Greed or want, usually in relation to food (馋 chán or 嘴馋 zuǐ chán) but without negative connotations. Somewhat similar to mouthwatering but describes the person’s reaction rather than the food. 眼馋 (yǎn chán) describes the same feeling but when a person sees something they like

Why zen doesn’t have anything to do with sitting meditation.

Although this tired old subject has been now been talked to death many times over on r/zen, and is no longer interesting, we still get trolls spreading religious misinformation on an almost daily basis.

As such, I’ve decided to collate all the crucial evidence in the “big debate” into one OP to make it easier to give people everything they need to know in one simple link, as opposed to repeating myself all the time.

Thus, welcome. This is a huge and tedious OP, but I think it’s necessary.

---------

INTRODUCTION

Zen has nothing to do with seated mediation. On the contrary, Zen masters warned people against trying to engage in seated meditation for zen purposes.

The reason so many people believe there is a link between zen and meditation, for that “zen” means “meditation” (it doesn’t) is that there are churches out there that have been actively spreading these lies and co-opting the zen name for their own weird nonsense doctrines for the last 1000 years.

Unfortunately for them, despite much being lost and purposefully destroyed, we still have a few records left from the real Zen Masters.

WHAT IS ZEN, THEN, IF NOT MEDITATION?

Zen is the name for an enlightenment school/lineage which was started in China by someone now referred to as Bodhidharma in around AD500. Unlike the various religions, philosophies and cosmologies at the time, Zen was radically different.

Zen is not a religion or a philosophy or certain practices or knowledge. Zen is, in a nutshell, about seeing your true nature. It’s about recognising what “Buddha nature” means. The penny drops, the cat is out of the bag. This is something that occurs in an instant. You see your nature and become a Buddha. This happens when all beliefs, ideas, concepts and practices are seen through as mere fleeting elements of One Mind.

Zen dialogues are all attempts at demonstrations and explorations of the dharma, as it were.

Buddha means “enlightened one”. The zen masters saw their enlightenment as the only true enlightenment, and the exact same one the “O.G” Buddha/Siddarta/Gautama/Sakyamuni experienced under the Bodhi tree. They retained the essence of it in their teaching, but Buddhists misunderstood and made a complex and nonsensical set of religions out of it, deferring to practices and beliefs, morality and the casting of the Buddha as a supernaturally gifted messiah figure.

Zenlightenment isn’t like that though:

*Enli

I came across this here passage while browsing through Dayi Daoxin's Terebess page, and found it interesting considering we've such a history of people asking how Daoism relates to Zen on this sub. In doing my research on it however, I soon fell down a rabbit hole and found it did more than just this and went straight to the heart of a lot of controversial questions on this sub, including:

• What is Zen's relationship to Daoism?
• Is Zen Buddhist?
• What is "zazen"?
• What is the Zen lineage? Can we trust its biographical and genealogical accounts?
• What does early Zen have to say about Zen as a whole and can we trust the sources?

This is a long post.

Without any further ado, here is the passage that started this all:

>The great master said –
>
>Zhuangzi taught:
>
>Heaven and earth are one finger.All things are one horse.
>
>But the Dharmapada sūtra says:
>
>‘One' does not just mean the number one;The intention is the refutation of all numbers.Only students of shallow intellectMean the number one when they say ‘one'.
>
>Thus Zhuangzi seems to be stuck at the idea of ‘one'.
>
>Laozi said:
>
>So subtle! So profound!Its essence is within.
>
>Here, even though there are no categories outside, the mind is still preserved within. The Avataṃsaka sūtra says:
>
>Do not be attached to dualistic entities,As there is neither singularity nor duality.
>
>And the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa sūtra corroborates this by saying:
>
>Mind does not exist internally or externally,Nor anywhere in between.
>
>When we understand this, we can see that Laozi is stuck at the idea of the existence of an essential awareness.

As we can see, Daoxin is allegedly disputing the idea of the "one/many" metaphysics that features chiefly in the proto-Daoist texts of Laozi and Zhuangzi, hinting at some nameless, swirling flow of constant flux and change hidden behind the appearances we see in the world, as well as the idea of a primordial awareness which subtly lurks behind the scenes, by his reading here.

Instead, he quotes Mahayana Buddhist scripture and suggests that the truth of the teachings is beyond the teaching of these two texts.

But... this is where the rabbit hole begins...

______________________________________________________

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

Do your worst!

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

They’re on standbi

Because she wanted to see the task manager.

Pilot on me!!

Nothing, he was gladiator.

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

When I got home, they were still there.

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "

I won't be doing that today!

[Removed]

This morning, my 4 year old daughter.

Daughter: I'm hungry

Me: nerves building, smile widening

Me: Hi hungry, I'm dad.

She had no idea what was going on but I finally did it.

Thank you all for listening.

You take away their little brooms

It was about a weak back.

Why

It’s pronounced “Noel.”

After all his first name is No-vac

What, then, is Chinese rap?

Edit:

Notable mentions from the comments:

• Spanish/Swedish/Swiss/Serbian hits

• French/Finnish art

• Country/Canadian rap

• Chinese/Country/Canadian rock

• Turkish/Tunisian/Taiwanese rap

There hasn't been a single post this year!

(Happy 2022 from New Zealand)

In chinese buddhism they say "Investigate Chan" where Chan = Zen... what is the Japanese Buddhism translation of that? thanks in advance

I just read Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson and it opened my mind to Zen Buddhism. I am very intrigued and would like to learn more. I would appreciate it if you all could comment with some reading material for beginners in this post.

Where ever you left it 🤷‍♀️🤭

There hasn't been a post all year!