypotheses, by which to discover whether or not the aspirations of the Mystic are anything real or possible to begin with. In the words of Anthony Daniels: “Where hopes are unrealistic, fears often become exaggerated; where dreams alone are blueprints, nightmares result.” Is then nonattachment anything more than a pipedream?

Most importantly, who wants the safety promised by nonattachment? Who really wants anything so repugnantly irrelevant as the promised happiness impervious to the world and lives we lead? This is all treated as self evident, but it is not. in those most famous words of Socrates:" "An unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”  These are Axiological questions of Philosophy so despised of Zen practice, yet due all careful consideration nevertheless. For as G. E. Moore contends, pleasure is not and end n itself, but merely a second order indicator of externally relevant and meaningful values. And the same might be said, even of whatever kind of peace of mind.

Attachment is important. Before any discourse upon nonattachment, the begged question, the more cogent beginning, should be investigation into the nature of attachment to begin with. Instead, attachment is no less typically demonized in Mysticism, than desire has been in Christianity, as part of an unwanted self desperately to be rid of. All of this is simply assumed. But is such anything but more of the same empty sophistry so typical of Mysticism? Is such anything more that another fine distinction that is actually no distinction at all and makes even les difference? -the villain as ever remaining attachment or desire... For in Psychology, disassociation is a denial process of separating shameful unwanted impulses, desires, and needs enacted, from cognition of ego and more importantly, superego, conscience. Thus is shielded self-system that Zen rationalizes and recommends by actually defining being fully engaged as abidance in the moment unpremediated, free from introspection and reflection particularly as in remembering the past and anticipating the future, in a word: innocent. Attachment has thus been convicted without much fair hearing. But to reiterate, only premediation is what renders experience even intelligible to begin with. Moreover, introspection of knowledge accumulated from experience in the past, along with scenario planning in anticipation into the future, are clearly at the very core of fullest engagement. Cursing attachment does not change the truth of credit due to the much maligned ego. Healthy egos need love too!

Much as ostensibly rationalistic Stoicism quests for untroubled ataraxia (aταραξία), in much the same Draconian response to the challenges of stimulus struggle, Mystical traditions including such as Buddhism and the Zen ever yearn for the peace of sublime apathy, by means of inducing overall behavioral extinction called: Zen cessation, emotional self violence in the cultivation of stunned shock, being the ongoing counterfeit of contentment, by means of inducing overall behavioral extinction called: Zen cessation, emotional self violence in the cultivation of stunned and exhausted shock, contentment that even according to the more Heraclitian Zen (in such colossal self contradiction) so vastly overrated to begin with! And regardless all other exhortation to moderation along the middle road of Siddhartha, in the manifestly immoderate perfectionist Utopism of Zen, the entrenched stubborn measure and evaluation of all things against impossible ideal totalities, the Zen much like unto Theology, often generates non existent snares and worries even such as to put stereotypical neurotic Judaism to shame!

But whence derives Buddhist compassion let alone conduct in accordance with universal law of dharma, save from attentive empathy and connection, from mindfulness of one another specifically? For according to the Zen, individuals may be perfectly genuine, but dialogue, let alone the motivating attachment snare of relationship, never can be genuine or true. Hence, Zen must regard Transactional Analysis and good faith as quixotically futile. For Buddhist engagement is predicated upon life  the moment, free from inner distraction and refection; and only the individual quelled into conduct within dharma can conceivably ever be however cold-bloodedly receptive to others, according to all such Mystical doctrines of self abnegation as the Zen. But is this realistic?

To reiterate: Before any discourse upon any fine points of non attachment, the relevant begged question, the more cogent beginning, should be proper investigation into the nature of attachment to begin with: In the celebrated poetry of John Donne: "No man is an island." Indeed, being that engagement is the beginning of the state or condition of attachment which is an ongoing, remembered or anticipated and even yearned for state of engagement, hence according to Self-Determination Theory, secure attachment is characterized by attention and responsiveness to one another's needs when turning toward one another to obtain comfort and care, not from shunning the dangerous emotional investment and risk of painful loss, the very cowardice whereof Zen is often quite rightly indicted.

And in this regard, autonomy support, vital to engagement in challenge and mastery in one’s own activity, is no less crucial than any other comfort. It is true that sentiment differs from emotion, in that relevant emotion however contexted by memory of the past and anticipation of the future, is elicited by and relates to external events in the present, whereas ordinary sentiment as in the wistful reverie, is introverted, an aspect of inner life and reflection that is a part of the Phenomena no less than perception of external reality. But sentimentality, resentment and self pity, much les the sublime indifference deliberately and painstakingly cultivated by the Zen, are well known so often to negate outwardly directed compassion. Emotional attachments are of actual relationship, while those of sentiment tend to the fantastical. And such illusion may even be understood as a bleakly anomic cultural feature of lonely conformity in a cold and unresponsive social environment. 

It remains then not only true but important how we all tend to reflect, remembering the past and anticipating future scenario, engaging thereby in time-bound attachment to places or settings, social milieu, to objects, events, actions and interactions, even ideas and meaningful values, but most especially bonds of affection to other individuals as according to Attachment Theory of the first core strengths attained in childhood towards adult attachment in relationships such as for couples.

All mature, friendly and functional attachments of social relationship under autonomy are ethical, being predicated upon trust and trustworthy fulfillment of such expectations, lack or abrogation whereof creating distance, even loathing and avoidance, or else ambivalence, mistrust and dysfunction, indeed if not amoral sociopathy outright, then the shattered confidence and compensations thereto of heteronomy. Weak attachment makes for weak conscience. Thus heteronymous covert relational hostility working to to undermine those attachments in society, shunning and mobbing, even well organized orchestrated harassment, thereby conspire with impunity by means of social exclusion, to harm and endanger the target of exactly such serial bullying.

Attachments may even be reshaped by sublimation. Whereas an attachment injury is the hurt from close quarters, so to speak, therefore that festers and engenders even pandemic attachment disorder severely enough to adversely affect future interactions and close relationships throughout life. Anti-Critical Bias let alone Fundamental Attribution Error exacerbated into Hostile Attribution Bias is all mistrustfully attachment injured and disordered, let alone the controlling possessiveness of bullying. 

To quote Gian Vincenzo Gravina: "A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."  But the irritation and lonely boredom from from insensitive or just unreceptive intrusion is the very least failure of intimacy. Intimacy risks far greater disappointment and betrayals. Therefore, even eustress in the most pleasant anticipation or prospect of intimacy is often marked by even sometimes threatening sensations of shyness, much as good sex is often preceded by the churning of proverbial butterflies in the stomach. And it's all just more sucker bait, and worldly snare according to the Zen, ever extolling Nirvana Principle of escape from the suffering of frustrated desire by the quelling of  Pleasure Principle.

 

“If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.” — Epicurus (Quoted in A Cyclopedia of Education, 1911)

 

“The secret self knows the anguish of our attachments and assures us that letting go of what we think we must have to be happy is the same as letting go of our unhappiness.” — Guy Finley

“The wise are so totally detached,
Pain is for those who are attached.”
— Mohit.K.Misra

“From the dear comes grief;
From the dear comes fear.
If you're freed from the dear
You'll have no grief, let alone fear.”
— Anonymous, The Dhammapada

So, can Zen nonattachment really be the answer, the release into perfect Buddhist compassion as promised? -Or just more of the metaphorical baby out with the proverbial bath water... At best, extreme perfectionist Utopist all-or-nothing polarizational Manichean exhortations to sublime apathy, let alone all harrowing Mystical trials in pursuit thereof even as supervised my the Zen Master, even denounced as wild-eyed extremist heresy, may then be subject to moderation as of the famous middle road of Siddhartha, into any more sensible measure of detachment, indeed of that lucid gain which is called: perspective and any moderate ambition of mere pain management in living life. Such much. For it remains that in the equivocation and Apologetics of the closet perfectionist Utopist all-or-nothing Manichean, Hell bent upon the literal and complete elimination of suffering, there are no diminishing and negative returns: if some is deemed good or helpful, then more must be better; and therefore the extremes only remain implicit from the moderate and common-sensible that provides a gateway to initiate the callow unsuspecting prospective new disciples, poor silly venial Americans not yet ready for more.

It remains, all nevertheless, that genuine love, compassion and friendship are all distinctly marked by such features as patience and kindness rather than envy, rude and boastful pride, ever self-seeking and quick to wrath and grudge collecting, by forthright honesty rather than hollow deceit, by protection and trust with every hope for the others' best interests, with perseverance through conflict, wanting for another all that the other person desires for themselves. And does any of that sound like nonattachment to you, gentle reader?

Hence Transactional Analysis quests and strives towards the cultivation of more intuitive interaction in good faith intrinsic to more genuine relationship between individuals. But the however optimistic Nihilistic value-destruction of Zen nevertheless scorns all such attachment as relationship without distinction. Bohmian dialogue however, does seemingly strive for vindication of human communication at all, even within holistic Zen sensibilities. But even that remains problematical.

In the most Heraclitian Buddhist thinking nowadays the more current than ever in modern physics, all objects, phenomena or other events are deemed empty of self sufficient inherency which illusory. For example, the hardest rock cannot really be inherently solid in and of itself, save that it cannot readily interpenetrate any other solid mass, because to exist is to be effective upon anything else at all at large.

In accordance with the law of unity of opposites which describes in matters of perspective, the underlying unity as well as the manifest polarity of things, events and processes, Mystical doctrines the likes of Zen and Buddhism partake of a controversy and synthesis (systems theory) familiar in science and Philosophy, that of profound marvel delving into the reduction of anything and everything that exists or occurs to the smallest and most basic self sufficient monads, versus serene appreciation in contemplation of the universal Gestalt of all things and phenomena existing only contingently, in context, dependant upon conditioning factors, upon other things, hence empty of adequate independent self-existence and intrinsic properties.

All such, however, is relationship in a strictly dharmic view. Whereas for Zen, dialogue, literally from dia- "across" + legein "speak," intersubjectivity let alone human relationship, remains all quite oxymoronic. And that is why Jews do not Zen. Judaism and even Jewish Mysticism to begin with, let alone the Zen, are intrinsically irreconcilable because, after all, community and the attachment and belonging of human relationship, a value so Nihilistically rejected by solitary Mysticism such as the Zen, has ever been, indeed, the very central focus of Judaic thought and life. 

Bohmian Dialogue strives to circumvent the inadequacy of conceptualization according to Zen, specifically as applicable in the effort at dialogue, only via the most protracted and arduous efforts of reciprocally Zenning of one another.

Zen, after all, remains a field of inquiry and controversy within which different views even as to the nature of Zen itself are known to clash, spark and contend, and over human problems that must honestly stick in ones craw, impossible neither to swallow  and stomach nor to expel. Indeed there have always been many reasons why it may even be deemed a deadly mistake to strive for ultimately boring inner harmony or tranquility of ataraxia, Nirvana, or Zen Cessation. Heraclites compared the personality to salad dressing, of constituents as incompatible as oil and vinegar: boring even to oneself, until agitated! Heraclites said: "All is fire!"  For Heraclites, nature is the agora or market of clashing forces in exchange, elements ever in transformation, and human nature likewise, is of inner conflict and tempestuous passion. Therefore, true insight is likewise thereof, honestly. And so is engaged creativity that makes even ones own company at all the more interesting and congenial. And so, orthodoxy likewise may be rejected even along with oppressive demands for unity.

In the words of Kahlil Gibran: "You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts..."  But isn't agitation to be valued? Yet Zen Epistemological Nihilism so bleakly insists that the instant even to speak about anything, one is only doomed to miss the mark. Whereas, rational skeptical science and Philosophy frankly lower any such impossible bar of perfection, spurning the futility of mythic unpremediation, optimistically enacting any hope that the more we examine and discuss any phenomena, the closer thereby we may draw to better understanding thereof. 

The difference between Zen and the democratic values of Scientific Rationalism and Socratic Method remain, nevertheless, that Zen is the quest for futility, while in the Epistemology of Scientific Rationalism and Scientific Method, doubt is fruitful and far from futile or even suffering. If Zen so values inner turmoil with difficult Existential problems, then why not embrace science and controversy? Indeed, scientific curiosity is optimistically deemed eustress and all precious little contingent upon the transcendence of Zenning the matter nor any sense of ultimate truth, wherein Zen may still fail to commit to human fallibility and will tend still to quest if not after the mythic true guru that should by spurned as the proverbial Buddha on the road, then yet after some true and infallible inner light for attainment of whatever the motivating lofty goals ever put forth of the Zen, that should have been rejected. It is futility itself that is most futile.

• Concise critique plus comparison to Christianity

After all, the observers observe and influence one another, not any other distinct object. Hence the sheer vanity of any Isolationist mythic 'Star Trek' Prime Directive of non intervention! We are all one and part of nature, anyhow, according to Zen. For as Werner Heisenberg pointed out, another's perspective at all, even simply being observed,in however minute the impact thereof, may nevertheless profoundly perturb.

In accordance with the law of unity of opposites which describes in matters of perspective, the underlying unity as well as the manifest polarity of things, events and processes, Zen and Buddhism partake of a controversy and synthesis (systems theory) familiar in science and Philosophy, that of profound marvel delving into the reduction of anything and everything that exists or occurs to the smallest and most basic self sufficient monads, versus serene appreciation in contemplation of the universal Gestalt of all things and phenomena existing only contingently, in context, dependant upon conditioning factors, upon other things, hence empty of adequate independent self-existence and intrinsic properties.

Zen is the quest for oneness. For the enlightened man is said to be one with dharma, the law of causation, and the perceptions of Determinism on the one hand, or of freedom, willful choice and influence, on the other hand, are both error, presumably from uninspired failure to synthesize frames of reference (subjective willful choice and objective Determinism) into the correct Gestalt. Hence, again, the sheer vanity of any mythic 'Star Trek' Prime Directive of non intervention, from the same false and distorted construct of ego.

Doing no harm is impossible, then, save not only by the rejection of ideological extremes, but also by committed benevolence. Indeed, is not the hottest circle of Dante's Inferno reserved for those who cultivate neutrality during moral crisis? One might consider that surely, if not actually doing nothing at all, then not-doing, must be the surest guarantee of committing no evil. But that can never be. Because continually bystanding in the face of suffering cannot be harmless! Only thus does Zen obtain the devout compassion of Buddhist Universalism, for which Zen austerity, The Dark Side of the Tao as notoriously manifest in Zen and the Art of Divebombing, Zen brainwashed fatalism gone war-like and cruel must and indeed should forever stick in the craw of collective memory and conscience.

But then, thereby, is not the purported great truth of futility attained and embraced by persuasive practical demonstration via Zen cessation of attachment and relation, being no more or less than in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration, extinction actually of all impulse rather than any mores specifically targeted impulse or range of impulses, then itself no more than just yet another illusion?

Indeed, since when is anything so Reactionary as Isolationism, the damnable paralytic sin of Zen indifference politicized, a Leftist bleeding-heart Liberal Progressive agenda?  We can thank Noam Chomsky, George Orwell's Renegade Liberal par excellence, who has never met a Communist despot he didn't like. For to quote Carl von Clausewitz: "The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."

Such intuitionist transcendence of ego and intellect as in Zen detachment obviously flies in direct opposition to any ideal of any Hellenized Jewish intellectual transcendence of brutishness, I and thou, deep thinking, attachment to and regard of principles or values of Universalism such as justice to occupy the minds of the righteous, only intellectual detachment in service to compassionate involvement even amid the temporal world of iniquity, integrity from the quest for fortitude in decency, to be a mensch? , in short, indeed, the very embrace of all that Stoical Zen seemingly flees to escape. 

So, what unity or convergence can there ever be found in in these manifest polar opposites, particularly? Only, if ever, in the dawning of responsibility, of Zen and Accountability.

The poetical sensibility of Zen strives for clarity and preciseness of allegorical imagery, pointing to that which defies direct description, all in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, wherein the Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding as such. The draw of cult initiation into the quest for enlightenment and the snares exploitation alike, is in the hope that with perseverance all that is nebulous, obscure and even dubious, will become intelligible and important later on.

But the truth is that imagery is hardly actually necessary to begin with for abstract thought, and indeed even seemingly somewhat unwieldy, indeed perhaps among the least practical of intellectual tools, but actually only the more challenging. And so, where is any advantage therein thereby? The answer is, emphatically, that the entire point of employing imagery symbolically or evocatively nevertheless remains in howsoever greater economy, stronger impression or greater familiarity with whatever selected images, than with whatever more difficult and as yet indistinct ideas represented for examination in order to be clarified.

Both Zen and Inductivism accept only personal experience, even if (very!) contrived by others, masters and educators, as the only true fit teacher, rejecting explanation as prone to error and therefore subject to critical thinking, an unreliable function of the ego. But while in some concordance with Zen in perhaps even excessively strict Empiricism, nevertheless Inductivism, unlike Zen, persists, nevertheless, Didactically in the culture of lasting progress of shared knowledge, where as Zen values only satori, the flash of transitory private intuition, a realization through direct experience.

in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding as such.

Any central hypothesis to Zen seems to be more as to questions of priorities and life style, possibly in completion with any others including those, for example, prioritizing any form of scientific curiosity, love or material standard of living and physical comfort, let alone Hedonism.

"If a man is crossing the river and an empty boat collides with his skiff, even though he is a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the other boat he will scream and shout and curse at the man to steer clear. If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world, no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you. Thus is the perfect man - his boat is empty.” 

— Chuang-Tzu

Zen appears to be more of a competing value system or even taste, than a competing Epistemological Methodological and Ontological hypothesis. Indeed, Zen tends to define knowledge at all, Axiologically according to it's importance as a frame of mind within Zen priorities thereof, despite any genial willingness of ancient and enduring Zen to embrace and to assimilate outside ideas and cultivate any superficial modernity in accordance with ideals of harmony via synthesis.

"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name. 
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth." 
— expounded Tao Te Ching

"Cling to truth and it becomes falsehood 

Understand falsehood and it becomes truth" 

— Quoth the Zen Poet Ryokan  

 

Futility, indeed! And all how true, no understanding can ever be certain or total and no happiness ever brings complete and permanent contentment. Mystical traditions including such as Buddhism and the Zen ever yearn for the peace of sublime apathy, by means of inducing overall behavioral extinction called: Zen cessation, emotional self violence in the cultivation of stunned and exhausted shock, being the ongoing counterfeit of contentment, contentment that even according to the more Heraclitian Zen (in such colossal selfcontradiction) is so vastly overrated to begin with! Regardless all other exhortation to moderation along the middle road of Siddhartha, in the manifestly immoderate perfectionist Utopism of Zen, the entrenched stubborn measure and evaluation of all things against impossible ideal totalities, the Zen much like unto Theology, often generates non existent snares and worries even such as to put stereotypical neurotic Judaism to shame!

