Did the Buddha ever talk about "Zen"?

Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) to Doggone, Wisdom Quarterly

What the Buddha Taught, Japanese statue cover

The historical Buddha frequently talked about jhana (Sanskrit dhyana), which in Japanese is pronounced zen (Chinese chan).

He often praised "meditating" (jhaneti) in gradual discourses on the Path to enlightenment, which is the intensive development of the wholesome quality of unification of mind (blissful serenity or samma-samadhi or the first four meditative absorptions or jhanas).

But what the West calls "Zen" is a modern mix of Chinese Buddhism and Taoism (going with the yin-yang "flow," the "Way," the path of least resistance) and traditional Japanese kami-priest Shinto.

Zen today is wonderful for not attempting to interpret experience or the historical Buddha's teachings. However, it was originally very academic.

Zen monks in Japan were extremely well versed in the sutras, philosophy, and other elements of the Dharma. The West assumes that Zen is as iconoclastic, just like we pride ourselves for being.

Myth-busting: Why Zen is not "Zen"

The Zen Monastic Experience (Robert Buswell)

UCLA Professor of Buddhism Robert Buswell, who was a Zen then a Theravada monk before disrobing and entering academia, taught Wisdom Quarterly a whole different story about Zen.

It's not what we Americans and Europeans usually imagine. He wrote of his adventures in the Zendo in 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 of unpredictable, iconoclastic teachers "bullying their students into enlightenment'' is grossly inaccurate.

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

He explodes Zen's reputation as bibliophobic, artsy-craftsy, and reliant on physical labor. Ironically, the book is great for the author's description of Zen that matches its reputation in the West -- the arduous life of the monastery's "elite vanguard,'' its meditators.

Although meditators comprise only a small percentage of the monks (with the rest devoted to support activities or ritual), their efforts are astonishing:... More

• Prof. Buswell on building a base for Buddhism