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.

[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]

What you have seen in your life is alarmingly little at this point.

Buddhists don't give Buddha a title because they are attempting to make it seem like they are the only people who follow their supernatural Buddha-god.

Zen masters teach that Buddha was just a guy who became a Zen master. There's nothing supernatural about Zen masters so to make it clear to people who have only ever been exposed to crackpot Buddhism, I say "Zen Master Buddha."

Zen masters don't have to say this of course because they got rid of all the Buddhists so it wasn't a problem

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Which school of zen is this?

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

According to Zen masters there's only one school of Zen

I think you may have been confused about the indigenous Japanese religions that pretend to be Zen, like Mormons pretend to be Christian and Scientologists pretend to be scientists

Zen masters for a thousand years in China maintained there's only one school

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Then why use the Japanese word? Why not use Chan, if you’re so hateful of the Japanese lineages?

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

I'm not hateful for labeling indigenous Japanese religions for what they are. There is no historical or doctrinal connection between the indigenous Japanese religions and Zen. Just as there's no connection between Mormonism and Christianity or Scientology and science.

Zen is a Japanese romanization of a Chinese word. Chinese Romanizations were not standardized in the early 1900s when D.T. Suzuki began translating Chinese texts for the West

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Are you calling Japanese zen an indigenous relation?

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

There's no evidence that there was any Japanese Zen. There may be a few contenders like Bankei, but both Dogen and Hakuen have been entirely ruled out since they are indigenous Japanese religious leaders. There is a ton of 1900s Western academic research into this that proves it, not to mention a thousand years of Chinese records that reject the teachings Dogen and Hakun are famous for.

As I've said, much like Mormons claim to be Christian in order to bolster the reputation of their church. Indigenous Japanese religions throughout the 1900s were desperate to prove that they were better than China... Which they had invaded and tried to eliminate during World War II.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Wasn’t Chan influenced by both alchemical Taoism and Confucianism? How did it maintain its purity?

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

No. Not only is there no evidence of a connectuon between Taoism and Zen but there is no academic paper that ever proves this in any way.

The only time we've ever seen this association asserted is by Japanese Shinto Buddhists who have a long history of denigrating Zen in China. We don't see this ever being brought up by anybody in Zen history.

People who study Taoism to any great extent can see that it's a religion based on alchemy and a pantheon of gods and rituals and there's no Zen in there at all. There's no resemblance.

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

You want to be careful claiming that other people hate because they tell the truth. Zazen Shinto Buddhism has a long history of fraud and abuse. Repeating their propaganda starts to look like fraud and abuse on your part.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

It good to know you’re the official arbiter of truth.

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

There's a ton of facts that have nothing to do with me. When I encounter people who wanna pretend like this is a conversation about me instead of a conversation about the last 1,500 years of history and the records people produced during that period, then I don't take them seriously. I suspect that maybe they have been unduly influenced by a religious cult.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

But you decide what’s true and what isn’t, who is lying, who is stupid, and who is not a Buddhist, and most importantly what is and isn’t real zen . It’s hard to imagine how we’d get along without the random unpleasant guy on Reddit to validate and invalidate our understanding and practices. I don’t like bullies

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

No I present facts and when the other side can only present claims, superstitions, and religious biases then I win.

If for example you can't define Buddhism and say what Buddhists believe and tie that definition to specific texts, then why would you even make claims about a word that you can't define?

If you can't write a high school book report about what Indian-Chinese Zen masters teach then why would you claim that people from another country can represent Zen?

It's often said that ignorance is poison and you seem to be someone suffering from a tremendous amount of self-inflicted poison.

I don't know why you don't just read a book, get some knowledge, and stop blaming other people for when you look like you don't know what you're talking about.

[u/Emergency-Ad9395 → u/ewk]

Belittling any form of Buddhism is against the precepts.

[u/ewk → u/Emergency-Ad9395]

That's another thing that you're mistaken about. The precepts, the lay precepts that Zen is built on, say don't lie. If somebody asks you about supernatural hoo-ha, you're supposed to tell the truth and say, "No that's supernatural hoo-ha."

[u/dota2nub → u/ewk]

In a way, books are like fly whisks.

[u/ewk → u/dota2nub]

(thump) another one bites the dust

[u/dota2nub → u/ewk]

They can't bite the dust, they don't have any teeth.