"You can't solve a problem on the same level you created it." admonished Albert Einstein. Indeed, in the words of Yamaoka Tesshu: "Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap." In other words, indeed the Zen value even of Zen itself, must needs be recognized as transitory, in order to be liberating rather than merely obsessive and Existentially Absurd mischief of repetition. Zen cannot solve its own conundrums. And that is why this before you. gentle reader, is merely a page about Zen, a Zen-despicable philosophical discourse, and not a page of Zen practice at all. For any however lasting scientific progress of civilization even amid transience and imperfection as extolled by Scientific Rationalism must be rejected as vanity by the Zen in quest only for the acceptance of Ecclesiastical futility. -Unless, indeed, the futility of futility itself, proverbially comes out in the metaphorical wash.

Indeed, whereas the serene Tao, dwelling far less in any appeal to the terrors of disorientation, almost conjures a ghostly form in it's explorations of the void as metaphor for the untroubled life and understanding, Zen, as the quest for emptiness amid enigma, may even resort to the surreal, non sequitur, enigma and contradiction, replete with nonsense and incongruous juxtapositions.  For Zen may prize such paradox and contradiction, where in, by a sort of Existential Heisenberg Principle, the act of repeating the right answer, even to the extent of the Tao, makes it wrong again, even the mischief of sheer irrelevance. For to quote a sage neither partakes nor shares with or imparts to others, that bygone Zen flash of insight. A dilemma! 

And all such seems by far more recommendation than an admonition, as regards the metaphorical reinvention of the proverbial wheel. Indeed, the Eastern Philosophy of Zen thus rejects any such shared legacy as in Western style social progress in favor of a strange and solitary personal quest by Zen practice, meditate and clear the mind of thoughts, progressively purging and emptying all that is habitual, peripheral and extraneous, and to focus attention upon one inquiry oneself rather than by placing faith in the religious writings left behind by others.

For, unlike conventionally factitiously thematic religions and philosophies, it is claimed that there can be no such object or conceptualization in Zen upon which to affix thought, much less meditate. Indeed, in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding as such.

Rather, the bottomless abyss of Zen is transcendentally noncommittal with nothing whatsoever to fathom. Indeed, unlike other brands of Mysticism, erratic and apart from day to day life of the prosaic, only the systematic training of the mind by observation and deconditioning of the encumbered thought process itself back into an empty ordinary native condition, unperturbed, free and sufficient, a quiet, self-confident, and trustful existence of one's own, is ever of any much value to the Zen.

For to the mindful, by heightened awareness undistracted, the Zen is revealed in the most uninteresting practical commonplace and uneventful life of the plainest person, by simplicity and unencumbered open eyed recognition of living in the midst of life as it is lived, the greatest mystery that is actually already possessed by everybody, as it is daily and hourly performed; ever serene heart enlarged to embrace Eternity of and beyond time and infinity of space in its every palpitation.

But if the no-mind is thought to perceive, thus does Zen assume perception free of self conscious preconception howsoever to be actually passive? After all, physiological sensation alone is not perception because perception is now known to be an active thought process even physiologically, neurologically, let alone psychologically, which must be learned over time by experience and practice. For it is the mind, not the eye, that sees! Hence any quest for unaltered perception is oxymoron and futile. And so, which such learning of perceptual habits are to be considered natural and wholesome as constituent to naive perception, and which are to be considered civilized and debased? And what preference can be anything but reflective and prejudicial no less?

Indeed, in so far as perception is learned by trial and error, conjecturally, then how much conjecture is possible without provoking reflection and self consciousness? Zen is a value preposition also prioritizing a certain kind, field or view of knowledge, rather than an Epistemology as such. Thus, in so far self consciousness and reflection play any part in perception, then perhaps if preconception cannot be eliminated without actually disabling perception, then conceivably self consciousness and reflection may still be to any degree deconditioned nevertheless. Or if not, then at least any hold of self consciousness and reflection upon self consciousness and reflection upon affect even if not upon cognition, may be howsoever deconditioned. Or so may be claimed by the adepts. But this all remains unclear. 

Indeed, with plethora of variations and syntheses, the two major schools of Zen are Rinzai, typically focusing on koan practice, and, in any departure therefrom, Soto stressing zazen meditation.

“All of man's miseries derive from a single source: that he is unable to sit alone in a quiet room, still.”  — Blaise Pascal

 

"If you are lonely when you are alone, then you are in bad company.”  — John Paul Sartre

Central to all Asceticism, Eastern or Western, is the ultimate value of peace of mind, and the conclusion that the only path to the attainment of peace of mind is training in meditation towards the avoidance of worldly action by the achievement of worldly inaction that is not borne of frustration or of helplessness but of free choice: in full resignation yet in full control. But what is all of this, but Existentially dishonest sour grapes and denial, only all the more Absurd? Much is written at great length, in qualification of correct or incorrect, right and wrong, methods and procedures of meditation. But there remains also skepticism without such qualification. Meditation is correlated with both whatever subjective experience thereof, and with objective changes in brain activity, and that very correlation of subjective experience with objective changes in brain activity, is sited in support of all manner of claims regarding the efficacy and benefit of meditation. But in truth, any of that hardly follows. Such claims include all manner of insight and self improvement, even morally and virtue, unless of course those are already demonized as attachments.

Of course, similar claims are made for every mode of indoctrination under the sun, most anciently from religion and prayer, to the bleeding edge of Cognitive Behaviorism in brave new worlds of formal education, not to mention, most clearly of all, for ever more widespread and potent psychoactive medication which most certainly of all, correlates both subjectively with unique experience and objectively with changes in brain activity. Zen in a pill? Even the claim of correlation of subjective experience with objective changes in brain activity, is no more unique than it is persuasive of much anything else. There is scarcely anything that can be done, even sports, sex or sleep and dreaming, that does not correlate subjective experience thereof with subjectively real brain activity. To begin with, objective changes in brain activity in no way validate or corroborate subjective experience and anecdotal reportage, much less tradition, much less at whatever face value to any Mystical experience by whatever means or circumstances. Such typically wishful low standards of clarity, argument, reasoning and evidence, lack adequate skeptical credulity to be taken seriously outside the circle of doctrinal faith. Indeed, what all these tiresome flavors of indoctrination all really bear in common is much the same self abnegation and compliance as either instrumental or essential to whatever notion of virtue.

Opposition to practices of meditation at all, may be premised upon fantastic supernatural claims that meditation endangers by opening vulnerability to demonic possession, or more rationally, upon Empirical observation of how meditation and chanting, indeed correlated both with subjective experience and objective changes in brain activity, serve as ready tools of propaganda and methods used in cult brainwashing. After all: Only the oppressor exhorts the masses to be still, silent and not to think!

• Beware of Meditation

• For, in the words of Huang-Po: "The ignorant eschew phenomena but not thought, the wise eschew thought but not phenomena."
• And because, unless merely seeking to vent and express the confusion and dystress of alienation, Surrealism either seeks to disorient an audience unless they are slyly in on the gag, either way, Surrealism demands it's own blithe conviction, never overt superiority. Hence, the true relevance and impact of Surrealism is only undermined by vastly unfunny adolescent smug camp. And likewise with the Zen. 
• So how may one ever respond to whatever the question to the satisfaction of the Zen master? With an answer just as meaningless, irrelevant non sequitur and surreal as the question. Or if all else fails, then perhaps by administration to the Zen master a long over due and well deserved beating himself!
• All 48 Koans With Commentaries
• Ultimate loneliness and enlightenment

To fathom Nihilistic value destruction, first must be apprehended, the doctrine of determinism. And here is precisely such mercurial injustice to the struggle for freedom, yet another red herring such that gives impractical philosophy such a bad name. But do not be so quickly numbed into inaction. And you have been warned! Because needlessly diversionary circuitry in complicated digression, quite spuriously burying the lead, ensues: Entirely Metaphysical but not even lucid therein, indeed even further divorced from sound logic, Empirical reality and reality testing under predictive scientific hypothesis replete with clear and precise conditions of refutation, and perish forbid, not to mention relevance of true to life drama in any real world struggle for liberation, many actually equate freedom not with determinism, but instead with even quantum randomness, no less. But that remains specious because if tautologically human freedom entails making choices, and making choices entails decision making which is not random but constraining, then transitively freedom likewise will not be merely random. And precisely how would any element of randomness confer freedom, any more than determinism? Answer: Supposedly indeed by the interplay, whatever that means, between mechanistic causality: determinism, and even quantum randomness. Because of course, existence as we know it would be impossible under utter randomness. Thus, reality thereby is held to be, only partially deterministic! Seriously, where do the begged questions even begin! But even if somehow at all true, precisely how would whatever sort of supposed interplay as howsoever vaguely imagined, between whatever is deemed to be causally determined and that which supposedly remains even quantum random, thereby even hypothetically amount to or somehow elicit any howsoever emergent freedom as some sort of objectively real third phenomena or ill conceived mystical force? Surely the entire notion remains markedly wishful and vastly half-baked, thereby demanding more precise explanation.

Hypothetically, even that which is called freedom, would remain as quantum statistical in nature as anything else. Indeed, under Quantum Mechanics, deterministic mechanistic causality is only a semblance manifest under high probability. Hence the same problem, such as it is, as with determinism, remains, no matter the proffered alternative. Like anything else, freedom will be dismissed as illusory, when deemed reducible whether to mechanistic causality and determinism, to statistical probabilistic causality under Quantum Mechanics, or even under sheer random chaos.  Clearly, the problem arises from Reductionism to begin with. And the answer remains quite simply in the rejection of Reductionism under Gestalt, and that the whole, for example freedom, can become far more complicated and thereby qualitatively different than merely howsoever the sum of whatever its constituent parts.

From determinism follows, at least in theory, that the results of any events will be mechanistically causally understandable, tracing backward, step by step, in narrative of historical sequence. Is everything in life entirely arbitrary and moreover therefore completely without value, outcome that even merely in theory, might thereby conceivably ever be fully understood rationally and causally? As opposed to what? Statistical quantum probability in actual reality, rather than simply measurement uncertainty, Epistemologically? Or is freedom somehow merely manifestation of chaos? How so? And in any case, Axiologically, precisely how does Nihilistic value destruction actually ensue? Indeed, precisely what difference of that kind, does determinism actually make, any more that quantum mechanics or chaos instead?

After all, omniscience being so unlikely in reality, remains nothing dangerous for fallible intelligence to fear. Indeed, in reality, there will always be surprises to come and to look forward to, lofty theory notwithstanding. Truth ignored does not go away. Nevertheless, if there can be any problems actually solvable merely by putting profitless obsession out of mind, then here above might be one of them!

In the irony of novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer: “We must believe in free will, we have no choice.” Indeed, determinism, that old canard, is the name given to the doctrine of mechanistic causality that all events as located in static space-time, even including human action and interaction, even that which is willful, deliberate and undertaken on purpose, even ones own very thoughts and feelings, ultimately are not merely motivated but causally determined externally. In short, that life is plot oriented/driven drama. Although, given that different beings respond differently even to similar external causes and input, the interference might ensue of not only external causality and determinism, but internal determinism, true to whatever ones own form, neural structure and consequent nature. In short, that life is character motivated drama. Of course, life is many things.

And yet, Nihilists have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no actual free will and even therefore cannot justly be held morally responsible for their actions at all. This is called: Nihilistic value destruction. And come to think of it, the same Reductionism, such much, applies no less, in any alternative model to that of determinism, such as quantum statistical reality, or even sheer random chaos, instead of determinism under classical mechanistic causality. One way or another, it can be fashionable to denigrate freedom. And there seems no end of frustration and betrayal, to engender despair of ever attaining freedom at all.

Existential Nihilism means that because all thoughts and feelings are merely determined by prior causality, there is actually no willing choice. Therefore, even such cherished illusions of virtue as equality, pity and justice, are no more commendable, moral or praiseworthy than wrath, malice or any other shortcoming or misdeed can be anyone's blame or responsibility.

However, exactly to the contrary of all such Post Modern gloom and despair, and yet from exactly the same karmicly deterministic view of situational  forces, Zen and Accountability extols Buddhist compassion and forgiveness,

Zen influenced Existential social Nihilism and detachment from everything, is distinctly manifest within the sense of isolation, futility, veritable well of sorrows and black hole of despair, angst and the hopelessness of existence increasingly prevalent in the modern world, all consistent with Nietzsche's prognosticated downward spiral.

Zen Nihilism standing in denial and value-destruction not only of objective material wellbeing, improvement of situation and circumstance, but subjective wellbeing  and intrinsic reactive happiness in response thereto as well, naturally engenders inward turning futility. Intrinsic reactive happiness stands perhaps as no less than the prime target of alienated Nihilistic value-destruction against any enticement whatsoever howsoever of engagement within the external world at all.

Nihilistic value-destruction regards all motivating human values as entirely arbitrary and senseless, giving rise to Post Modern Behaviorism. In the words of Mokokoma Mokhonoana: “Most of our desires tend to reveal their pettiness a few months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, or even seconds, after they have been fulfilled.”  Thus in one bold stroke are so cavalierly dismissed not only Hedonia but also Eudemonia. Indeed, all values, or desire even so much as survival instinct to begin with, cannot be logically reducible, but are simply a matter of human nature, biological and in that way indeed arbitrary. For as Socrates famously argues, how can the oblivion after death be any more painful than the oblivion before birth?  Thence, the Nihilistic value-destruction of the Zen in particular, is premised upon Nirvana Principle which aims at the alleviation of suffering by reducing and indeed even eliminating all need and desires on a purely subjective Phenomenal level. The Zen, devaluing objective reality at all, perhaps even somewhat obsessively strives at complete subjective destruction, effective Phenomenal annihilation of ego and maya and thence liberation from their intrinsic fraudulence. For any variety of Mysticism despises all worldly desire, yearning and extolling instead purported riches divinely and spiritually transcendent all thereof.  Indeed, as the saying goes: "If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything."

Nevertheless, indeed completely mooting the entire non problem and generalred herring of determinism and Nihilistic value destruction, even from even the most obvious nonrandom predictability of rudimentary animal behavioral response notwithstanding, it may be inferred that an animal nevertheless even howsoever amorally, experiences freedom, as howsoever may come to pass, in gratification of whatever impulses entirely with neither external restraint, inner ambivalence, sans also possible deterrence from any detriment consequential from action taken. And such immediate Pleasure Principle indeed remains the most rudimentary pursuit of happiness. And thus as it turns out, determinism is not truly antithetical to the subjective experience of freedom. After all, whatever freedom from constraint would have to be some aspect of objectively real situation indeed under determinism of the most crass materialistic mechanistic causality.

The glorification of abject surrender is characteristic of Nihilistic corruption of the instinctual will to power and survival exactly as bewailed by Nietzsche in ‘The Antichrist’. “I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it. [...] the values of decadence, of nihilism, now prevail under the holiest names.” 

Hence, Psychiatrically, Nihilism even denotes Solipsism, and behaviorally, peculiar involvement and engagement in actually self defeating and counterproductive action. But then again, Anti-Psychiatry, Anti-therapy or Therapeutic Nihilism is the disbelief in the efficacy or value of therapy! After all, a particular long standing criticism of Psychotherapy and Psychology, by Thomas Stephen Szasz most notably, is the assertion that we do not know why Psychotherapy works when it works, or why it fails when it fails, only that anyone often benefits from getting attention from others under any pretext, all equally bad and equally good.

Hence another ready defense of such Mystical practice as the Zen, is that the ineffable poetical ideas and mysterious procedures only serve as prompts to inner progress, and therefore do not need to be precise or even true at all, much less literal.  Ultimately then, deliberate obscurity is the final bulwark of defense, for Mystical traditions such as the Zen, often hiding from the scientific quest for truth, behind the engineering emphasis upon results. Worse, even the results remain not only subjective but ineffable. And this is only refinement of the same as ever Theological doctrine of the two truths, classic doublethink, sweeping aside all effective tools of criticism in order so blithely to excuse whatever anti-rationality of the adherent, cleaving only to what passes for learned controversy, whatever minor dispute of sheer personal taste within whatever insider community. The utter circuity of Zen equivocation and Apologetics is now complete, the gateless gate slammed shut. Aum! in the words of Bliss Carman, "What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease." But even worse however than "facts" [sic!], Zen Mystical surrender to the ineffable only persists in whatever indistinct travesty of investigation, in utter capitulation to ongoing obfuscation.

Indeed, Psychotherapy, as ministration to the soul, has long been practiced in various religious and Mystical context, long before entering secular medicine. But as Nietzsche observed: “Mystical explanations are considered profound. The truth is that they are not even superficial.” Whereas, Anti-Psychiatry, Anti-therapy. Therapeutic Nihilism and general condemnation of Psychobabble, all not withstanding, Psychology seeking to rationalize, explain and at all guide Psychotherapy, has at all served to demystify. Indeed, ought not any whatever howsoever specifically particular and preferential recommendation of whatever religious or Mystical practice, as ever claiming legitimacy by comparison and similarity to Psychotherapy, therefore depend neither upon sheer cache of Psychotherapy nor upon whatever stated ideals of whatever said religion or Mysticism, in other words: upon Moralistic purity of intentions, but rather more responsibly upon any particular hoped for clear therapeutic advantage in whatever religious or Mystical practice? Secular Psychodynamic Psychotherapeutic working through of emotional inner conflict, turmoil and distress, is distinct from abstract reasoning which is characteristic of the Freudian ego or Transactional Adult Ego state, and must struggle with psychological defenses and denial, whether emotional, neurotic or even hysterical, or as so often, with intellectual rationalizations. In Psychotherapy, insight is often not enough without catharsis. Abstract reasoning can only be at all therapeutic or remedial in application to any symptom of actual at all fragmented cognition. Otherwise, the emotional process of Psychotherapy is merely distinct from abstract reasoning, not hostile thereto. Indeed, practice is not merely intuitive, but indeed guided by a great deal of abstract theory, never whatsoever condemning rational scientific investigation. Whereas in Mysticism such as the Zen, there is longstanding condemnation of reasoning and the ego, in favor instead of practice. Furthermore, Psychotherapy seeks to liberate repressed emotions, not freedom from desire. For that matter, whatever cognitive inner "mental chatter" is no problem, only whatever anxiety as ever attached thereto or repressed thereby. Psychotherapy extols not self abnegation, but to the contrary, the validation of self. Psychotherapy is so opposite of Zen Mysticism, as even to pathologize apathy as depression and to treat attachment disorders, far from ever extolling non attachment. Nondirective psychotherapy does not quest for inner stillness beyond resolution or at least management of troublesome inner conflict.

