Why Zen is not "Zen" (video)

Wisdom Quarterly, Robert Buswell, Yoga Garden (recommended by PasaDharma)

Patrick Reynolds has a book for desk workers (Knowledge Workers Survival Guide). Here he introduces the basics of Zen-style sitting meditation -- called zazen -- and what to expect from daily practice. Patrick has more about Zen on his weekly podcast: ZenIsStupid.com. If visiting Yokohama, Japan, join Patrick Wednesday evenings at 7:00 pm for zazen at Yoga Garden. (Music from The American Analog Set, Ulrich Schnauss, The Dining Rooms, and George Handel).

• Wisdom Quarterly: Za is Japanese and means "seat" as in zafu and zabuton. Zen simply means "meditation," from the Sanskrit word dhyana (jhana in Pali, as a verb jhaneti, "practicing for jhana"). Meditating (jhaneti) means settling back into an original serene state.

Did the Buddha talk about Zen?
Wisdom Quarterly
The historical Buddha frequently talked about jhana. He often commended meditating (jhaneti), which is the intensive development of wholesome qualities.

But what we call "Zen" -- a mix of Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism (going with the "flow" or the path of least resistance) -- is modern.

Zen today is wonderful for not attempting to interpret experience or the Buddha's teachings. But it was originally very academic. Its monks in Japan were very well versed in sutras, philosophy, and other elements of the Dharma. The West assumes that Zen is as iconoclastic as we pride ourselves for being.

Myth-Busting: Why Zen is not "Zen"
UCLA professor of Buddhism Robert Buswell, who was a Zen then a Theravada monk before disrobing and going into academia, taught Wisdom Quarterly a whole different story about Zen. It's not what we Americans usually imagine. He wrote of his adventures in the Zendo:

The Zen Monastic Experience
[This book is] a myth-shattering foray behind the walls of a Korean Zen Buddhist monastery. The common Western image of Zen as a religion that features unpredictable, iconoclastic teachers "bullying their students into enlightenment'' is, says Buswell (UCLA), grossly inaccurate.

And he should know, having spent five years as a monk at Songgwang-sa, one of the largest Zen monasteries in Korea. Here, deftly weaving scholarship and memoir, Buswell depicts what life in a Zen monastery is really like....

Buswell explodes Zen's reputation as bibliophobic, artsy-craftsy, and reliant on physical labor. Ironically, the narrative takes flight with the author's description of the aspect of Korean Zen that matches its reputation -- the arduous life of the monastery's "elite vanguard,'' the meditators.

Although meditators comprise only a small percentage of the monks (with the rest devoted to support activities or ritual), their efforts astonish: sitting in meditation for 14 hours a day; for one week a year, sitting seven days straight without sleep; engaging in such severe practices as extensive fasting, never lying down to sleep....

But for most monks, Buswell notes, it's "a disciplined life, not the transformative experience of enlightenment,'' that's crucial. Less the sound of one hand clapping than of hands, mind, and heart working together to lead a sanctified life -- and, as such, a sound corrective to Western misunderstandings about Zen.

• Buswell: Building a Base for Buddhism
  Buddhism may champion the concept of detachment, but UCLA Buddhist scholar Robert Buswell admits his ego got bruised when he returned this summer to the Buddhist monastery where he practiced for five years in his early 20s. A friend who had remained at the monastery looked...