Disagree. Zen has a very bad track record while barking heavily up the ‘nothing to do’ tree. In contrast, technique heavy schools get rapid results, in many cases so rapid that there has to be a degree of warning and caution for people with unstable personality constructs. Pre-buddhist non-dual schools also preach a similar doctrine, and it excuses their teachers from needing to demonstrate results. There are stages where surrender and letting go of efforting is essential, but those are techniques/tools to be employed, not the goal of the path. There are discourses that specifically warn against non-efforting prematurely, or villainizing desire in general unfairly which is called out as spiritual bypassing since it excuses you from the hard work of detecting subtle differences between ‘wholesome and unwholesome’ desires.
Pedagogically, yes, a lot of type-a personality Americans do need heavy decompression before things have room to work.
I’m not sure exactly what you disagree about, but thanks for the comparisons.
Here’s a nice comparison on Quora from someone “Practicing Yoga & Meditation since 2001”
Zen is a school of “sudden enlightenment”. You “just sit” on the cushion for a million years and with shear mind force destroy your ego and then you suddenly “get” it. Or (in the Rinzai school) you are given an absurd puzzle called Koan to solve. It throws your ego from its normal course that you reach Satori. Hence all the strange and crazy stories of Zen masters.
Vipassana is a school of “gradual enlightenment”. First you learn how to focus on a single object or awareness for extended period of time. Then with non-judgmental awareness you observe. With long enough practice your mental obstructions or “fetters” as Buddhism calls them are broken—one by one. When all the ten fetters are broken, you have reached.
I have tried Zen in a monastery setting and quickly found that its not my cup of tea. People’s temperaments are different. Some people may find Zen to be more appealing than the traditional Vipassana.
I would suggest you try out both a see which works for you. Its one thing to intellectually understand meditation and a totally different thing to sit in a cushion for 8-hours and watch your breath hit the tip of your nostrils.
Disagree. Zen has a very bad track record while barking heavily up the ‘nothing to do’ tree. In contrast, technique heavy schools get rapid results, in many cases so rapid that there has to be a degree of warning and caution for people with unstable personality constructs. Pre-buddhist non-dual schools also preach a similar doctrine, and it excuses their teachers from needing to demonstrate results. There are stages where surrender and letting go of efforting is essential, but those are techniques/tools to be employed, not the goal of the path. There are discourses that specifically warn against non-efforting prematurely, or villainizing desire in general unfairly which is called out as spiritual bypassing since it excuses you from the hard work of detecting subtle differences between ‘wholesome and unwholesome’ desires.
Pedagogically, yes, a lot of type-a personality Americans do need heavy decompression before things have room to work.
I’m not sure exactly what you disagree about, but thanks for the comparisons.
Here’s a nice comparison on Quora from someone “Practicing Yoga & Meditation since 2001”
Zen is a school of “sudden enlightenment”. You “just sit” on the cushion for a million years and with shear mind force destroy your ego and then you suddenly “get” it. Or (in the Rinzai school) you are given an absurd puzzle called Koan to solve. It throws your ego from its normal course that you reach Satori. Hence all the strange and crazy stories of Zen masters.
Vipassana is a school of “gradual enlightenment”. First you learn how to focus on a single object or awareness for extended period of time. Then with non-judgmental awareness you observe. With long enough practice your mental obstructions or “fetters” as Buddhism calls them are broken—one by one. When all the ten fetters are broken, you have reached.
I have tried Zen in a monastery setting and quickly found that its not my cup of tea. People’s temperaments are different. Some people may find Zen to be more appealing than the traditional Vipassana.
I would suggest you try out both a see which works for you. Its one thing to intellectually understand meditation and a totally different thing to sit in a cushion for 8-hours and watch your breath hit the tip of your nostrils.