Please excuse me in advance as this will be longer than three sentences, but I feel it's something important enough to warrant a longer post.
Just yesterday I happened to stumble upon the subreddit r/Zen. At first, I was frighteningly disturbed and horrified at many of the things I was reading. Everything from "Dogenism" being a cult and not real Zen, to the very practice of sitting being little more than a choreographed ritual. It's even suggested in this space that Zen and Buddhism are mutually exclusive, and "Zen Buddhism" is a fabrication. If you were to base your understanding of Zen on the information in this subreddit you would be convinced that it's simply an abstract state of awareness and not an actual practice, with the exception to that being the practice of arguing over what is or isn't Zen and quoting various Tang dynasty writings. The hostility toward Zazen as a practice of sitting even culminated in a post trying to argue that the word "Zazen" really translates to "reigning awareness" and that anyone who practices sitting is wasting their time.
Thankfully, I was able to do some further digging, it turns out that this very subreddit has a longstanding reputation of itself being a fringe cult, claiming to represent "true zen" in it's pure pre-Dogen uncorrupted form but being little more than the collective ramblings of a very literate but mentally ill user named u/ewk. The irony being that this virtual space is itself what it claims the entire Soto tradition to be.
The only reason I share this is as a cautionary tale. While the internet is a technological wonder that brings to life good things like the very Treeleaf forum I'm posting this on, it can also be harborage for many unwholesome personalities and influences who use the anonymity of the internet in an attempt to subjugate rather than liberate.
Jacob Jay
Sat today and it was not a waste of time.
Just yesterday I happened to stumble upon the subreddit r/Zen. At first, I was frighteningly disturbed and horrified at many of the things I was reading. Everything from "Dogenism" being a cult and not real Zen, to the very practice of sitting being little more than a choreographed ritual. It's even suggested in this space that Zen and Buddhism are mutually exclusive, and "Zen Buddhism" is a fabrication. If you were to base your understanding of Zen on the information in this subreddit you would be convinced that it's simply an abstract state of awareness and not an actual practice, with the exception to that being the practice of arguing over what is or isn't Zen and quoting various Tang dynasty writings. The hostility toward Zazen as a practice of sitting even culminated in a post trying to argue that the word "Zazen" really translates to "reigning awareness" and that anyone who practices sitting is wasting their time.
Thankfully, I was able to do some further digging, it turns out that this very subreddit has a longstanding reputation of itself being a fringe cult, claiming to represent "true zen" in it's pure pre-Dogen uncorrupted form but being little more than the collective ramblings of a very literate but mentally ill user named u/ewk. The irony being that this virtual space is itself what it claims the entire Soto tradition to be.
The only reason I share this is as a cautionary tale. While the internet is a technological wonder that brings to life good things like the very Treeleaf forum I'm posting this on, it can also be harborage for many unwholesome personalities and influences who use the anonymity of the internet in an attempt to subjugate rather than liberate.
Jacob Jay
Sat today and it was not a waste of time.
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