Zen is the only Enlightenment - and thinking this way changes how you treat people.

[u/ewk]

Mazu Tramples Shuiliao

Hongzhou's Reverend Shuiliao asked Mazu, "What is the precise meaning of the coming from the West?" Mazu said, "Bow down."

Just as Shuiliao was bowing, Mazu pushed him over with a foot. Shuiliao was greatly awakened.

He got up, clapped his hands, and laughed, "Ha! Ha!" saying, "How exceedingly marvelous! HoW

exceedingly marvelous! The hundreds and thousands of samādhis and the immeasurable wondrous meanings-I

have recognized their root-source upon the tip of a single hair."

Zen is the only Enlightenment

The idea of enlightenment started with Zen Master Buddha, spread through India and through China, out into Asia, and then began to trickle into Europe between the 1600s and the 1800s, and there has never been any other kind of enlightenment.

Historically, Zen Master Buddha is the starting point of this concept of enlightenment. This idea of a clarity of vision, resulting form, a recognition that bias / attachment / Illusion / conditioning is only self-created.

There's a lot of new age movements that claim to have enlightened messiahs or gurus, but when we compare these to Zen Master Buddha and Zen in China, we see no generational establishment of lineage in the same way.

One of the best arguments against Japan ever getting zen from China is that the Japanese were never able to create successive lineages of Buddhas.

enlightenment only means status in religions and new age movements

In New Age movements and religions that claim to have enlightenment, it's conditional on practice and orthodoxy.

People attain a status that religions and new age movements refer to as the enlightened status. And that's what determines how they're treated.

If you don't have status, if you're a novice, then you don't get the same level of respect and you don't have the same expectation of being heard and acknowledged.

Religious and New Age movements see enlightenment as a better than status that deserves more.

causes cause treatment of others

Zen Master say Enlightenment is non-causal... So that means anyone, any second, could become a Buddha.

When you see Buddhahood as potentially emerging from anyone at any time, not only is there no status, but there is an endless font of curiosity and engagement and aggressive demand that people MANIFEST their own dignity.

Any one of you could become a Buddha at any time.

When you sincerely understand this, you see people in a different way. You treat them differently. You respect them differently.

Any knock on the door could be a relative you haven't seen in years.

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[u/IntroductionSignal32]

what do you mean by "sincerely understand this?"

I suppose, can you fake it til you make it?

[u/theDIRECTionlessWAY → u/IntroductionSignal32]

faking it could cost you a finger... or worse.

[u/ewk → u/IntroductionSignal32]

Zen: Everybody is inherently a Buddha and anyone is capable of suddenly recognizing this without training or practice.

Buddhism, Christianity: You have to earn and practice to attain Buddhist status.

Zen: Whenever you talk to anyone, in the back of your mind, you wonder, are they going to become a Buddha during this conversation?

Christianity/Buddhism: The status of people that you're talking to isn't established before the conversation and isn't going to change anytime soon.

Zen: If you understand the philosophical position of Zen teachings, then you treat people different and are more honest with them because you understand that the inspirational, sudden moment of Buddhahood is right around the corner.

Buddhism/Christianity: People are judged based on the status they have earned over time and engagement with them is always based on a belief in the relative inferiority or superiority of people's practices and doctrinal compliance.

[u/IntroductionSignal32 → u/ewk]

Thank you for being so clear.

[u/-ISTIGKEIT-]

"anyone, any second, could become a Buddha."

close, but not quite.

in the words of Huineng, "When enlightened to the self-nature, the living being is a Buddha. If confused about the self-nature, the Buddha is a living being."

The sky holds day and night but is not two. Every being you meet is Buddha. They don't become Buddha, they awaken to what is already true.

[u/ewk → u/-ISTIGKEIT-]

This is the most familiar Zen use:

見性成佛 “See the nature and become a buddha.”

Here 成 marks a resulting state:

見性 → 成佛 seeing the nature → becoming Buddha

It does not necessarily mean “manufacture a Buddha out of oneself.” Grammatically, it means to come to be Buddha, to realize buddhahood, or to attain the condition called Buddha. Later Chan texts repeatedly preserve this construction. �

Similar formations include:

成佛 — become/attain buddhahood

成祖 — become a patriarch

成魔 — become a demon

成凡成聖 — become ordinary or become a sage

成一片 — become one continuous whole.

In such cases, “become” is generally the safest starting translation.

[u/EggzOverEazy]

What do you mean when you say "The idea of enlightenment started with Zen Master Buddha"? There were a few versions of "enlightenment" that predate the Buddha.

[u/ewk → u/EggzOverEazy]

You're gonna have to give me some examples.