“I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health, you will be better armed against that unhappiness.”

― Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria (1895), (co-written with Josef Breuer)

Zen Nihilism

In the words, again, of Yamaoka Tesshu: "Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap." And it may well be that the washing off endeavor, has been largely neglected: Zen is not this, Zen is not that. Therefore, tautologically, must it not be true that Zen is not Nihilism? Indeed, as we have seen, it is so often put forth, in effect, that Zen isn't even Zen! But the answer is: no. For Zen not to be Nihilism, an effective double negative, Zen would then have to be something, anything specifically. Zen quests for emptiness and futility. And what better describes Nihilism? Indeed, what has Postmodern Nihilism ever been, if not Zen inspired?

Have you found The Root Cause of Unhappiness? Spoiler: it's ego of course, consciousness, the mind itself intrinsically, thought at all. Happiness is just spacing out! Or so we are assured. Paradoxically, motivational power of positive thinking often appeals to the Nihilistic de-motivating adaptive Zen ideal of universal acceptance, loving whatever one does, taking joy in any task that comes to hand, and likewise the embrace of every experience with equanimity, in truth all too often a desperate psychological  rationalization not merely of acetic self denial, but blocking out suffering via bad faith, by living a lie, even to the extent of  moral void and no-mind of not-doing in blithe and listless service to evil, deadly hypocrisy exactly as the fictional character of Misuzu the exploited would be acolyte of Panaru, instead fallen into the orbit of the facile and predatory Manticore, recognizes to her own desperate horror but only far too late, in 'Boogiepop Phantom' episode 3: 'Life Can Be So Nice' scripted by Sadayuki Murai. Indeed, Zen is also referenced as by George Orwell in '1984' as Eastasian death worship, the Oriental counterpart to doublethink in Oceania, ever extolling noninvolvement and the virtues of inertia, automatic obedience, not-doing achieved by no-mind, the extinction of ego and autonomy, Oh, double plus good! 

No surprise, then, how just as Zen questing for cessation and the embrace of  pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity, aim at the Behavioral elicitation, frustration and final extinction of desire and thus dissatisfaction in the individual, likewise, with or without the animus and hostility of soft-flame, the committee ambush of Zen apologetics aim at the obliteration of the very topics of desire and dissatisfaction as taboos from public discourse, accomplished by changing every conversation in pursuit of worldly happiness by doing what one loves, particularly interpersonal interaction and bonding (another word for attachment) therein, or even the very concept of happiness as state variable inner subjective response to external favorable circumstances, hence a transitory but renewable experience to be enjoyed only in leading life, all abhorrent ideas of such deadly error to the Zen sensibility, instead into yet another discourse upon the Zen, indeed consistent with Zen practice, a debate inevitably proceeding forward until exhausted cessation (in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration and extinction, but of all impulse globally, in general, wholesale and in total at all, rather than merely any specifically targeted impulse, hence the embrace of  pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity), never returning to initial topic. Comedian and pundit Bill Maher even has a gag about Columbus facing constant agenda highjacking on the part of chronic Zen inertia, had he lived today: All his pals would all kvetch and schmaltz: "But Chris, first explore the new worlds on the inside? " By design, the loneliness of Zen has no bridge. You might as well beat metaphorical head against proverbial wall. By contrast, the most superficial Behaviorist crass materialistic Reductionism of whatever stripe, simply tends toward the stone-deaf powerplay when likewise confronted with such incomprehensibly alien values as intrinsic motivation, never recognized as ends unto themselves but merely subverited into further manipulative "motivators". Zen cessation, that purported great truth embraced in futility and Ecclesiastical vanity attained by technique of such persuasive practical demonstration that is no more or less than. in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration and extinction but actually of all impulse rather than any specific targeted impulse or range of impulses, also comes in handy for inevitable and inextricable extinction or cessation also of such features of autonomy as doubt and curiosity as to truth (assertions in correspondence to reality) and desire for knowledge. (awareness of truth). No wonder then, how Zen cessation in pursuit of Nirvana Principle, independence by the elimination of all needs, readily comes into service of the most oblivious and obedient heteronomy and atrocity.

Indeed, among the tenacious snares of the ego so scorned of the Zen, are every human emotional need and cherished illusion, including the yearning for sympathy and understanding. But there remains every question, just whom are the ones truly ensnared? For such fundamental impulses that they so prudishly abhor, are indeed the very wellsprings of every intrinsic human bond (Zen despised attachment) or value (worldly snare of illusion). Hence, all regard, values and bonds derivative from emotional needs are, tautologically, values of attachment. Otherwise, there are values that are radically intellectualized, or values of detachment or of utmost pragmatism. And chief among these is the Nihilistic and Solipsistic Nirvana Principle, the strategy of overcoming this world, escaping distress by reducing one's needs, not only material but principally, all regard of emotion, ego, perception, transitory illusion, maya that is the snare of attachment, much as desire and pleasure are the trap of sin according to Christianity. 

The Nihilism of Deathism and terror management: Actually in opposition to Emortalism advocating and striving for practical immortality, technologically, in progress and the advancement of science and medicine, Deathism, is the name given to the morbid glorification of death as actually something necessary, not so bad, or even very good. So good we gotta share! The condemnation of practical immortality as sought for by Emortalism, is at least a qualified condemnation of life. But such qualification is ultimately disingenuous. For in order so to condemn life, one must condemn the human condition, either situationally or by condemning human nature, or else resolve that human character and circumstances are always intrinsically and irresolvable mismatched, for everyone, and always will be. Indeed, in order to reject practical immortality, without utterly and openly condemning life to begin with, it must be resolved both that no value endures, and that there is nowhere to go from there. -both eternal verité and progress must be discredited forever. And if that is not Nihilism, then what is?

“To be, or not to be? That is the question” pondered by Shakespeare's Hamlet. Or less succinctly in the words of Albert Camus: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."  - a question only afforded fresh new relevance by the practice of Cryonics and by Radical Life Extension research, so promising towards the aging cure and the eradication of natural death, much as lethal pandemics the likes if Polio were eradicated, instead of continuing merely to treat the symptoms. But the question remains somewhat imprecise. Rather, it is a matter not of deciding only whether life is always worth living, generally speaking, but of judging whether life is ever worth living or not, whether, even in principle, life can be worth living at all or even endured temporarily, never mind, in all human frailty, limited resolve and finite endurance, preserved and extended indefinitely. Indeed, judging whether life ever can be worth living, and perhaps even under what abstractly possible or conceivable conditions of practical implementation, might even be deemed the most central of all questions to the human condition. And hope for life worth living is either actively vested in the quest for honest integrity together with the pursuit of happiness and functional relationship or else Nihilistically rejected and condemned as by the Zen Mysticism that is rightly so often called out as a cowardly religion, being after all so loath even to risk living life unadulteratedly burdened by the human condition of ego and often even morbid Phenomenal inner reflection, conscience that makes cowards of us all ever dwelling upon suffering from misfortunes occurring in external reality, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Indeed, Zen explicitly and Nihilistically condemns and rejects worldly life as worthless, questing, regardless, only for some comfortably numbed inner life devoid of attachment, from which a return to introverited solitary innocence will bring a promised Narcissistically rapturous unpremediated satori. Zen, in short, famously and fantastically preaches it's optimistically Procrustean half measure of suicide, practicing the selective self-disavowal of bad faith.

"Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are." wrote Lao Tzu "When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you." Indeed, in similar sentiment and amplification, Schopenhauer claims that knowledge of the inner nature of the world and life results in "... perfect resignation, which is the innermost spirit of Christianity . . ."  But in the biting prose of Kathleen Norris: "When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?"  Indeed, in the words of Dr. Samuel Johnson:" Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates." And in much like sentiment Jonathan Swift quips: "The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."  

A familiar traditional theme in prevailing religions remains Mysticism that despises all worldly desire, yearning and extolling instead purported riches divinely and spiritually transcendent all thereof. Hence the age old question persists: Is Zen a religion? Well, Communism is is often called an Atheist religion though that may be taken as a figure of speech; but Zen, even however distinct from Buddhism and hence  no matter how Atheist remains no less Mystical. Indeed, speaking of Nihilism, the only ultimate remaining reality pursued in the Mysticism of the Zen is so nakedly and undisguisedly introverited and Solipsistic. And as to criteria of religion, certainly as with any other more modern motivational Behavior Modification, Zen qualifies no less as yet another rancid flavor to Marx's famously proverbial opiate of the sheeple, a force for inaction likewise so often faddishly prescribed to dull Proletarian discontent. Surely all such exhortation to sublime apathy or willful positivity even by means of Behavioral Modification is actually initiated from the controlling parental ego state of Transactional Analysis. Indeed, how callow and self serving to castigate, ostracize and even terminate from gainful employment, those deemed excessively critical or negative. How judgmental they all are against judgmental people! And what poor judgment thereby. Indeed, how cruel and lonely, how bereft of all animal compassion, to deny those who suffer, even dying cancer patients, their fear and anguish all in the name of relentlessly willful positivity! Why, in any public discourse as on every online forum, any salient agenda such as any quest whatsoever for happiness by actually seeking to improve one's actual circumstances in order better to fulfill Intrinsic values, or any call to stand to against the debilitating oppression of continual and destructive serial bullying, is regularly quashed, obstructed and tabooed by immediate puerile soft-flame outcries of Zen Nihilistic value-destruction in blanket invalidation, admonition instead only to search within for sublime apathy. Bah, humbug!

Indeed, to quote George Orwell, "The main motive for ''nonattachment'' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual  is hard work." 

We all know just how perversely people can actually wallow in their own misery! Indeed, paradoxically, in extreme cases, often many actually seek dangerous refuge in the depth of their own despair by simply giving up and effectively discounting, meaning to invalidate themselves. Such are typically inconsolable in their Nihilism, denying not only the reality, possibility or feasibility of happiness, but the desire and very value. All such surrender offers relief in the short term, but only deepens depression soon after.

And of course, there is no counter argument from pure reason, simply because needs, desires and hence values, are at best only reducible biologically, never logically, and hence, indeed arbitrary after all. Indeed, in the words of Steve Novella: "You can't argue someone out of a position they didn't argue themselves into."  Nevertheless, much as anyone might ever struggle to deny it, the very agony evidenced of such an individual in so wretched a condition only corroborates and affirms how greatly and deeply we all do care after all.

No indeed, all such harrowing misery certainly falls somewhere short of the indifferent serenity and joy in the moment ever extolled of Zen futility! So, is such a wallower in misery simply stranded foolishly somewhere on the harrowing path to enlightenment, or is Zen just unrealistic or simply unreasonable? And is invalidation perhaps the actual lie, rather than the ever despised maya?

"Happiness is fine as a side effect," opines Adam Phillips, British psychoanalyst and author of 'Going Sane' “It’s something you may or may not acquire, in terms of luck. But I think it’s a cruel demand. It may even be a covert form of sadism. Everyone feels themselves prone to feelings and desires and thoughts that disturb them. And we’re being persuaded that by acts of choice, we can dispense with these thoughts. It’s a version of fundamentalism."  Adding: "Read a positive-psychology book, and what would a happy person look like? He’d look like a Moonie. He’d be empty of idiosyncrasy and the difficult passions." Indeed: “It seems to me that if you were to take a rather stringent line here,” concludes Phillips, “then anyone who could maintain a state of happiness, given the state of the world, is living in a delusion.”

And of course, lest the point be missed, every such criticism as above of the rank self-dishonesty of bogus Power of Positive Thinking as ever may be redeployed and marshaled in quest of futility, however applies no less readily also to the discipline of Zen. Indeed,  Isaiah Berlin considered vibrant and creative Stoical inner happiness an heroic resistance to oppression, yet deplored glamorization thereof that might even be twisted into recommendation of tyranny as incubator for great dissident literature.

Moreover, on a personal note, I must confess, that for my own part, much as my heart may ever ache from the vicissitudes of life, yet, at least all things being equal, and being as I understand restless obsession or distress on the level of Freudian emotional inner conflict, I cannot say that my head hurts from mere thinking so that I'd actually ever yearn to quell or even slow down my very thoughts alone, however indirectly representational or abstract.

Of course, nevertheless, neither can I state from experience the benefit or not of such achievement or capability, for whatever the value or reliability of any such anecdotal evidence. But then, would one even remember?

After all, Chaung Tzu says that the true sage is absent-minded, forgetful of good and bad deeds alike.

Indeed, beyond sheer pragmatism, Zen tends to define knowledge at all, by value according to it's importance as a frame of mind within Zen priorities thereof, despite any genial willingness of ancient and enduring Zen to embrace and to assimilate outside ideas and cultivate any superficial modernity in accordance with ideals of harmony via synthesis. For Zen remains a doctrine of non attachment nevertheless embroiled in passionate inner conflict, too perfectionist for any middle road of Siddhartha, regardless of stated Zen values of moderation and pragmatism, and Intrinsic values will scarcely embrace their own annihilation. Hence Nihilistic value destruction is incommensurable with any other Axiology, any precept of intrinsic values. There is no shared framework of requisite shared assumptions. Only any reciprocal honesty of desire at all whatsoever to come closer to truth and sympathetic interest even to comprehend one another's aims and central problems, employing techniques of Active Reading or Effective Active Listening in rejection of Wittgensteinean paralysis, can at all ever bridge the divide in order to open true dialogue and fruitful controversy.

Axiology of intrinsic values can perhaps at all imperfectly seek to address suffering which is the central conundrum of the Zen, but in the Zen, so hostile towards the human condition, and ever abiding in the embrace of meaningless Ecclesiastical futility, can there ever be achieved the revolutionary uncompromising Zen rectitude to confront and address even with Buddhist respect and compassion rather than forever fanatically lashing out and seeking to crush even howsoever in Zen tough love, intrinsic values aside from those embraced in optimistic Nihilism such as are purported to bloom amid the rubble only from an impossibly Draconian complete clean sweep and fresh start?

And if not, then exactly what is the point of relentless tabooistic and pigheaded Zen soft-flame in suppression of Axiological discourse, strategy and action in the pursuit of happiness, except in the preference and force for inaction of unflagging zealotry in blustering repressive Zen badgering and bullying? μῦ! Such unseemly conduct puts the lie to opposing claims alike, either of genuine concern with the issues at all on the one hand, or pretence of non attached disinterest on the other, either way instead evincing only the classic Zen dogmatically indoctrinated attachment to non attachment at its most intellectually desperate. Bah, humbug!

Sadly, fewer seek to sell their souls at any price, than simply to be rid of them at all, relieved thereof and grateful for it. So, who would actually sally forth in order to have their spirits broken and discarded as such an obstacle? Alas that all too many are so desperate for peace and acceptance on any terms. And there is never any shortage of ever the same cult snake oil from phony gurus and fakirs, Zen Masters and Behaviorists, all ever eager to oblige. Such is the most vile exploitation. Beware! Maybe its already time long overdue, just to give up on giving up! Perhaps futility is, well, quite simply even only the more futile, and Nihilism itself should be approached more Nihilistically.

According to Richard Schecherer, ”The Future of Ritual. Writings on Culture and Performance.” Routledge. London & New York, 1993, p. 27 ff. in Sanskrit the word ‘maya’ at one and the same time denotes ‘play’, ‘magic’ and ‘to discover (or create) the world’. By what rigid and fearful austerity then has so plainly even fanciful and romantic a sense of wonder  become instead so virulently demonized as the dire worldly snare of egotistical deception? Scientific discovery at least replenishes the wonder after slaying Fairy Tales!

The central at least seemingly fantastical premise or Solipsistic metaphor of all schools of Buddhism and Hinduism, including also the Zen, is that of the maya, the veil worldly illusion masking the true unity of all being, that there are not really many living beings populating the universe, but that, actually, a dreaming and multiple personality disordered God is essentially trapped veritably multitasking countless simultaneous nightmares, innumerable illusory POV sharing some element of narrative cross-continuity, in each of which eventually struggling by the means of Eastern religion and practice, to pierce the dual illusion of self and the outside world, by the cultivation and attainment of void, totality and sheer serene apathy, purportedly achievable in Zen futility, all so as to escape the snares of attachment and involvement, regard whatsoever, in illusion and Ecclesiastical and otherwise vanity and thus awake, to finally halt each ongoing karmic cycle, until none remain, and ever completely return to innocence in the blissful unaware nonexistence that is the ultimate, the self-communion of God.

Otherwise, the nightmares never end, even in ostensible death, but only begin again in the tragedy of rebirth, and even proliferate in ever more simultaneous incarnations, presumably as population rises. The Qabala, however, takes a more optimistic slant, claiming gnosis of how God willingly and eagerly casts off Divine perfection, simply for the joys, even however arduous, of ascension, and reunion. -In other words, all for the sake of progress. Because even God needs something to look forward to! The fantastical premise or Solipsistic metaphor of the maya is popularized for the cinema in the Matrix movie franchise. But actually the maya remains anything less than whatever machination of sinister conspiracy. Rather the maya like samsāra, remains metaphor merely for our Existential conundrum of hapless bumbling involvement as the offish hard luck chumps, losers and utter schlimazels that we are.

 Only then explain the metaphor, and so many yet balk at the simple truth, that indeed that the real true to life Matrix has always been that tenacious chimera, that toxic will-o'-the-wisp and Absurd Existential hangover, which is nothing more or less in sore travail, than constructed mass delusion in action called: social reality, poignant investment to which we are all so brazenly extorted. Well then, that will be another matter entirely! For as George Orwell observes: “A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing,”

Axiology is not Ontology

Mystical traditions such as the Zen Nihilistically deny or invalidate the self (ego, so much maligned) particularly as Phenomenal, that inevitably must be readmitted via the proverbial back door. In stubborn denial of the human reality of vulnerability and dependency, in rejection of all that might ever need to be accepted, they can only extol as freedom, whatever benumbed sense of self alienation, detachment or non attachment and appeal to intuitive apprehension anything ineffably beyond. But all such notorious Zen attachment to non attachment, may be inspired  by no more than wishful thinking and a false positive in the brains tagging mechanism of important ideas, even when there was no idea at all. Ah, now there's Zen emptiness! If nothing particular can seem important, does that not irrefutably signify that nothing at all can ever be important? No. Bah, humbug! There can be no such thing as nothingness as an entity. The word: 'nothing' merely denotes the empty set. Maybe the aching emptiness of Zen is only the sickness of Zen itself.

