About

Zen and “Me”

I’m not a practicing Buddhist, and I will probably never become one. So why a blog about Zen with tiny Zen and Chan poetry and wisdom words? Because I like them. This attitude towards life, this genuine respect for life is wisdom, pure knowledge of the concrete, how life IS, not thought of.

Wisdom is rare today. The West has no idea of what pure empirical knowledge is, modern man is theorizing about life, without capturing the living, the process. Everything is schematized and generalized to abstractions. Abstractions are abstractions not life. Many have probably forgotten they exist at all. We live in an artificial world created by man and have forgotten how to meet life itself.

Ideas are illusions products of thoughts. Thoughts, however are mere tools, instruments so one can navigate, survive, invent etc. in relation to pragmatic interests. Even scientific “truths” are not real, they are an approach to reality, sometimes equal with, but they ARE not. Clever or stupid it doesn’t matter, ideas are frozen (reified) concepts from yesterday borrowed from somebody who thinks he knows. He does not know, you cannot know reality, you can experience reality but not know it. Zen is not a philosophy, and not a religion, these are meaningssystems founded on words but Zen is wordless. You cannot theorize on Zen. But, you can use Zen as a practical reference for seeing life. The way life is, not how it’s conceited. Zen is what you might call a way of seeing and living.

To be ,not to think is the essence of Zen. Hence, the only way to deal with Zen when you write about it is to hold Zen up against life as it is lived not thought. So instead of writing on Zen per se the solution is to write about life in a Zen perspective, life in the broadest sense including all kind of human themes.

On my own experience:

Years ago, in a Chinese garden in Penang, Malaysia I had a surprising experience. It was late evening, already dark, when suddenly in a split second I entered a mental state which made me see what life actually is.

It first appeared as a strong feeling of “seeing” the presence of death followed by the intertwining of death into life. It was not a “mystic” experience at all, rather a very clear and natural insight into the living life. It was an understanding, which embraced not only life but also death, because I suddenly perceived life and death as a unity of mutual dependency.

This life/death unity created a nearly visible energy which expanded time and space. The garden with the small Chinese house, the heat, the chickadees, and the vegetation melted together into a vibrating “forever world” which had a quality of something “majestic”.

Time and space vanished and an airy vibrant reality and a feeling of having seen this for hundreds of years appeared. The oneness of the experience lifted the understanding to a level where words couldn’t reach, words became useless.

The experience lasted maybe for 10 seconds and then everything became “normal” again.

I was 16 years old and had no knowledge of Buddhism or meditation etc, so my experience was not determined by Buddhist knowledge or imaginations, which tells me, that such an experience is possible for anybody, no matter who they are or to which culture they belong. The experience was not “religious”, it was overwhelmingly “natural” and “self-evident”, nearly beyond religion.

I think the reason for the sudden change (awake?) was my youth and that it was the first time I experienced such exotic surroundings. (I am Danish). Maybe it was some kind of a culture shock, which made me completely open and aware, so much that I forgot myself during these marvelous 10 seconds.

It probably also had much to do with innocence, susceptibly and the ability to give in to life by forgetting yourself. That is youth and that is also the core of Zen.

If you want to read a bit more about the blog I have this post

If you are interested in politics I have another blog Dissent Mag. This blog demonstrates fully the nature of human delusions.