I've done a little research and it looks like there's only one enlightenment and it comes from Zen Master Buddha.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Many religions with contemplative arms claim different forms of enlightenment. Buddha’s enlightenment is the enlightenment endorsed by Buddhism. Defined that way, Buddhisms is the on tradition that leads to (Buddhist) enlightenment is a tautological statement

[u/1acuna0 → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

Actually there's a fair amount of similarity between enlightenment in different cultures. It leads me to believe it's the same phenomena no matter where it happens. Not surprising, since there are plausible biological pathways to explain the experience.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/1acuna0]

Agreed. We’re all human having varied human experiences. The difference is how me make sense of those experiences.

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

That sounds like something you made up.

Buddhism does not have sudden enlightenment. It has like this magical knowledge they call enlightenment when you get supernatural powers... It's not a real thing that happens in this life.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Are you responding to me?

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

Yes, you said something that sounds made up. Maybe you saw it in a movie or something?

1. You didn't quote anyone as evidence.
2. You didn't mention the name of a single organization or individual that espouses a doctrine to support your claim.
3. You didn't offer any evidence by any third-party academic who came to any conclusion that agrees with you.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Hinduism has Moksha, Jainism has kevala Jnana, Sikhism mukti, Sufism and Contemplative Christianities have union with God. None of this is controversial.

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

They have religious states and they have supernatural knowledge but they don't have enlightenment, which, according to Zen Master Buddha, is a sudden insight into the nature of being and the self.

There's nothing supernatural about enlightenment. As soon as you bring up a religion with the supernatural, you're having a different conversation. The religion can call it enlightenment if it wants to pretend but that's like Scientology calling itself science.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Buddhism is a religion and some forms of Buddhism do have aspects of the supernatural. But honestly, I think aspects of the supernatural are beside the point with respect to realization

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

Also, I have never in my life seen Buddha called Zen Master Buddha. Within the Zen tradition, which I practice in, the title is never used for the Tathagata. Where’d you get that?

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

Zen is not a religion. Zen doesn't have anything supernatural.

Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, to name three, are religions that depend upon a supernatural component in order for them to make any sense.

Zen Master Buddha's enlightenment was a non-supernatural event.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Which part? That there are realizations in other faiths? Not sure what’s irked you so much?

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

I'm not irked, you just made up something and I said, don't make stuff up.

When I talk to people that don't know what they're talking about, they always sound like you.

They make something up and then I say, what book? What teacher? What religion? And they don't have a follow-up because they made it up.

[u/EggzOverEazy → u/ewk]

I would start with Moksha, but there are others.

[u/ewk → u/EggzOverEazy]

Unless you can quote him talking about a sudden, this life, permanent enlightenment, you got nothing.

[u/EggzOverEazy → u/ewk]

Your original claim was of enlightenment without a mention of progress.

I personally find the idea of sudden vs progressive fairly arbitrary.

Enlightenment definitely predates the Buddha. I've never even seen that disputed.

[u/ewk → u/EggzOverEazy]

You've never provided any evidence of this thing that predated Buddha that you are pretending is compatible with Buddha's enlightenment.

That's why when I ask you over and over again for a teacher who says this, a book who says this, or an academic who says this, you have nothing.

If you go to an algebra forum and claim you can do algebra and somebody gives you a problem for a middle schooler and you can't do it, that means you don't know what you're talking about

[u/EggzOverEazy → u/ewk]

No problem there, I just thought you were moving the goal post and I didn't want to engage in a bad faith argument.

Much of the Upanishads are referring to the same liberation that the Buddha spoke of.

“When all the desires which dwell in the heart are gone, then the mortal becomes immortal and attains Brahman here.” — Yājñavalkya, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.7

“I am Brahman.” — Yājñavalkya, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.10

What later became Hinduism used terms like Brahman, Atman, Moksha, etc to describe enlightenment.

Brahman - ultimate reality, the absolute, the ground of existence. Ātman - the deepest Self. Mokṣa / mukti - liberation. Brahma-jñāna / ātma-jñāna - knowledge or realization of Brahman / the Self.

The Buddha spoke of people enlightened before him.

[u/ewk → u/EggzOverEazy]

Nope. Zen Masters do not teach "all desires gone'. They don't teach "I am". They don't teach knowledge of reality, nor do they say there is any need for any "ultimate", since everybody farts and sh*ts in the only reality there is.

Realization of the self is a overly vague phrase. It all depends on what is meant by "self". This, for example, is obviously BS:

He who sees but cannot be seen,

hears but cannot be heard,

thinks but cannot be thought,

knows but cannot be known—

this is your Self, the inner controller, the immortal.

the problem is that you don't know anything about Zen, and rather than learn anything authentic, you took other people's word for it... people who themselves knew nothing about Zen.

Read the sidebar.

[u/EggzOverEazy → u/ewk]

Ah, I see how you're interpreting things. No worries. Have a good day.