What exactly is signified by condemning the maya and deeming the world merely an illusion? The very notion is ambiguous and polysemic, leading to several possibilities: Literally, to deem the world illusory, asserts the Phenomena as an hallucination with no connection to any outside reality. Otherwise, instead freely interpreting the Solipsistic metaphor, perhaps experience is so woefully inadequate and distorted as to be considered illusion, even admitting Ontology, even however Epistemologically inaccessible. Or else or perhaps hence, to deem the lives we lead illusion is complaint of how we are so frequently and continuously confused, harassed and beguiled by howsoever trivial or unworthy concerns of samsāra throughout the maya. Or any notion to the contrary may be asserted. And all such are value judgments, Axiology rather than Ontology.

Therefore, likewise, what exactly can be signified by howsoever deeming the self merely an illusion?

The parameters of identity for self preservation, a memplex guarding its own consistency and integrity, remain largely an Axiological question. All hence the reevaluation thereof even in contemplation of drastic enough personal change as might hitherto hold all dread than of no less than spiritual death, even in circumstances even far short of utter dissolution and the end of consciousness, may instead open the way more to spiritual rebirth. Mysticism the likes of the Zen, and the sacrifice it calls for, is an Axiological proposition, because the inherent Nihilistic value-destruction entailed is itself, in and of itself, an Axiological position to begin with. But there are less drastic alternatives, and every need thereof: It is always possible to be both too touchy and too changeable. Tragically, people are known all too often in clinging to the obsessively superficial, to compromise essential values. In contrast to the fabled attainment of unwavering Buddha Nature, Existential good faith, entails the acknowledgement of plurality in facets of being and identity, along with constant change and evolution of being and identity, ongoing error detection and course correction much as with knowledge in Evolutionary Epistemology, all as inalienable from the human condition. Only this opens the way to any good faith sensemaking, evaluation and sense of proportion.

Others cannot understand us but misinterpret, and one can never see oneself as others do. Therefore, what is left? What accurate perspective can be available? To quote Oscar Wilde: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” The conviction of a chronic stutterer in their own self knowledge, dooms them to stuttering and despair. But putting self aware self consciousness aside, as by playing a character rôle, and the stuttering abates, Though the snares of Existential bad faith, another denial or illusion of self, may be found the more morally complicated in their deadly false investments. To cite the Zen parable: If the nibble sharp and pointy toed mountain goat, where self aware and prey to self consciousness, she would constantly stumble and fall. People trapped in any pattern of behavior, speech or thought, invest apparent and evident great efforts in adherence to their own sense of character and never acting out of character. And to what end? What is the point? To claim that the self is an illusion may mean that all identity is similar even perhaps anal fixation: identity crisis, at least to some degree. But in the alternative, is complete spontaneity possible, practical or even desirable? The innocents in Eden where not chaste, but tranquil and unashamed with their nakedness and nature, but for all of his good will, the sociopathic innocent Parcival is not peaceable, but merely without guile and ignorant in his murder and mayhem. For in Christian Moralism, good intentions are everything. For sin is the awareness of sin, knowing better, guilt and the troublesome burden of moral debt to God. Likewise, in Zen Mysticism, ego is but the illusory sense of self, the chimera of self image, because there is no self according to Zen Mysticism. Again, the very notion the self dismissed as illusion, is ambiguous and polysemic, leading to several possibilities: Putting aside conundrums raised thereby, literally, to deem the self illusory, asserts no such thing as self, and inner reflection thereupon and hence all sense of self at all, if not actually hallucination, then howsoever vaguely misguided. Indeed, Otherwise, again, instead freely interpreting the Solipsistic metaphor, perhaps reflective sense of identity is so woefully inadequate and distorted as to be considered illusion or delusion. Therefore, we often do not know ourselves at all, and it is self image specifically, that is so false, so unreal an illusion. Or else or perhaps hence, to deem the self illusory is another value judgment to the effect that identity and/or ego to begin with, are howsoever trivial or unworthy by whatever standards and for whatever reason. After all, the denial fostering false dishonest self image has many names: the rationalizations of neurosis and layers of reaction formation, Existential Validation and Existential. Indeed, even rejecting sheer Solipsism and embracing objective external reality that is the subject of Ontology, who then in this world, is honestly for-real, including oneself? 

And with even the value of self in question, one by one, values pertaining to every facet or experience and need of the human condition likewise must come into question. Indeed, there can be no scientific reason to live, and neither any scientific refutation of however optimistically Nihilistic value-destruction as of the Zen, because no matter how biologically innate, values, the only thing that makes life worth living, simply are not Ontological. So, can Zen be made scientific? That would require conditions of failure and refutation. And what would those be, if not already long obtained? The famous paradox of elusive Zen, is how it's all there for the taking. Indeed, the very same may be said of suicide outright. And yet, most people neither Zen nor suicide, and most that attempting either tend to botch t job because its not what they truly crave. All they really need so desperately, is attention. And true indeed, even amid our human condition and circumstances of endless miserable suffering, the culprit in common remains no more or less than those ever demonized persisting motivating attachments of bored lonely unresolved fear, frustrated desire and yes, even Philosophy especially Axiology.

And in the face of such failures, one is left either like any other religious zealot, either Moralistic demands of Behavioral compliance, all self blame in lamentation of one's own shortcomings and laxity of determination and conviction of faith, and futility of ever redoubled effort, or else, to responsibly reevaluate all such draconian solutions, return to Axiology, being: the endless reflection upon the values ultimately derivative Psychodynamically from the human condition and human needs, even biologically. Then to strategic application of  Axiology, by seeking to meet human needs, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, social and material desires, indeed ultimatly even via the overthrow of biological destiny, by reproductive choice, eradication of sickness, and even the elimination of aging and natural mortality.

Otherwise, modern medicine always offers ever more extreme interventions into unhappiness, most directly: 

 

Zen in a pill? Be a happy brain!

Transcendentally inauthentic irrelevant futility attained

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”  

Viktor Frankl E. Man's Search for Meaning (1905 - 1997)

The very best and most fortunate outcome from lobotomy indeed conferred peace from anxiety, but also the loss of motivating drive. And Thorazine was initially marketed as a less invasive means to similar results. The increasing resort to lobotomy was never a scientific error, but a classic Zen Nihilistic value destruction inspired either by circumstantial desperation and suffering or simply obsessive questing for the perfection of peace and tranquility over unhappy struggle, at whatever cost to ineffable intangibles of flawed and troubled humanity.

 

But nowadays, despite how 81% where found to want the government’s prime objective to be the ‘greatest happiness’ rather than the ‘greatest wealth,’ nevertheless polling data collected by GfK NOP for the BBC series 'The Happiness Formula,' revealed that 72% simply would not take a legally available drug that made them happy, even if there were no side-effects. For as G. E. Moore contends the very hypothesis that nothing but pleasure is desired seems largely due to a confusion between whatever the cause and whatever the object of any given desire, indeed pleasure being only the second order desire pursuant to whatever perceived and understood good being first order desire. And even if the anticipation or idea of pleasure even without thinking about it, is indeed always among the causes of desire, that alone would not tempt anyone to think pleasure a good in its own right no matter what, certainly not the sole and only good, especially not wire-head pleasure induced which becomes completely arbitrary, irrelevant and actually quite literally without value.

 

And the same all applies to whatever conceivable ataraxic emotional balance and to the Mystical Zen pursuit of sublime apathy in flight from suffering: Nirvana Principle, reduction or even elimination of all needs, the frustration whereof after all being the cause of all suffering. "Pain is certain, suffering is optional" said the Buddha, Of course exactly such passive resignation and forbearance to simply make do, tends to perpetuate unhappy circumstances, and thus affords a handy propaganda tool of oppression. Hence does Karl Marx famously denounce religion as the Opiate of the Masses. 

 

Whereas, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy strives neither for escape into, nor annihilation of, memory and complexes from the past. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy seeks the resolution of inner conflict regarding issues in the frustrating present and in the traumatic past. The effort and painful preoccupation of obsession is irrelevant denial. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy only strives for honest meaningful relevance of personal value, never the meaningless Ecclesiastical vanity and futility of the Zen.

Involuntary detachment arrived at under coercion, results in depression and despair, and not the relief or peace afforded by voluntarily letting go of whatever vexation. From the observable benefits and peace of mind from voluntarily letting go of whatever vexation, Mysticism the likes of Buddhism including the Zen, enthusiastically recommends the embrace of ever the greater and broader the scope of detachment, voluntarily, as therefore all so much the better. Sometimes as in scholastic educational indoctrination generally, the counterproductivity of coercion is taken only as a spur for greater zeal. Or unintended and undesired pressure becomes the prevailing Existential conundrum, the notorious and insidious attachment to non attachment, not unlike unto the purported tension between underachievement and student potential that is the self-serving guilty and evasive problem statement of educational pseudoscience, ever striving to excuse the perpetuated detrimental educational failure of coercion and indoctrination. For all such is hallmark of Perfectionist Ideology and variants of Salvation Anxiety.

But from Moore's rejection of pleasure as an objective unto itself, the fundamental clarity of modern Psychology may be restored: One does not choose to let go, or arrive at a conclusion that anything of oppressive and deceptive seeming importance, might actually turn out the more trivial, by criteria merely of arbitrarily abandoning and relieving dystress. Rather, to be at all resolved and honest with oneself, there are Ontology and Axiology to be addressed. Otherwise, there is only self deception and ever greater inner pressures of ambivalence.

We all care and we all need to care. A sane person is neither unemotional and unmotivated nor manic with perpetual bliss. But a neurotic embroiled and even stalemated in conflicted inner turmoil, may disapprove of their own feelings, suffer guilt, and even become all the more upset about being upset in the first place! Whereas, to be free of the turmoil of inner conflict, is acceptance of one's own emotions. Indeed, one might simply assume that one may even be, one way or another, that whatever emotional response, pleasure or displeasure, to whatever circumstances, past, present or anticipated in future, may be entirely meaningful and even appropriate. Indeed, Psychotherapy never demands or extols pure undistracted presence in the moment, as does Zen Mysticism.

• Automated Sociometry  Vs. HEDWEB bio-happiness,

Zen Nihilism Shock Therapy Vs. Zen Moderation

From the concept of futility into the practice/application/administration/infliction of futility

 

The 'Star Trek: Voyager' episode 'Sacred Ground' scripted by Geo Cameron and Lisa Klink, is a clever and provocative parable constituting a Zen attack upon what might be characterized as Captain Janeway's scientific attitude or: Scientism Lite.

For 'Scientism' is the term coined by Karl Popper for what he saw as the religion of science, the making of science into the object of a religion and the practice of science, likewise the more superstitious, all motivated in clutching so desperately for the chimera of certitude or whatever certitude surrogate therein, much as in conventional religion likewise the appeal to faith. But the scientific attitude herein dubbed as Scientism Lite, instead of actually expecting certitude or whatever certitude surrogate in science, nevertheless derives a satisfaction, even dependable reassurance and meaning in the deeper sense, in a word: solace, from hope in the rational and Empirical explainability of the universe embraced through science. But Epistemological Methodological definition of Scientific Method is entirely distinct from human motivation thereto, remaining intangible values. And, strictly speaking, the Ontology of science investigated via the Epistemological Methodology of Scientific Method and Empirical evidence, experiment and repeatable observation, is entirely empty of Axiology, of all value judgment or attitudes, even motivating optimism of character towards scientific rationalism.

And indeed by contrast, in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and  awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding as such that is, indeed, the goal put forth  of scientific investigation.

In the story, Katharine Janeway, redoubtable captain of the starship Voyager, lost in the reaches of uncharted deep space and ever burdened with command, must undergo a baffling and protracted ritual ordeal in order to safely traverse a dangerous and mysterious symbolic ceremonial archway or gateless gate in order to save her vulnerable dear friend and crewmate Kess from the consequences of her own unsuspecting curiosity and the puzzling injury resultant of a fateful accident at an alien temple cave where sensor readings are forbidden.

The rituals, however, are all confabulated from Janeway's own projected expectations, ambition and determination, all as so obliquely provoked by the oracular and obscure guidance so affably proffered her in the shrine.

And by the time Kess is saved and conscious once again, and the riddles both of the somewhat bizarre malady or injury and also of the rather paradoxical cure (The mysterious cure for Kess, unconscious and in critical condition throughout, apparently first requiring biochemical changes in Janeway's own biochemistry as manifest from her final state of desperately bewildered and demoralized near collapse and acute exhaustion) are finally open to rational scrutiny, Captain Janeway, harrowed, dazed and exhausted beyond caring, helpless throughout the baffling and seemingly arbitrary ordeal and desperate leap of faith, has attained enlightenment of Zen futility, cessation. that purported great truth of futility as attained by technique of persuasive practical demonstration being no more or less than, in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration and extinction of impulse, forever beyond the former solace of any scientific attitude or Scientism Lite now quite crushed.

And so, in the end, though optimism strictly in the quest for literal truth being correspondence to reality and even knowledge thereof, the efficacy of science in rational Empirical inquiry reestablished as a matter of ordinary practicality, stands plausibly enough vindicated once again, nevertheless the enthusiastic technobable rings somewhat hollow forever more in Janeway's ears. 

Hence and thus does the striking and deeper pent-up irrelevance exposed in the dénouement form the true anticlimax of anti-drama. But the question must remain open if ever thence accrues any grace and more serine acceptance for Janeway of her situation.

For the question of meaning in the deeper sense, especially as in the proverbial meaning of life actually signifies whatever valued prospect of fulfillment or else only futility, sheer Ecclesiastical vanity. And in case of just such utter futility, then there is no use bemoaning thereof. Yet even so much as the aforesaid common sense may seem easier said than done, given actual human nature and behavior. And indeed, the embrace of apathy and surrender to futility is the primary motivating goal put forth of the Zen, in such Draconian response to the challenges of stimulus struggle, .

Thomas Szasz famously defined happiness as "[a]n imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children and by children to adults."

Life is suffering of one kind or another, an Earthly Hell in which to abandon all hope. Thus the cold succor and sublime satori of stunned Zen apathy is merely requisite pain management throughout life which is suffering.  Or then again, is Zen really all just colossally sour grapes, maybe?  

The program of becoming happy, which the pleasure principle imposes on us, cannot be fulfilled.  — Sigmund Freud

 

Indeed, is not Zen, in truth, simply more of much the same terror management in the face of mortality and berevment?

Some say that one becomes addicted to shame when another's heart is closed to one, because, however excruciating, the sheer megalomania of taking the blame protects one from the ugly truth that we really have no control over others and the universe or God. We can't make either love us or, ultimately, even protect those who do. Put more simply, then, and in complete good faith, powerlessness, the impotent helplessness of the human condition is terminally demeaning.

Soap cleans itself the way ice does,
Both disappear in the process.
The questions of “Whence” & “Whither” have no validity here.

Mud is a mixture of earth and water
Imagine WATER as an “Heavenly” element
Samsāra and nirvana are one:

Flies in amber, sand in the soap
Dirt and red algae in the ice

 

— Philip Whalen, 'On Bear’s Head'

 

"To die, and to be dead. That must be glorious!" rhapsodizes Dracula, eternally and relentlessly driven and ostensibly empowered by a superficially ecstatic yet actually demeaning burdensome nightmarish unquenchable void of all consuming and destructive urges, and secretly yearning for peace and sweet release. Indeed, an extreme metaphor for one of the bleaker views of the human condition, and the more so, given also the belief in samsāra, perpetual reincarnation, wherein real death, escape from karma and the Wheel of Life, of perpetual rebirth only into greater and lesser degrees of eternal damnation, is cherished as so elusive an achievement.

Indeed, in this or any one life alone, let alone any others past or to come if such there be, all human suffering is seen in Zen as the emotional baggage of the ego; the ego, baggage and all, being an Ecclesiastical vanity that must, in a stunning cathartic moment of insight and confrontation with the truth of all such Ecclesiastical vanity in worldly things and attachments and desires, all regard whatsoever, be relinquished entirely, for the attainment liberation, Nirvana during this life, by which to overcome this world. The Zen test of faith demands the breaking of the spirit first, promising exaltation only thereafter. And all cooperation in baffling and perplexing cult initiation persist upon suspended judgment and the hopes that things will begin to make sense later on. -A false hope to be dashed in Zen Surrealism. For Zen seeks to duplicate or simulate, less dangerously, an overwhelming effect sometimes observed of sudden devastating and even life threatening trauma, that of renewed vividness and shattered priorities, sometimes called: enlightenment.

Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic.” 

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sadly, fewer seek to sell their souls at any price, than simply to be rid of them at all, relieved thereof and grateful for it. So, who would actually sally forth in order to have their spirits broken and discarded as such an obstacle? Alas that all too many are so desperate for peace and acceptance on any terms. And there is never any shortage of ever the same cult snake oil from phony gurus and fakirs, Zen Masters and Behaviorists, all ever eager to oblige. Such is the most vile exploitation. Beware!

Indeed, the authoritarian peer pressure of traditional Japanese society engenders such crushing self consciousness that might even be metaphorically envisaged as a great rising bullying tsunami wave of shame and anguish such as might, at long last, in a moment of great and dramatic suspense, finally crest and crash at the threshold very sanity, redolent with the promise of well earned peace and gentle sunshine on that beach of the land beyond all cares! For the Zen test of faith demands the breaking of the spirit first, promising exaltation only thereafter. But without fundamental catharsis or transformation one will be unable to advance, and only remain, metaphorically, asleep. Drastic measures, harsh regimen and great sacrifice may be indicated in order to be jolted from complacency and crack open to finally attain the serenity of blissful apathy. Est is a similar practice.

And so, the Zen Master provokes or evokes the disciple's distress, by sympathy or cruelty, sense or nonsense, by any means fair or foul that the Zen Master may choose in whatever opening as may ever present itself, until nothing makes sense, and so nothing matters any more. -In terms of Behavioral Modification, eliciting response repeatedly only for purposes of frustrating every impulse to reach out emotionally, unto behavioral extinction. Because the painful Existentially Absurd conundrums of life, none the least of which surround Zen itself, investigated by uncompromising Zen must stick in one's craw, impossible neither to stomach nor to expel. And freedom from Mammon and maya must be attained by passage through the barrier (for such is the rôle of the Zen Master) and not the gateless gate. 

By paradoxical intention, never striving or exhorting to motivate disciples, but actually struggling to drive them away, thus does the Zen Master leave it, instead, to the disciples to try to motivate the Zen Master himself, thus perhaps allowing the disciples the latitude for developing a sense of responsibility for their own wishes, be that a minimal, moderate, realistic and healthy self accountability, or else an impossible transcendent ideal of responsibility engendering or revealing desperate sycophancy.

Thus, whereas the professional compassion of the basically Freudian talking cure of traditional Western Psychotherapy coaxes out Catharsis from the patient via acceptance and even affirmation of the values of human needs, by the oblique approach to past traumas and to issues in the present, actually striving to heal whatever damage to self image, indeed to open the range of options in life for patients who feel so trapped, by contrast, Zen seeks to liberate inner Buddha nature finally by crushing the ego shell which is seen as the root of all suffering, fear and doubt, according to Buddhism and Hinduism the motivating goal put forth  of which is to need less and cease caring so as to finally embrace not simply any Western value of ingenuity and creative problem solving born of frustration, but the great truth of Ecclesiastical vanity, sheer futility. But what is "breaking the ego shell" but romanticized Mystical doubletalk for crushing the spirit? The cruel, helpless, heteronymous and irresponsible Existential Validation of the The Zen Master, alas generally traditional in education, is of all harshness excused as merely constant with, and preparatory for, the harsh reality of an indifferent universe. For the Zen test of faith demands the breaking of the spirit first, promising exaltation only thereafter. For only hope at all makes despair possible, making beguiling hope only the worst of all plagues and demons escaping from Pandora's box, according to all such Mystical sensibilities as the Zen.

And they're not kidding!

Sadly, fewer seek to sell their souls at any price, than simply to be rid of them at all, relieved thereof and grateful for it. So, who would actually sally forth in order to have their spirits broken and discarded as such an obstacle? Alas that all too many are so desperate for peace and acceptance on any terms. And there is never any shortage of ever the same cult snake oil from phony gurus and fakirs, Zen Masters and Behaviorists, all ever eager to oblige. Such is the most vile exploitation. Beware!

For as long as the world abides in tragedy, mad and damaging, madness of some kind or another, especially collapse beyond caring anymore, will have it's plausible defenders as the only true sanity and succor. Hence, Zen is Draconian pragmatism in the service of optimistic Nihilism. And the Zen test of faith demands the breaking of the spirit first, promising exaltation only thereafter: That in order to learn everything, one must first forget everything, and in order to gain anything, first one must lose everything. Such is the cynical rationalization and justification for systematic invalidation at the hands the anciently venerable and authoritatively severe Zen Master, the austere midwife of Zen cessation, futility, resignation and crushed spirit. By contrast the disarmingly manipulative Existential Validation and bad faith of the cutting edge Cognitive Behaviorist, is a dharmic aptitude of complete well-meaning innocence. Indeed, manipulation is best defined as undue advantage from trickery via the exploitation of affective innate and conditioned triggers or "push buttons" to undermine and overwhelm, even barrage, resistance, better judgment and autonomy of the target, via subtext of emotional incentive and disincentive. –As distinct from open coercion alone or substantive disinformation, lies. Typically, the manipulator obfuscates the nature of their coercion exercised, along with whatever self-serving advantage thereof. And for the Zen, life amounts no more that to an endless and wearisome succession of manipulation, via the diabolical "push button" triggers and strings attached, escapable only by surrendering all attachment without regard. Whereas, in the alternative, Transactional Analysis, by contrast, is less radical and more selective in seeking to disable triggers, and therefore may even be found appealing to Zen moderation.

So, if anything in life does deserve to be accorded any greater importance or legitimacy, then what is essential and what is extraneous? And essential or extraneous to what purpose, motivating goal put forth, agenda or value? Unless relative to any clear and discrete purpose or strategy, assertion or implication of the primacy of one aspect of human nature, Phenomenal condition or state of consciousness over another is surely more often the very height of value judgment, not objectivity and Ontology of reality per se. And, indeed, the ancient and ongoing debate to this very day, is one over not only purposeful strategy but very much of value preference. Even the Zen rejection of values is in and of itself an ultimately pragmatic value. And madness of any stripe is perhaps more often marked by the lack or distortion of values than by any other more concrete delusion. Hence, arguably, values, then, are inherent to perspective and hence indispensable to clarity and sense, no less than reason itself. Yet the greatest sense of clarity often belongs only to madness, exactly as advertised by the Zen.

Because, whereas in Western Psychology, the break from involvement in external reality leaves only desperate lonely Narcissism, in Mystical traditions such as the Zen, only a fully realized psychosis facilitated in Zen practice, achieving the lofty abandonment of worldliness, is the only path to restore genuine spontaneity, clarity and compassion, by freedom from suffering. Hence the Zen test of faith demands the breaking of the spirit first, promising exaltation only thereafter.

Little doubt can there be that there is no despair save by even the last fading embers of hope. And with the abandon of all hope, most beguiling and mesmerizing of all motivating snares of illusion, so too, obviously, will despair be quelled at long last, and peace attained. And such exactly is the radically pragmatic and advice of the Zen, indeed, the Socratic next best thing to being dead.

The ever begged Axiological question remains, however, in that another somewhat less flattering euphemism than the perhaps somewhat cavalier lofty and romantic metaphor of crushing the ego shell, and no less value loaded, is in the tragic pathos of the expressive figure: to break one's spirit. -Indeed, surely a high cost and a grave risk for contentment, such as ever may accrue thereby, from resignation and utter complacency in the literal abandon of all hope! In Psychiatry, after all, futility and loss of interest are considered signs of disordered depression, not revered as the royal road to enlightened serenity, and nervous collapse is seldom actually a recommendation, even under what amounts to the scrupulously careful suicide watch provided within the Zen Dojo.

Sadly, fewer seek to sell their souls at any price, than simply to be rid of them at all, relieved thereof and grateful for it. So, who would actually sally forth in order to have their spirits broken and discarded as such an obstacle? Alas that all too many are so desperate for peace and acceptance on any terms. And there is never any shortage of ever the same cult snake oil from phony gurus and fakirs, Zen Masters and Behaviorists, all ever eager to oblige. Such is the most vile exploitation. Beware!

If anything constructive and uplifting is every truly to be lucidly and incisively salvaged from the Zen for all time, then compassion demands nothing less than the explicit renunciation of all such enthusiastic violence and hate speech against the long suffering and unjustly maligned ego! We all know full well that any healthy ego needs love too! Therefore, to find clarity, do not meditate in oblivious serenity, but reflect self-consciously thereupon. For it is only from the rational Adult ego state of Transactional Analysis that our full measure and reasoning ability and information are available to guard us from deception and manipulation.

"Boredom: the desire for desires.”  — Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy, 'Anna Karenina'

 

And ironically, perhaps whatever famous achievements of Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha, where necessarily contingent upon exactly the sheltered posh life that he came to reject as such a sham. Indeed, whereas perhaps the closest Western analog of the Eastern concept of satori, namely Mazlow's famous model of self-actualization, abiding or episodic, very much depends upon social and technological progress towards the very highest standard of living and comfort, explicitly making prerequisite any experience of the satisfaction and satiation of worldly physical, emotional and social needs of deficiency, rather than at all, transcendence thereof via their abnegation, suppression, reduction and elimination in accordance with Nirvana Principle, and even though any such Western Psychopathological characterization as Psychotic break may seem harshly prejudicial in connotation, it may rather even be just such stunned apathetic detachment, in turn exalted as true inspiration into long denied dawning grasp and acceptance of overwhelming reality, the awakening that is the specifically Zen Catharsis pain management, suffering unto burnout ad apathy at the natural safeguard tolerance threshold of Ecclesiastical vanity, sheer futility, all cold comfort as such may offer, thence enlightenment, attainment of the Socratic "next best thing to death," a perfect neutral balance and harmony, inner peace, awakened undistracted mindful heightened awareness of the momentary and common place, awakening to freedom and true autonomy that will be extolled as the path to perfect selfless compassion, sharper wits even from perfected detached rationality (though never exactly Rationalism per se), or even better Tantric sex, depending upon who one asks. After all, according to the Zen, even without the sheer Nordic sense of darkness and menace of an Odin the Mysterious Stranger, nevertheless, the Buddha performs not only as Psyche Pomp and guide but scam artist trickster! For, to find oneself, one first must loose oneself.

And, there fore, all this dissertation is useless. Because in Zen, explanation actually undermines persuasive practical demonstration of Zen enigma. Only the harrowing experience may be beneficial. For the essence of Zen is Ecclesiastical vanity, sheer futility! -Ecclesiastical vanity. Thus, it must be presumed that if any of this is utterly confusing or, perhaps better still, emotionally unimaginable, then understanding may dawn!

Or, else, perhaps, also if the information rich juxtapositions may be pleasing, even despite being coherently and logically sequenced, and not because of it.

Although, in the words of Yamaoka Tesshu: "Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap." And to that latter very end of sobering letdown, Didactics of critical demystification may yet find paradoxically Zen application.

Indeed, even the traditional Zen scorn towards Philosophy typically rife with contradictions and also conundrums such as in this very sentence, is, in and of itself, nevertheless, a crucial Philosophical position. Much as Zen embraces the void by process of elimination ad infinitum, likewise the Socratic Method strives for enlightenment by refutation, also questing for truth in a process of elimination. So why does Zen tradition, so prizing of paradox, spurn the contradictions discovered in philosophical discourse?

At any rate, the prized karmic misanthropy of Zen is lofty and paradoxical. Indeed, by the rationales of Zen, perhaps even the most exploitative liars and frauds do God's work in crushing ego. For the sincere tough love of Zen, or so we are assured, is not intended as any sort of demonic and heartless Sadistic gloat, but, rather, just to the contrary, a sacred quest into the heart of the tragic human condition that is the rightful object of causeless perfect compassion.

Sadly, fewer seek to sell their souls at any price, than simply to be rid of them at all, relieved thereof and grateful for it. So, who would actually sally forth in order to have their spirits broken and discarded as such an obstacle? Alas that all too many are so desperate for peace and acceptance on any terms. And there is never any shortage of ever the same cult snake oil from phony gurus and fakirs, Zen Masters and Behaviorists, all ever eager to oblige. Such is the most vile exploitation. Beware!

Zen claims to offer nothing that isn't there for the taking. And yet, Zen is supremely difficult and troubling. If Zen ever patronizes, then even such a position might even proceed from integrity and consistency. And so, hypocrisy is seen only entering from human weakness thwarting true ideal Zen, to gullible disciples and their arrogant Zen celebrities. And so, is any of that indication of the radical utopian overreach of the Zen?

In confrontation with this very question, what will be the demands of Zen moderation and controversy? 

Comedian and host of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart, lamenting the polarization of politics by extremists, and yearning for the better centered and generally less excitable masses to rise and storm the seats of power, assailing the clashing ideologues, chanting: "be reasonable! Be reasonable" also likewise has suggested a qualified pledge of allegiance "one nation under our reasonable God." But is such ever to be Zenned? And in which heaven abide reasonable gods?

Wise men make proverbs and fools repeat them. -as the old saying goes... Indeed, if even the Lord Krishna to Arjuna cautioned how he could never tell his story, as it slipped from him, the same way twice, then what did Gautama Siddhartha really discover, and nearly never expound at all, convinced that no contemporary could possibly understand? Indeed, can whatever distortion of ages past ever be pierced, even today? Can the Zen mischief of repetition only yet compound and confound upon itself? Or in all this time, might we dare be optimistic ever of better readiness to receive and to understand?

Perhaps the clue may yet be had in that which does not reconcile, not even as dualistic opposition. Namely, moderation, the famed middle way of Gautama Siddhartha the Buddha on the one hand, with such flagrant ideal Manichean extremes of Perfectionism as manifest in any motivating goal put forth of total release or escape on the other hand, thereby necessitating, instead, such jarringly immoderate Draconian self negation, crushing of the ego shell (meaning: nervous collapse breaking the spirit under what amounts to a careful suicide watch provided within the Zen Dojo) and utterly complacent resignation and surrender of all attachment and regard in the abandon of all hope.

For Zen engages in the denunciation of human sympathy as a deadly attachment ensnaring the unwary from attainment of Zen futility and emptiness awakening into mindful heightened awareness of the transitory and common place. Indeed, Zen extols dissolution of the bonds of society, all because of suffering in society. Zen is so Philistine and anti-intellectual in such dread of risking disconnection as entailed in the employ of layered abstract reasoning.

Indeed, what oversimplification can there be the worse and falling further from the mark in any hoped for apprehension of the totality of being, than perhaps among the greatest of immoderation nigh inherent to the Zen even abandoning perfectionism in practice, nevertheless enduring in the fanatical Radicalist insistence upon pure Cartesian justification for every cognition or affect whatsoever!

And, surely, what a fuckin' drag! For to quote Thomas Moore:" But, faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast to some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last." 

Again, in the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic." Indeed, any feeling creature in suffering and sorrow can reach a threshold of despair into learned helplessness lauded by the Zen as sublime apathy, the endorphin biological defense mechanism of disassociation ramped up to its utmost extreme, Zen enlightenment into the great inner truth of futility, thus promising life in the moment without attachment, indeed an achievement of immeasurable practical value, but only given Nihilistic value destruction in such profound contempt for Mammon. -And thus all whether by intent or merely as a byproduct, nevertheless no less intrinsically, thereby dangerously disintegrating all manner of emotional and intellectual defenses against conditioned cult obedience and bad faith into the dissociative behavior of automatic action. For dissociation is a denial process of separating shameful unwanted impulses, desires, and needs enacted, from cognition of ego and more importantly, superego, conscience, thus shielding self-system.

And it can never be enough simply to qualify that the true Zen master should never be so gullible. For all such as above, indeed, is exactly the dilemma of the human condition that should stick forever in the craw of Zen agitation, impossible neither to stomach nor to expel, at least until Zen, indeed, exactly as according to Yamaoka Tesshu, like unto soap to wash with, must finally likewise be washed off as well, cleansed in the crystal clear water of the transparently obvious and therefore often forgotten and nigh invisible, the return to common sense practicality. -Not by dropping the soap in the shower and bending over blindly groping to find it! Especially not when life is regarded as such a prison. -metaphorically that is.

Instead, if any sort of Zen practice is truly to be all that much safer than real life tragedy, then perhaps deconditioning of mind and body, like anything else, will generally be more fruitful in harm reduction, progress, improvement, systematically correcting errors and deficiencies, traumatic or otherwise (-and ideology, especially!), as they come to light, than so immoderately clinging to, and thereby turning truth into, the dire Manichean falsehood of exhorting wholesale attack upon whatever will howsoever be simplistically and enthusiastically demonized as the ultimate root of all our suffering, whether as ever the case may be, the demon of the hour be attachment as in Zen, desire as in traditional Christianity, property as in Marxism, or any other woefully half-baked target.

Indeed, just as fancy upscale Psychotherapists are often so roundly mocked for treating" the worried well,", likewise Gautama Siddhartha is sometimes criticized and perhaps unfairly misunderstood, for allegedly addressing only posh ennui of the privileged ruling class instead of overcoming far greater worldly suffering, By contrast to Zen perfectionist idealism, Sigmund Freud was far less ambitious:

“I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health, you will be better armed against that unhappiness.”

― Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria (1895), (co-written with Josef Breuer)

And perhaps, likewise, Gautama Siddhartha, who rejected extremes both of excess and of deprivation, was also not such an ideal perfectionist at all, but only sought, more reasonably, to address such suffering as he discovered out in the real world, only via sensible harm reduction, improving life tolerably by common sense healthy living, mind and body. -Indeed, the optimism of progress, imperfect, open transparent reasonable and fallible ongoing improvement, being a position frequently misunderstood, nay, if not quite entirely incomprehensible, from any all-or-nothing transcendental ideology doggedly insistent upon the perfect ideal as the only true measure of all situations for anything to be knowable at all, that it must be complete and certain.

Perhaps the idealists deserve praise for any vision of anything however impossibly better even amid the most crushing conditions of the ancient world and endless human suffering. Nevertheless, such may yet profit from a gentle reminder how even the fire-bringer and redeemer Prometheus sacrificed all only for the sake of progress and opportunity, in other words: to improve the hitherto dim, damp, chill and dismal human condition, howsoever incrementally.

Another definition or hypothesis of the middle way of Siddhartha, just possibly consistent and reconciled with any sort of Zen idealism, is again, of Stoical neutrality and hence void, returning to the putative great redeeming truth of Ecclesiastical vanity, sheer futility, awakened totality and sheer serene apathy free of distraction from mindful heightened awareness of the ordinary and transitory. So the question remains: is the latter rationalization actually reconcilable and consistent with Zen moderation? Indeed, can the middle way metaphor expand to encompass both latter and former definitions as aspects in Gestalt synthesis? No, this cannot be. To promise anything so impossibly extreme and complete as total and comprehensive escape from all suffering at all, only tempts if not actually extorts, hypocrisy. All too often, getting to the root of a problem demands bloody mindedly throwing out the proverbial baby with the metaphorical bathwater. And the core radical premise of Zen is extremist to the ultimate, and simply irreconcilable with Zen moderation. Given ongoing controversy within Zen, any number of conceivable qualifiers can always be attached, indeed in evocation of such Zen values as of moderation and practicality along the middle road of Siddhartha. Yet all such qualifiers seem disingenuous, typical Zen equivocation, remaining as they do, implausible and irreconcilable, unless until ever even moderation and practicality are openly accorded priority and core fanatical extremes of perfectionist idealism of the Zen can first be explicitly abandoned, rather than all cloaked in evasive sophistry and qualification in order the inexorable logic later to reassert itself surreptitiously as perhaps somewhat disingenuously intended. As things stand, indeed, even the infamous moral vacuum of Zen seems the more consistent than much lauded Buddhist compassion requiring all manner of ad hock doctrine tempering the uncompromising extol of sublime apathy in such Draconian response to the challenges of stimulus struggle, .

For the manifest immoderation and human perversity to be explained away, remains so manifest in all of the melodrama of uncompromising Zen rectitude and cathartic breakdown, perhaps only long overdue for a big Zenslap or just a gentle smile, from some latter-day avatar or inner specter of serene and clean living Siddhartha. For the reasonable moderation to truly walk the middle road of Siddhartha may first demand the open and explicit abandonment of impossible Perfectionist Ideolog excess baggage.

Alas, Zen, preaching Nirvana principle, lowered earthly expectations, instead so often remains fixated upon impossible and ideal Perfectionist demands of miraculous introversion. For such are the notorious snares attachment to non attachment. But even so, in calmer alternative to the Zen foment of inner crisis, yet there remains the seemingly safer, gentle, simple and moderate recommendation of the mind with no reference point in meditation toward the quiet cultivation of Zen inner peace, void, indeed, fruit of the very same great redeeming value of totality awakened in mindful heightened awareness of the ordinary and transitory, sheer Ecclesiastical futility and serenely apathetic surrender of all attachment without regard, and most especially the goodbye to agitated worry, especially lunatic ideology.

• Ultimate loneliness and enlightenment

 

 

What is "Not-Doing?"

"You can observe a lot just by watching.”  — Yogi Berra

 

 

Descartes seized upon, as the beginning of his Philosophy, his famous declaration: "I think, therefore I exist." But if you are not thinking, what? This is where Zen begins. The Zen rejects the escapism afforded by the unique features of the idle human mind, being: insight, imagination and cooperation, all as burdensome self-consciousness. For Zen means doing things willingly and cheerfully, and not-doing means letting actions control the doer rather than the other way around.

 

So, can there be any Zen of effortless Altruism? Indeed, what numinous clarity of right action transcends any dichotomy of selfishness versus Altruism?

Even in the stillness of sitting meditation, Not-Doing needs must remain distinct from mere inertia, laziness, sloth, laissez-faire or, indeed, any mere passivity, but perhaps more properly, action in disregard, without attachment. The point being that apprehension is often known even to bring about the very dreaded results. Don't force it, just let be.

"Tao abides in non-action. Yet nothing is left undone. (...) If kings and lords observed this, ten thousand things would develop naturally."  — Lao Tzu

By the sense of relief from pressure of Not-Doing, Wu-Wei, the Taoist precept of action not from agenda but rather with with zijan, natural spontaneity, may one gain the freedom and sense of relief to simply be (or Not-Be) oneself. In equilibration, free of the striving and preoccupation of intention, the bliss of ever unfolding oneness may reveal itself to the quieted mind.

Wu-Wei is the Taoist expression for the power of positive not-doing. It is the action in non-action, the knowing in not-knowing, the something in nothing, the doing in not-doing. Wu-Wei is following the way of the water, the way of the wind. It is the not absence of action, but it is the absence of trying. Wind is never still, but it has no intention. Water ever seeks its own level, but not on purpose. 

 

Or in the words of Chuang Tzu: "detachment, forgetfulness of results, and abandonment of all hope of profit."

Not-Doing defined as action from Buddha Nature, however, only shifts the question. And Buddha Nature as opposed to what else? Why, ego, of course. So, Not-Doing, not by explanation or conceptualization, but as the fruit of practice of Zen just as any other system of principles and methods employed in the performance of any routine or  set of activities, denotes automatic skill, easy effortless action ingrained to second nature without even trying, as in the practiced facility granting the sense of ease in the conduct of any art achieved in unselfconscious perception without distraction from the process that has finally become second nature, all from No-Mind, fearless and free of all cares, empty of thought and without self conscious premeditation nor by impulse either.

The arrow is said to fall from the Zen archer like the first snowflake, with salvation from sin, escape from karma and no weight of responsibility on his own part as he acts without attachment or regard, without the ugliness of thinking about it. For the Zen test of faith demands the breaking of the spirit first, promising exaltation only thereafter.

As a glittering generality, mythical promise of the miraculous is epitomized in the immortally trite platitude of Yoda the Jedi Master: "Do or do not, there is no try." 

Likewise, skilled dharma is thought to accrue in Not-Doing, supremely adaptive and unpremeditated right action going with the flow and rising to situation unfolding, behavior that arises from a sense of connection to others and to one's environment and the experience of unity, for everything to take care of itself, including morality, all too easily dismissed with all other passions, emotional attachments, regard or conceptual and rational issues.

Or to drop the ever passive voice of the Zen and frame the entire conceit most plainly and concisely in the ever Zen despised active voice:

No-mind inauthentic blind submission in the irresponsibly indifferent Behaviorally Conditioned heteronomy to situation, absolves all weighty cares of responsibility!

 

"Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”  —Nathaniel Hawthorne

Yes, yet another charming Zen snow job! Have you found The Root Cause of Unhappiness? Spoiler: it's ego of course, consciousness, the mind itself intrinsically, thought at all. Happiness is just spacing out! Or so we are assured.

And a similar fashionable pseudo-sociological rationalization for the same age old cowardice likewise frequently snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, might be that of spontaneous collaboration, especially when likewise to the exclusion of intentive planning and action by association with crank ideologies of paralytic radical anarcho-holism, the diligent cultivation of memetic influence upon the sublime confluence of appropriate conditions for whatever particular desirable and foreseeable outcomes, and all to the rigid exclusion of events in crude linear progression especially as from any such abhorrent crassness as of direct action.

"Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”  — Benjamin Disraeli

 

For the problem with any Nihilistically unsympathetic morally void Zen, is that, just as the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. And such a Zen readily adapts itself to whatever authoritarian ethos and duty of obedience that history brings, however deranged. So, what, precisely, ever distinguishes masterful adaptability from pliant resignation even unto the sheer murderously violent psychotic disassociate states of fanatical marauders precisely as described in Zen and the Art of Divebombing? For such is the ultimate in conditioned Zen bad faith, selective self disavowal. Indeed, is not the hottest circle of Dante's Inferno reserved for those who cultivate neutrality during moral crisis? Because by standing in the face of suffering can never be harmless! But in the alternative to simply going with the flow, at least there is still also the Zen that prizes the honesty of agitation and intractable discomfort with Existential dilemma.

• An otherwise fairly accurate even if dogmatically Trinitarian Critique of Zen
• Concise critique plus comparison to Christianity

In the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic." Indeed, any feeling creature in suffering and sorrow can reach a threshold of despair into learned helplessness lauded by the Zen as sublime apathy, the endorphin biological defense mechanism of disassociation ramped up to its utmost extreme, Zen enlightenment into the great inner truth of futility, thus promising life in the moment without attachment, indeed an achievement of immeasurable practical value, but only given Nihilistic value destruction in such profound contempt for Mammon. -And thus all whether by intent or merely as a byproduct, nevertheless no less intrinsically, thereby dangerously disintegrating all manner of emotional and intellectual defenses against conditioned cult obedience and bad faith into the dissociative behavior of automatic action. For dissociation is a denial process of separating shameful unwanted impulses, desires, and needs enacted, from cognition of ego and more importantly, superego, conscience, thus shielding self-system.

Paradoxically, motivational power of positive thinking often appeals to the Nihilistic de-motivating adaptive Zen ideal of universal acceptance, loving whatever one does, taking joy in any task that comes to hand, and likewise the embrace of every experience with equanimity, a mechanism of psychological denial to rationalize not merely acetic self denial, blocking out suffering by living a lie, but even moral void and no-mind of not-doing in blithe listless service to evil, deadly hypocrisy exactly as the fictional character of Misuzu, acolyte of Panaru, recognizes to her own desperate horror, but only far too late, in 'Boogiepop Phantom' episode 3: 'Life Can Be So Nice' scripted by Sadayuki Murai. Indeed, Zen is also referenced as by George Orwell in '1984' as Eastasian death worship, the Oriental counterpart to doublethink in Oceania, ever extolling noninvolvement and the virtues of inertia, automatic obedience achieved by doublethink and the bad faith of selective self disavowal towards extinction of ego and autonomy, Oh, double plus good!

• Zen and the Art of Divebombing
  or: The Dark Side of the Tao

And make no mistake, such was not the merely a tragic abuse of Zen, historically, but nigh inevitable from the inherent flawed weakness of Zen all along and unto this very day, still crying out.

A rebuttal of sorts: Zen and Accountability

 

There is even a fashionable Anarchistic concept of collective "not-doing" somewhat disingenuously designated: spontaneous collaboration.

How can autonomous equals best interact and cooperate freely and responsibly? Some maintain that collaboration on the part of the individual must be entirely spontaneous, unpremeditated by will and ego. But that more often turns out to be a pretext for abrogating upon promises made, after extracting and then wasting the efforts of others. Actual spontaneous collaboration is indeed observed in different species including humanity, arising organically under various particular circumstances to serve whatever particular range of needs. But that has been taken as pretext for spontaneous collaboration as an ideology, which is radical anarchism questing for personal liberty via the attachment disordered and Nihilistic rejection of all intentive and structured interactions throughout society. But realistically, the latter dubious Anarchism may be dismissed as pipedreaming wherein the intention and striving characteristic of autonomy are despised in very principle as in Not-Doing and the irresponsibly indifferent Behaviorist heteronomy to situation as extolled by the Zen. The ideal of reciprocal and symmetrical spontaneous collaboration is manifest in the Open Source format of entirely noncommittal voluntary collaboration on a whim, both the achievements and practical imitations whereof are all well known and understood, in the world of computing. But it is no secret that in actuality, behind most every successful Open Source initiative, there is somewhere a committed steering committee securely nested within the very corporate world so scorned by would be spontanious collaborators.

Just as individual not-doing is supposed to rise to whatever the occasion, so does actual spontaneous collaboration as observed arising organically, within whatever limits of application. -Very much unlike the radical anarchist ideological lifestyle of spontaneous collaboration, really little more than profound alienation in deep denial, bush-league anarchism, in reality nothing more than trendy pseudo-sociological rationalization for age old decidophobic paralytic radical anarcho-holism, frequently snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, especially when likewise to the exclusion of intentive planning and action by appeal to crank ideologies of  the diligent cultivation of memetic influence upon the sublime and nigh magical confluence of appropriate conditions for whatever particular desirable and foreseeable outcomes, firmly eschewing any such abhorrent crassness as of consciously and overtly purposeful interaction or individual direct action seeking to guide events in any crude linear progression.

 

Indeed. perhaps worst of all, under hypocritical nigh Mooninite pretentions of being so much more highly evolved, such impoverished and two  dimensional ideology practiced only unilaterally, is the ever manipulative habit and moral vacuum (because agreements are an imperfect ssocial technology!) of making promises with no intention of keeping them unless one feels like it later on, in order dishonestly and exploitatively to incur any likewise unilateral sense of obligation or contractual reliance from the rest of us poor squares!

 

 

 

Zen brainwash?

 

"I just don't know how...to think less. If you know how, then teach me...”  — Aishah Madadiy, Velvet di Durham

All cooperation in baffling and perplexing cult initiation persists upon suspended judgment and the hopes that things will begin to make sense later on. -A futile hope to be dashed in Zen Surrealism. All other revelation is deemed fraudulent. For the Zen rejects the escapism afforded by the unique features of the idle human mind, being: insight, imagination and cooperation, as burdensome self-consciousness. Have you found The Root Cause of Unhappiness? Spoiler: it's ego of course, consciousness, the mind itself intrinsically, thought at all. Happiness is just spacing out! Or so we are assured.

According to Freud, the conscious and aware ego exists for the sake of impulse formation into the execution of strategy, serving the drives of the id within constraint of conscience which is an aspect of superego. But Zen is the paradoxical cultivation of non-cultivation and striving to non-striving, for a return to a romanticized natural state which will be empty of artifice, prior conditioning, premeditation and premediation whatsoever, and release from all thereof, in recognition that only the illusion of non-enlightenment, ego, self consciousness born of inner reflection brought about by life in society, all trivialized and demonized and believed to obscure becoming enlightened naturally.

And ever the function of propaganda is to lighten conscience in savagery against whatever is demonized or trivialized in the first place. And from whatever core values, typical cult conditioning reinforces the pivotal rationalizations of a shared worldview rarified of empathic common sense. But in the struggle against abuse, Zen in particular, does not merely contend with inevitable distortion. Rather, Zen is forced to confront problems and contradictions inherent to any such radical optimistic Nihilism.

And Not-Doing, to live in accordance with the way is for one’s hand to be guided thereby, becoming perfect in action only when one no longer consciously considers what one is doing. Not-Doing means letting actions control the doer rather than the other way around. But whence all said action?  Motive, as any other truth, does not actually go away simply by being ignored instead of being considered.

Indeed, one may quest for whatever sort of inner knowledge from the unconscious, or to trigger operations and response thought howsoever healing. Or else, one may seek to add to, change, control, overwhelm or seduce the unconscious by whatever content of behavioral conditioning or suggestion. And the slight of hand comes in blurring the distinction, in bait and switch of the latter instead of the former. Yes, there's the rub!

Indeed, either way, superficially, there may be a similar result in unselfconscious action. But precisely because each is harmoniously adaptive to completely different situation, likewise the core motivations remain irreconcilably distinct.

Much thus, one way or another, Fascism of whatever stripe, typically contrives to actually fob off conformist and dutiful blind obedience as rugged Individualism. Much as with the Hindu adaptation of Buddhism to Arian domination, in the particular Feudal Japanese appropriation of the Zen, the crucial slight of hand is in the conniving reversal of inward soul searching for whatever the innate inner knowledge from the unconscious, into conformist Behavioral conditioning and fatalism via deceptively superficially similar striving towards No-Mind, the unconscious reservoir of dissociative automatic behavior without regard or attachment. For dissociation is a denial process of separating shameful unwanted impulses, desires, and needs enacted, from cognition of ego and more importantly, superego, conscience, thus shielding self-system.

But Freud condemns all such abuse as violation of his famous injunction against suggestion, the crucial distinction being between the open endedness of what Sapir Handelman categorizes as expanding manipulation as often seen in psychotherapy, consisting of whatever indirect oblique approach, with emotional incentives and even diversionary tactics, yet, similarly to Socratic Method as applied to open questions, all scrupulously directed toward liberation via the inculcation of doubt towards various beliefs, complexes and double binds, by which individual action of the person, willing choice, and well being is effectively constrained and imprisoned, as entirely district from limiting manipulations designed only to narrow, constrain and specifically direct the range of belief, conviction, behavior and action taken by the target thereof, objectification and exploitation all in accordance with the aims of the manipulators.

Alas, the core ethic of Zen is often perverited and abused. Ah, but is that merely mischief and misfortune? Indeed, are not the perverting contradictions inherent and the abuse therefore imminent and innate? Then again, are not all proverbial swords two edged? After all, there is always far darker negation. Indeed, any tool of liberation, be it the Nihilistic Zen bludgeon or whatever incisive Zen scalpel of inspired thinking, may also all to easily and suddenly be turned about to degrade, enslave and destroy. Indeed, a quest for something ineffable may readily engender servitude to an unquestioned master renowned as exalted beyond mere mortal rational mentality and mere intellectual defenses such as question or criticism.

For all such is typical of devious coercion and consensus manipulation towards exploitation until the collapse into disillusionment or, if not, then long term cult brainwashing into the eager and highly capable sycophancy and career advancement of the true believer.

And it is the realization of such uncomfortable truths that must always inform our most difficult meditations. For example, no uncompromising quest for human truth can ever simply ignore the Second World War! But an historical account alone, no matter how detailed and unflinching, runs the risk of simply dismissing brutality as pure aberration rather than delving any deeper, let alone Zenning the matter.

Indeed, if abasing and humiliating oneself is ever truly so fruitful in vanquishing ego and achieving the bliss of humility, then why do Masochists so often tend all the more towards the most morbid and chronic egocentric obsession?

Tantra: the next best thing to necrophilia!

Who eats chocolate simply in order to transcend and overcome the pleasing flavor?

 

""A good rider has balance, judgment, and good timing. So does a good lover."  — Unknown

 

Though tantra is juxtaposed to Vedic traditions as a heterodox, life-affirming tradition, which is both ancient and basic to Hindu interpretations of being, its hedonistic contents have been purposely neglected or suppressed, partly because of the continuing hold of Victorian morality (imbibed from the British missionaries and colonial rulers), and partly because the erotic route to mystical achievement has always been a secret, minority path."

— Prem Saran, Tantra - Hedonism in Indian Culture  

At minimum, much as the famous Buddhist Shaolin warrior monks renounce aggression, even practicing their renowned martial arts without aggression, Tantra aims at non-thrusting sex likewise all without the passion of aggression. Thus do the disciplines of Tantric sex promise such benefits as slow, prolonged and even entranced love making in tranquil Yogic positions, relaxation and greater heights of ecstasy, and some would say, enhanced intimacy as well. Or are they actually expressly seeking  to avoid it? That rather depends whom one asks, and it should come as no surprise that once again the question typically comes subject to much qualification.

Indeed, what exactly is meant even by the common parlance: casual sex? (What, as opposed to formal attire debauchery?)

Why must it ever be so hard just to be easy?

That vibrant lust momentarily fulfilled still escalates unsatiated, seems little tragedy. By contrast, the sex in sexual addiction must be pretty damn awful just miserably bad sex to be so depressingly joyless! What are called addictive behaviors such as gambling, never mind actual substance abuse, are the most Existentially Absurd, Ecclesiastically futile,unfulfilling of so-called recreations, indeed leaving no afterglow no speak of.

Casual sex so-called, is often anything but! -rather instead, excruciatingly awkward and actually uncomfortable, all the more so for the cultivation of disassociated sexuality, cavalier attitudes of the same antique Zen quest for indifference in struggle of denial in order to cope with deep seated shame and disgust engendered by the no less archaic and ugly bigotry that so demonizes Eros as the enemy of Agape and, more to the point: vice versa; either way, as often expressed poetically: that love demands the sacrifice of love. Is casual sex like casual conversation, interminable delusory small talk, a snare of doom into an oblivion of unfulfilled superficiality?

Answer: Only insofar as anything howsoever more substantial is actually howsoever deliberately ruled out as actually impolite as typically in the name of willful positivity. And the same goes for sex. typically, it is actually the onus and dire presumption or outright premeditation of attachment disorder that truly raises any such neurotic dire conflict between Eros and Agape, in such dire self fulfilling prophesy. Nothing endangers or destroys deep feeling the way that pressure under demand thereof as any sort of prerequisite does. Freedom from precisely such common place ideological demands, freedom to grow, is always precious. Whereas, under conditions of distress, such as school, emotional support seems more of a determinant of success than sexual activity or not.

Indeed, it is so often the anhedonic that are so unsympathetic and Moralistic. Nevertheless, it is the pleasure centered who are so often maligned as therefore callous and indifferent, attachment disordered. And yet, in truth, many close relationships grow from sharing pleasures. Why should it be any different with the intimate gratification of lust? Answer: Compartmentalization that is, indeed, repressed and attachment disordered. Compartmentalization as a defense or denial, a coping strategy for dealing with overwhelming ambivalence, as from the equally intense craving and terror at any prospect of intimacy of any kind at all. Agape can be as painfully suppressed as Eros. And as we shall see, some actually recommend it!

Declares Laura Wood, The Thinking Housewife: “The well-educated slut has been fed a pack of lies. Let’s face it. For all her credentials and impressive grades, she is stupid! Promiscuity plunders a woman’s soul and wrecks her ability to love.” Indeed, along the slutty Tantric path upon the sadly misguided Zen quest of futility and non attachment, such precisely, is actually the deliberate goal put forth! “It keeps many from ever marrying at all or from having children. It is ultimately unappealing to men.”

But are any of the three preceding claims scientific? What would be the Empirical standards of refutation? Under what conditions, particularly of culture and especially self fulfilling prophesy, might any of the assertions in question, tired traditional truisms as they may be, nevertheless ever tend to be true (correspondent to reality)? What would be the controls? And are there pertinent statistics?

Actually, it turns out that initial sexual interaction and encounters as readily leads to longer term relationship as anything the more at least ostensibly Platonic. Although differing expectations can lead to misunderstanding and disappointment. if only by the expression: "casual sex" nothing more was ever meant than that everyone involved in entitled to be comfortable with all that they do together, at their ease and free. Alas, the very expression: "casual sex" is loaded euphemism, instead signifying nothing more or less than morbid detachment, yes: those Zen ideals of non attachment, and cynical compartmentalization. But there is even worse in the implication of all such as the natural human disposition, indeed remedied only by repressive indoctrination into controlling jealously, possessiveness and fear based relationship. But in any better alternative, surely any coherent quest for individual wholeness, must value the genuine and natural integration of self, integrity and principle, often at the vulnerable danger ever of openness, approachability, and even heart worn on sleeve. 

For the searing ambivalent inner conflict between desire and inhibition is untenable and irreconcilable, save either that lust be quelled or insecure jealousy, fear, guilt and aversion overcome. But as Thomas Szass observes, either such profound change is easier lip service than accomplishment, and so it is more common for anyone simply to go through the motions either of liberated sexuality on the one hand or of chastity on the other, than truly to conquer either desire on the one hand or inhibition on the other, at all.

"I'm just a Westside lover, I leave females in my sheets and all my feelings in a rubber."  — Big Sean

Indeed, to what lengths should one be willing to strive for pure, innocent precious freedom at long last, from the falsehood and suffering brought about by the entire range of frustrated needs obstructed by all manner of confusing, painful and debilitating anxious, guilty and self-conscious sex hang-ups? Everyone is one way or another familiar with the grand stereotypical societal myth of how the quest for acceptance into the Sixties, with the ideals of peace, love and understanding, and practice of flamboyant free expression, somehow collapsed into such now hilarious self-involved Narcissistic Disco era self caricature into the Seventies.

Behind enshrouding Mysticism, Tantra can be perverse and prudish all at once. Consistently to every other context of life, Tantric sex is the ancient and venerable application of Yogic contortions and sublime Zen apathy and transport of utter detachment even to such weird and dissociated sexuality. For dissociation is a denial process of separating shameful unwanted impulses, desires, and needs enacted, from cognition of ego and more importantly, superego, conscience, thus shielding self-system. And during the Seventies, porn icon Emmanuelle as most famously portrayed by Sylvia Kristel, was the skinny blond catatonic shiksa goddess slut and traveling guru, the ideological cheerleader and rôle modelfor entranced and detached dissociated sublime apathetic carnality, attended upon by robust and lustful male performers doing all of the work for their limp, entranced and passive pretty ragdoll!

So, are such truly The Joys of a Woman and aught anyone actually to envy Emmanuelle and aspire to become more like her? Indeed, can complete introversion truly be the key to sexual liberation? Answer: Obviously, not for natural extroversion and curiosity. For once again, the pangs of loneliness and sexual boredom are portrayed as anything to be quelled introveritedly and Narcissistically by regaining taste only for one's own company, because extroverited Hedonistic passion actually reaching out for human connection even for the sheer gratification let alone actually ever in order so much howsoever as to alleviate any suffering of loneliness, is once again cynically and prudishly dismissed as Quixotic, Ecclesiastical vanity, Zen futile. Have you found The Root Cause of Unhappiness? Spoiler: it's ego of course, consciousness, the mind itself intrinsically, thought at all. Happiness is just spacing out! Or so we are assured. And hence the dysfunctionally misguided appeal, also, of all such disassociated sexuality in quest of radical disengagement. 

 

If You Meet the Buddha in the Road, 2000
by Amir Rosenblatt

 

"If you download from the Buddha on Usenet, plonk (killfile) him!”   — Gyrate

 

"Should you encounter the Buddha unit onsite maintenance, deactivate it...”  — Mike Borden

 

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, have him call my agent.”  — waynio

 

"Ask him how far it is to the next gas station.”  — WaldemarExkul

Understanding is explanatory abstraction enabling cogitation upon and employment of concepts effective and pertinent to whatever subject matter at hand. Explanation is of causation in context and likewise of consequence. Rational construction comes intermediate between objective reality and subjective perception and experience at all, the Phenomena, let alone abstract or practical comprehension.

Different phenomena (lower case) emerge as sufficient causes converge under favorable conditions, and disintegrate as causes or conditions dissipate. People understand and relate to the plot logic of polemical drama and the linear causality of stories, even though events in the real world unfold as the confluence of all manner of even dharmic and karmic cofactors in the outcomes of complex systems, perhaps even amenable to some common theme, similarity or generality, if not any other serviceable narrative.

Problems and types of causality are divided into the categories of dharma and karma, - in the polemics of drama, dharmic plot, with "unity of action," Sequence and logic, and situation plus karmic character motivation, which together equal dramatic destiny, fateful choice of free will, because karma accrues from volitional intentional action without which worldly happiness is impossible. That is why sublime Zen apathy promises freedom from karma, ego and responsibility. Karmic destiny, particularly: as of bad karma, is predictable outcomes unfolding as inexorably driven by inflexible fixed attitudes, position or POV, in short: dramatic failure of growth.

inherent meaning as a poetical figure, actually alludes to purpose of personal fulfillment, what matters deeply growth towards self-actualization or at least freedom and autonomy, relevant value, and without which life itself threatens Zen futile Ecclesiastical vanity! and such as may be expressed, also, in the intention of deeds, including that which is most broadly signified in communication of message, information content, ideas, conveying Phenomenal subjective experience or understanding, TEXT and subtext all in CONTEXT, unless, most narrowly, scientifically, literally and precisely,  denotatively or referentially, that which is signified and thus conjectured, is simply and clearly whatever corresponding objective reality, Ontologically, hence, also, implication, logically inherent consequence and Deterministic inescapable causal effect that inspires bleak fatalism but also liberation, hope from knowledge and even wisdom, for discovering better choices, willfully, autonomously.

Mythical karma is not actually a system of the universe at all. Because there actually can be no Ontological foundation of morality, the so called law of karma is actually mere truism not really consistent enough to qualify as a physical law of nature. The principle at all of karma is merely a fateful tendency however as universal as anything in the soft social sciences or humanities, stating that, in life's drama, good results tend to follow from good, skillfully detached and responsible causes or motivations and bad results, intended, foreseen or otherwise, from bad, malicious or simply ineptly irresponsible, often impulsive, reactionary and misguided causes and motivations. Which, in any momentary reflection, all seems manifest in human affairs, functionality and dysfunctionality, both privately, psychologically, and in the wider scheme of events in society. Thus even sans mythic past lives, one way or another, we remain all nonetheless and nevertheless the inheritors of past actions, decisions, experience and history culminating and calumniating in each our own situation amid the world about us, karma. Universal justice, however, is by no means assured. Besides, in the words of  William E. Gladstone: "Justice delayed is justice denied." -Let alone through eons of mythical reincarnation! What would be the point?

By contrast, dharma, in the many significations of the word, may be thought to refer to the more straightforward material and perhaps even the familiar mechanistic problems  and types of causality and effect such as that in the polemics of drama, differentiate the "unity of action," Sequence and logic as of plot distinguished from  sheer chronological sequence of narrative. Dharma is constituent from all that simply is, unmotivated, morally neutral and devoid of passionate human values, such as is the concern of natural science and particularly physics. Dharma also refers to the nature and function of any thing or event, as most lucidly as we may so apprehend, which, of course, is the motivating goal put forth of science. But all too often, it may be observed that the more transcendent the passion for science, the more detached, socially inept, graceless and impractical have been many of the most famous and accomplished scientists in ordinary life!

Dharma in the sense of trustworthy virtuous right action according to divine law, of Stoical oikeiosi, also denoting one's rôle in life and the challenge to play it well as conduct within dharma, perhaps connotes a somewhat jaundiced and detached view of plot, such as might fail to be properly acknowledged as the more intimate problem of growth and character development. Drama, after all, from the same root as the Sanskrit dharma but in Late Latin drma, drmat-, via the Greek drn, to do or perform, is conflict inherent to situation; conflict on every level within  and without, being, as it is, more than merely an event, but like unto karma itself, a condition, a relationship.

Indeed beware! for in true life no less than in the equivocal representation thereof, poor staging or presentation of any level of conflict is effectively misdirection dissipating inherent drama, reducing promise to catastrophe by losing sight of what matters deeply. Where, then, does that leave the ideal and motivating goal put forth of sheer detachment?

Is Zen itself, then, no more than the hamartia and even cowardice of turning one's back on life?

Which brings us to conduct within dharma:

"A good rider has balance, judgment, and good timing. So does a good lover."  — Unknown

Dharma remains at once both eternal universal order and also duty or law governing one’s life. Fulfilling dharma goes beyond mere purpose in life, but endures as the path for transcendence of suffering and the cycle of birth and death called: Samsāra. Now, there can be a Zen of any solitary art, archery, motorcycle maintenance, or anything else, even perhaps including the conduct of science, even the Chivalric Kama Sutra Tantric sexual etiquette extolling adroit arts of love. But can there be a Zen of graceful interactions, especially such as by which people are ever thought to relate to one another? Indeed, is the cultivation of skilled conduct within dharma in order to become good at life, and much such a quest for the same insight of spontaneous authenticity and good faith is striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? Is Transactional Analysis then a properly dharmic liberation from karma?

Or is the cultivation of virtuous right action or Stoical oikeiosi, conduct within dharma, rather a questing for sublime unmotivated impersonally cold-blooded perfection in dealing with others? And what would that amount to, but manipulation without attachment? Indeed, must Zen prize or reject the same insight of spontaneous authenticity and good faith striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? Indeed, strictly speaking, can Zen ever even recognize as possible any insight of spontaneous authenticity and good faith striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? After all, bypassing, exchange which is not genuine communication because it lacks sufficient intersubjectivity and does not carry at all the same meanings or even purpose, intention or point at all between the participants, is all there really is, according to the Zen, traditionally.

According to Zen, individuals may be perfectly genuine, but dialogue, never mind the attachment snare of relationship, never can be genuine or true. Hence, Zen must regard Transactional Analysis as quixotically futile. For only the masterful Zen liberated superhuman quelled into conduct within dharma can conceivably ever be however cold-bloodedly receptive to the challenge of effectively dealing with others in order to feed them the correct stimuli in order to steer them along the most benign causality, according to Stoicism and Zen alike.

In the most Heraclitian Buddhist thinking more current than ever in modern physics, all objects, phenomena or other events are deemed empty of self sufficient inherency which is illusory. Such, however, is relationship, indeed, in a strictly dharmic view. Whereas under Zen Wittgensteinean paralysis, any meaningful conversation, dialogue, literally from dia- "across" + legein "speak," let alone human relationship, remains all quite oxymoronic, being after all, inescapably doomed to human imperfection. And that is why Jews do not Zen. Zen and Judaism are intrinsically irreconcilable because, after all, the attachment and belonging of human relationship, a value so Nihilistically rejected by the solitary Zen, is, indeed, the very central focus and very cornerstone of Judaism.

The sublime sagacity and skill promised of conduct within dharma mythologizes and romanticizes the irresponsibly indifferent proto-Behaviorist heteronomy to situation much as extolled by such doctrines as the Zen. Conduct within dharma refers to Not-Doing without attachment or self conscious contemplation, thus immediate, harmonious and perhaps even somewhat superficial, individual conduct in even nigh fundamentalist conformity with the dharmic principle of universal order, behavior that arises from a sense of connection to others and to one's environment or situation and the experience of unity, balanced, unselfconscious, adaptive, detached and karmically neutral. A lofty ideal of sagacity, contemplative Gestalt comprehension accruing the skill to act beneficially for oneself and others, a more scientific caution towards moment to moment human transaction, the lesson of exaggerated responsibility in hindsight as the quest for perfect compassion must demand, once the deceptive illusion and snare of attachment, regard, desire and unhappy frustration is overcome and the transitory nature of things can be accepted and embraced.

Hence, arguably, the transgression of  hamartia, after all, more often so unwitting, is only figurative, because, literally, the only transgression in question is against dharma in the sense of the laws of nature. But the laws of nature, literally, are inviolable! After all, who needs to enforce the law of gravity or thermodynamics? Hence, the only conceivable violation can be against prudence, soundness of judgment. Hence, hamartia is only poor unskilled dharma, error indeed, often quite innocent and impulsive.

Whereas science, no matter how exacting, remains volitional intentional action, deliberate exercise in trial and error bound to anticipate and forever accept imperfection. Hence, like unto science, is Zen likewise sanguine or not? And if not, why should the surrender to futility be deemed more commendable than commitment to scientific rigor? The Zen rejects the escapism afforded by the unique features of the idle human mind, being: insight, imagination and cooperation. Indeed, Philosophy is typically belittled in Zen because every solution only tends to fresh contradiction. But then, what of Zen paradox? nevertheless, as the sages admonish, Philosophy is not Zen. And perhaps the real practical and practicable limits of any Zen practice are somewhat overdue to be at all established in clinical trials. For tragic and damaging attachment to the same old myth and pursuit of transcendent perfection remains, tantalizing and tormenting, especially when and as abused and exploited by the infamous domineering controlling Zen celebrities, authorities, fakirs, tricksters, the paradoxical Buddha on the road and hence, with any luck, ego crushing barrier to the gateless gate to Nirvana in this life. -Or so we are assured...

 

Why Jews do not Zen

Who is a Jew? Indeed, what is a Jew? -let alone an Israeli... The answer is that the Jew, much as the Hobbit, is a mythical creature of mythical extraction and legend. -Just like everybody else! And so, then what are, if not differentiating factors, then key values, as in being a mensch?

• Mideast Food Fight

Be a mensch! For Menschlichkeit or creditable trustworthy humaneness and integrity, is the art of being a mensch, upfront, honest, autonomous, responsible and accountable, yet gentle, with benevolence, empathy and sympathy. Indeed, a synthesis of single minded convergent thinking with nuanced situational Gestalt may be achievable in the intellectual cultural Jewish trait or aptitude of justice, proportion, perspective and whole integrity, especially as refined in prewar Germany, by Einstein, Freud and Marx, Relativistically, via the integrative synthesis of divergent frames of reference or POV, everything from time dilation and inner life to a larger view of economics, overviews and special cases. - All factors that may play into differing values and levels, priority and autonomous coping in case of inner conflict between responsibilities and/or interests, honestly true to oneself and straight with others. 

"We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within. But let us not imagine there is anything grand about the introvert's unhappiness.”  

— Bertrand Russell

We all tend to become attached to places or settings, social milieu, to objects and even ideas, but most especially bonds of affection to other individuals as according to Attachment Theory of the first core strengths attained in childhood towards individual adult attachment in relationships with autonomy and respect, risk taken in friendship and vested in talent rather than social advantage, with trust placed in content of character, indeed also particularly such as for couples. Whereas an attachment injury is the hurt from close quarters, so to speak, therefore that festers and engenders attachment disorder severely enough to adversely affect future interactions and close relationship throughout life. Anti-Critical Bias let alone Fundamental Attribution Error exacerbated into Hostile Attribution Bias are all mistrustfully attachment injured and disordered, let alone the controlling possessiveness of bullying.

To quote Gian Vincenzo Gravina: "A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company." But insensitive or just unreceptive intrusion is the very least failure of intimacy. Intimacy risks far greater disappointment and betrayals. Therefore, even the most pleasant anticipation or prospect of intimacy is often marked by even sometimes threatening sensations of shyness, much as good sex is often preceded by the churning of proverbial butterflies in the stomach.

So, can Zen non attachment really be the answer, the release into perfect Buddhist compassion as promised? -Or just more of the metaphorical baby out with the proverbial bath water...

For genuine love, compassion and friendship are all distinctly marked by such features as patience and kindness rather than envy, rude and boastful pride, ever self-seeking and quick to wrath and grudge collecting, by forthright honesty rather than hollow deceit, by protection and trust with every hope for the others' best interests, with perseverance through conflict, wanting for another all that they want for themselves.

In the most Heraclitian Buddhist thinking more current than ever in modern physics, all objects, phenomena or other events are deemed empty of self sufficient inherency which illusory. Such, however, is relationship in a strictly dharmic view. Whereas for Zen, dialogue, literally from dia- "across" + legein "speak," let alone human relationship, remains all quite oxymoronic. And that is why Jews do not Zen.

Mysticism at all, even Jewish Mysticism let alone Zen, are, in truth, all intrinsically irreconcilable with Judaism, because, after all, the worldly attachment and belonging of human relationship, a value so Nihilistically rejected by the jaded and solitary Zen, is, indeed, the very central focus of Judaism. Zen inertia, futility and inner peace from complete surrender are irreconcilable with the Jewish value of persistent hope even amid life's most crushing tragedy.

in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding as such. Indeed, in the Zen, whole and directly intuitive apprehension is extolled as superior to dichotomous logic. But: How so?

The very question provides Zen persuasive practical demonstration, in it's manifestly daunting complexity. And seeking an answer in simplicity, simply cannot make simple, whatever, indeed, is not actually simple to begin with. After all, Occam's Razor seeks for the simplest workable explanation for whatever available observations. Indeed, in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Perfection is reached, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away." But when distortion finally arises in further pressing the quest for simplicity, in heedlessly continuing to subtract even what turns out to be essential after all, this is rightly called: oversimplification. Indeed, oversimplification is often a grave drawback of all Radical Holism and one dimensional thinking!

For such, precisely, is the poverty of the Zen, in that though Zen claims to transcend words, actually, direct apprehension can be limited and limiting. For example, the numbers one, two and three, may ever be known at a glance, but who can understand even the number six, except by imagining twice three? And is merely grasping principles at all, even by whatever agency of howsoever dichotomous reasoning, truly anything over which to feel guilty and inadequate? Do suffering innocent cherubs actually bleed from every hair split by philosophers?

Despite the ancientness of the golden rule, to do unto others as one would have them do unto you, nevertheless, only via intellectual Humanism is embraced the real great truth that only an Individualist can be altruistic, because, after all, how can one care for another without first recognizing and endorsing their individuality? In the biting irony of W. H. Auden, "We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know." 

At this point, to escape the Zen moral vacuum, even Buddhist compassion must invoke relationship in order to support oneness, because, putting aside all dangers of whatever twisted horrors as ever may arise to fill the moral vacuum, amoral Zen makes by far the more consistent sense than Zen altruism, because even assuming as given, all due moderation, nevertheless, sublime apathy in prudish Zen cessation (in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration and extinction, but actually impulse at all globally, in general, wholesale and in total at all, rather than merely any specific targeted impulse or range of impulses, especially including those of desire, relation and attachment, all as the royal path to altruism, is far more problematic; because, as the famous biologist and developmental psychologist Piaget understood, sympathy as requisite to service to others can not be even possible without selfishness that can in turn be projected onto others; because only the individual liberty and open desire of a healthy ego can be extrapolated into the experience of others so as to engender ones own sympathy.

Indeed, tyrannical self denial is far more often seen only undermining exactly that very developmental process of emotional growth, actually accomplished, however reasonably and imperfectly, quite without the scoundrelously unnecessary and impossible transcendence of the life and experience to which such development is even relevant.

And for that matter, by what mitzvah or kindness, how is charitable service to a selfless person even possible? Indeed, what could ever be the point of, as it where, cooking a meal for a person forever quelled of appetite? Moreover, tautologically, the closeness of reciprocity requires both selfish desire and altruistic benevolence on all sides.

Hence the focus of Judaism is not with tearing down distinction of the self, but upon building and discovering relationship.

I and Thou not: I Am Thou. If you meet the Buddha on the road, talk it over. (What could it hurt?)

Have you found The Root Cause of Unhappiness? Spoiler: it's ego of course, consciousness, the mind itself intrinsically, thought at all. Happiness is just spacing out! Or so we are assured. Indeed, Zen seeks cessation, that purported great truth by persuasive practical demonstration towards the embrace of  pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity, being no lore or less than, in terms of Behavioral Modification, repeated elicitation, frustration and extinction, but of all impulse globally, in general, wholesale and in total at all, rather than merely any specific targeted impulse or range of impulses, and especially of attachment or relation and thus of the suffering born thereof, whereas dialogue actually builds relation and attachment, seeking thereby any resolution to the troubles and suffering of isolation. All accord born from true open dialogue (literally from dia- "across" + legein "speak") still recognizes the sovereign individuality of one the other. Indeed, exactly thus must such blatantly obvious dualistic synthesis in particular nevertheless be reasoned, abstractly from fine distinctions, not Zenned in compassionate oneness.

And for the Jew, duality is not the constructed deceptive fracture of whole and singular reality so despised by the Zen, but rather culture, perspective and harmonizing depth perception to be embraced and valued. And so, for the Jew, there can be no notion of regret over intellectual categorical thinking. Indeed, even in meditative traditions, duality has even been regarded in Jewish thought as the very will of the Creator, rather than any flaw, gnosis of which to overcome.

The Nihilism of the Zen ever gravitates towards oneness of the Tao, whereas the exploration of Judaism ever embraces the duality of Diaspora.

By no accident where the three most important thinkers of the Twentieth Century all assimilated and cosmopolitan German Jews, living their lives from the dual perspective of the Jewish experience on the one hand and the German cultural mainstream on the other, and each rediscovering the world in fresh dimension from some innovatively dualistic perspective and synthesis. Freud focused upon the workings of the subjective inner world of the human mind in contrast to those of the external reality, Marx sought to place the economics of Capitalism and the market into a larger ongoing historical context, and Einstein fathomed relative frames of reference in space-time.

Psychologically, morally and socially indispensible self-conscious emotions include embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, pride, and shame. The self is apprehended by distinction from other. Therefore, the truly unselfconscious are indeed untroubled by reflection, blithely insensate and irresponsible to the feelings of others whom they treat utterly without regard and trammel under foot.

For Judaism, true to itself, hardly need strive at dichotomy, but one way or another, already abides ever in dualistic counterpoint to argue Existential controversy with the world, hence intrinsic complication even quite without affectation. Indeed, dialogue and controversy are intrinsic to the essential moral Jewish rôle of loyal opposition in struggle with God: "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him" (Job 33:15, NASB).

Thus, if the innocent uncomprehending tiger evinces neither guilt nor remorse in slaying it's dinner in accord with it's own inalienable and harmonious nature, why then should the thinker be any more vexed simply with the habit of thought? And what's so awkward about self-consciousness introspective preoccupation anyhow? Why is analysis, however abstract, deemed any less true to the self of the rational being born into this world endowed with cerebral cortex, than quiet respiration and photosynthesis are to the humble and placid bamboo? To the Jew, it is not. Therefore the silly Zen equivocation and blanket Ad Hominem of dismissing all heterodox opinion as manifestation of ego, remains utterly unconvincing. Only oppressors admonish the masses not to think! And anyhow, isn't the naivety of innocence so often vastly overrated? -Let alone as in amoral Zen inspired and one dimensional Nazi sociopathic veneration and emulation of tigers, wolves and other natural predators!

For despite the ardent exhortations of misanthropic hermits and heteronymous conformists alike, nonetheless, never might I conceive that compassion could move me to crush another's spirit/ego into utter complacency of nervous collapse under what rather amounts to careful suicide watch provided within the Zen Dojo. For the peace embraced thereby in resignation and the abandon of all hope, nevertheless inspires more pity than envy.

Indeed, if anything constructive and uplifting is every truly to be lucidly and incisively salvaged from the Zen for all time, then compassion demands nothing less than the explicit renunciation of all such enthusiastic selective self-disavowal (bad faith), taboo, violence and Moralistic hate speech against the poor long suffering and unjustly maligned ego!  Awkward self consciousness results from whatever undermines healthy self confidence. We all know full well that any healthy ego needs love too! Therefore, to find clarity, do not meditate in oblivious serenity, but reflect self-consciously thereupon:

Accepting all things with undifferentiated equanimity as extolled of the Zen, would mean to accept the very opposite thereof instead of seeking or demanding all acceptance of all things with undifferentiated equanimity as extolled of the Zen. Of course Zen means not making effort, but that doesn't resolve the inherent contradiction. Accepting all things with undifferentiated equanimity as extolled of the Zen, means accepting and even embracing also arousal, discontent, judgment and ego no less than all else howsoever deemed simpler and more spontaneous. The only conceivable reconciliation of such paradoxical manifest contradiction into any constancy, comes in the admonition of Yamaoka Tesshu comparing Zen to soap to be washed with but then washed off again. Enough already. Zen isn't clever anymore. It never was.

Sadly, fewer seek to sell their souls at any price, than simply to be rid of them at all, relieved thereof and grateful for it. So, who would actually sally forth in order to have their spirits broken and discarded as such an obstacle? Alas that all too many are so desperate for peace and acceptance on any terms. And there is never any shortage of ever the same cult snake oil from phony gurus and fakirs, Zen Masters and Behaviorists, all ever eager to oblige. Such is the most vile exploitation. Beware!

Again, does not Zen exhort the acceptance of things as they are? Why then not acceptance and even appreciation of the much and unjustly maligned ego, just as it truly is? It is no cowardly Nihilistic introversion that overcomes ego, in the first place of no need of being overcome, violated or crushed. Zen scoundrelously promises the impossible and the unnecessary in order to evade even minimal accountability. Rather, it is love among all attachments so anathema to the Zen, that penetrates and uplifts egotism, altruistically redirecting any self-centered focus instead upon the emotions and interests of others, thereby even overcoming bored and lonely Ecclesiastical futility. That very capacity defines who we really are, or else one truly is nothing, a failure as a human being. Who knows if love indeed ever conquers all. But love for all of its chimerical ephemerality and pointless suffering, still handily trumps Zen cynicism. For as John Donne so famously wrote: "No man is an island." If all of this is trite, then by that very token, the poverty of all Mysticism such as the Zen should be obvious.

Indeed, both the Zen Mystical disciple and the patient in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy among others through any range of life experience and transition or process of maturity, may report a certain particular change, despite sameness otherwise. - to whit: continued experience of all the same even hither to vexing cognition and affect, and yet somehow no longer so troubling or overwhelming. So perhaps non attachment is simple detachment after all, and enlightenment perhaps even into better conduct within dharma, is nothing more than any dawning of what we call perspective or proportion, and nothing more. After all, what is the unenlightened Cretin, Philistine or lunatic fool, but one so utterly lacking all perspective and proportion? The adept bragging of being so quelled beyond any urgency at all, apathetic and only going through the motions, can always be thrice denied, dismissed and disowned as an extremist heretic, an aberration or anomaly. But that can be no less disingenuous than hiding him under the proverbial bushel. As whatever ancient doctrines are increasingly qualified and explained away in whatever apologetics, less and less remains, plain and profane indeed, unless the apologist strives to metaphorically back peddle by slipping anything more in via the proverbial back door. Otherwise, successive qualification consistently reduce wild eyed grandiose claims into into disappointing trite platitude.

It is only natural and healthy for ego to wax and wane in the transition between conscious states, even waking and sleeping. Awakening is awakening to ego, reason and even self knowledge, not out or away from ego. All value judgment aside, the escape from ego is in sleep and dreams by any other name, especially exaltations of transcendental meditation, with or without drugs. To call any such awakening is to claim lucidity or insight therein, in other words: inspiration. As if inspiration where ever any more escapable than ego!

And for that matter, perhaps satori is a function not of true oneness, but merely of harmony. Harmony or Gestalt is of the whole and may be experienced or apprehended in a multitasking simultaneous congruence rather than the dichotomous sequence of counterpoint. Nevertheless, counterpoint remain no less rich and complex even than harmonies. And harmony or counterpoint howsoever created, recognized and apprehended in the mind may be transient, precisely because of the effort entailed in the nigh orgasmic mental complexity that even however pointless, is the lure of the obscurantist Kabalistic esoteric complexity junkie. However flawless execution, even as however sort of columniation or fluke outright, like unto consummate ballroom dancing, only promotes the illusion of effortlessness, albeit unlike ballroom dancing, even however subjectively.

And the actual totality of being remains exclusive to external objective reality, and we can only reflect thereupon to the best of our phenomenal faculties of factitious artifice, which is to say, according to our own natures. And exactly that dichotomous relationship, being knowledge, is what makes love possible. -hence the Biblical usage...

And so sayeth the Bard: "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Suffering, then, has not been Zen-futile. Hope for better has endured.

And that is why Jews do not Zen.

• Zen Judaism: For You, a Little Enlightenment
• The Jewish Attraction to Buddhism  

A rebuttal of sorts: Zen and Accountability

 

Zen truth... ?

In 'Would My Zen Master Fail Me For Writing This Article?',  Patrick Cox writes: "The purpose of Zen is to become fully aware at every moment. One is supposed to become mindful of things in the world or the situation one is in at each instant: to become fully aware of the tea that one is drinking, for example. “In short, the whole philosophy of the various methods is to broaden a person’s vision, sharpen his imaginations, and sensitize his mind so that he can see and grasp truth instantly any time and anywhere.” (A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, p.429)."

But is the above claim objectively testable? What would be the conditions of refutation? For that matter, what truth, and in correspondence to what reality?

"In other words, the goal of Zen is maximum awareness of reality, unmediated by false concepts. (Although Zen resists the tendency to define ‘reality’, let me provide a definition of what I understand to constitute reality for Zen, acknowledging my inability to do full justice to the reality Zen mind can make known, and which experience verifies. "Reality is everything that can be perceived by the senses and conceived by the intellect. Zen considers the non-Zen mind to view reality through concepts and sensory data, which results in a failure to fully understand it. Zen does not regard this common partial understanding of reality as completely wrong; rather, our normal conceptions are regrettably far from the perfect understanding of reality that Zen mind tries to help us achieve.)"

But because perception itself, gathered by the sensory apparatus into the mind for processing, is therefore well known to be interpretive in very nature, unmediated perception remains oxymoronic. And because we are all fallible, there will always be false concepts often undetected. Hence there can be no totality of perfection or certitude. And calling any claimed mode of apprehension perfect, or better or even merely different, is still uninformative, most specifically, Axiologically, as to what about it may be deemed even desirable, or indeed how and why so. Zen is but another expression of the cowardly and nostalgic quest for the recovery of lost innocence.

There is much apologetics of denunciation of American Zen as heretical from authentic Japanese Zen, or indeed with any clearer justice, of Japanese Zen and its worst liberties with Buddhism from  India, indeed historically, literally Zen entranced war crime instead of Buddhist exhortation to somehow or other no less detached (or: non attached) compassion, But don't buy in! Briefly, the central bad idea called Nirvana Principle of reducing ones needs by simply quelling pleasure principle, remains ancient, enduring and international.

Indeed Freud observed: "That which is not expressed is actedout,." And Freud's famous observation well accounts for the most notorious cult hypocrisy and abuse, and within Zen particularly. Yet the answer given to that problem by the various mystics remains no more or less than exhortation, under what amounts to scrupulously careful suicide watch provided within the Zen Dojo, to desperate striving unto nervous collapse and the breaking of the spirit or in more romantic and pleasing euphemism: crushing of the ego shell.

Again, Zen is but another expression of the cowardly and nostalgic quest for the recovery of lost innocence. But leave us face it that innocence may be vastly overrated. Otherwise, why change at all? What need for the sacred fool ever to sally forth? Innocence is often extolled particularly for clarity from preconception and thence certainty or anything of the sort. But sheer naivety is not infallible after all, whereas uncertainty need never so terrify or paralyze curiosity and responsible autonomy.

in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding and even curiosity as such. 

 

"All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.” 

— Luis Buñuel

 

Thus many a disciple must wrestle with the Zen-futile Salvation Anxiety (so to speak), attachment to nonattachment, of Zen's unstated implication of, or desperation for, the numina, of somehow unmediated direct apprehension of essence, in the blithe ignorance of the constructed subjectivity of meaning, how even experience, psychologically, culturally and even neurologically, is, after all, no less factitious, an artifact, conjecture, conditioned upon Gestalt relational context and empty of self sufficient inherency, than all hearsay, hindsight, preconception and preoccupation which the strict Empiricism of Zen so vehemently scorns and deplores, but worse, any regard whatsoever, distress and attachment of all such futility as in any demand to the contrary, for only transcendent authenticity, even if not deeper meaning per se. For, indeed, just what does all that matter so?

Such patently false conundrums that have inspired such enthusiastic violence and hate speech against the long suffering and unjustly maligned ego, emanate from the ill reputation of meta-cognition, of awareness of self, as an irksome burden to be spurned at all cost, including as self consciousness so often and consistently does, time binding and character building, rebellion, regret, worry, ofttimes painful change and growth, all emotional baggage of the past and concern with plans of the future to come. The all to familiar yearning of Zen, then, is for the unperturbed innocence of some sort of pure spontaneity, or else, in truth, at least to cherish, with enthusiasm, every delicate illusion thereof.

Hence, Zen takes neither savor nor solace in the scientific questing and testing for literal truth which is the correspondence to reality in assertions, despite the lucid dharmic neutrality of any such scientific agenda, because, after all, it is people who yearn for truth, not statements, and therefore the process of the mind, experience and reflection that together comprise the Phenomena, which must somehow ever arrive, even however briefly, at some clarity, validity and true accord with reality that constitute such transitory insight, satori, as constitutes the only kind of knowledge valued and exalted by Zen beyond whatever sheer practical utility.

 

For those who have Awareness,
a hint is quite enough.
For the multitudes of heedless
mere knowledge is useless.
— Haji Bektash Veli

 

Zen is often likened unto the '60's. For, as the saying goes, If you remember it, then you where never there! For Zen is also the appreciation of the elusive, the cultivation of the experiential and intuitive, of immediacy, especially where definition may fail. The intellect of Zen in pursuit of satori, does not seek to grasp Dialectically, but only to point, to indicate what must be caught, not taught, and often seeks to fall back upon such common sense as that will be apprehensible experientially, even reliably, repeatedly and at will.

For example, the Zen Master will not state for us a definition of self. But if one responds to one's own name, then, momentarily, it must be presumed that one does apprehend what is self! So, why struggle with difficult definition and explanation of self awareness, when the experience thereof is always simple and imminent?

For the skilled Zen master helps to bring about the causes and conditions of insight, which, nevertheless, remains subjective and solitary. Indeed, the vantage for such awakening is never far for anyone.

"Where ever you go, there you are!”  — Buckaroo Banzai

Indeed, all else is distraction. Static in the attic! Especially, of course, the needlessly complicated construct of the ego shell. We are all Buddha. Further more, Buddha is not this, and Buddha is not that, and so on, elimination ad infinitum, questing for emptiness, oneness and, seeking there in, but quite literally, "the peace that surpaseth understanding".

"Zen is like looking for the spectacles that are sitting on your nose.”   — Ella

For this is all there is. And there is no hidden meaning. The only secret, and an open secret at that, is that there is, indeed, no secret. For "it is your true self, it has nowhere to hide." and "a dunce once searched for fire with a lit lantern!" thus writ are the koans, plain and profane. 

The Scholar: Whither goes the soul when the body dies?

The Master: There is no necessity for it to go anywhere.

— Jakob Böhme

 

 Indeed, as a matter of Zen practicality, had the poor frantic dunce, or sacred fool, only known what was the fire of his lantern, one must imagine that he'd have cooked his rice that much sooner. After all, we each tend to miss the obvious, one way or another. For, like unto the quenching and crystalline water drawn for the hungering dunce's cook pot, where the answers any clearer, they'd only be that much harder to see, transparent and therefore nigh invisible.

Does a dog, then, partake of Buddha Nature? For cheerful dogs are attentive while desperate men are intentive. A dog, after all, responds to it's own name without encumbrance or factitious artifice of fixed meditation, and never complains of identity crisis or Nihilistic Existential angst!

What the the Buddhist monk walk up and say to the (vegetarian) hotdog vendor? "Make me one with everything!"