Probably, but there is something else more subtle.
Both the cultures you’re pointing at are, essentially, engines to support achieving right mindset. It’s not quite the same right mindset, but in either case you have to detach for “normal” thinking and its unquestioned assumptions in order to be efficient at the task around which the culture is focused.
Thus, in both cultures there’s a kind of implicit mysticism. If you recoil from that word because you associate it with anti-rationality I can’t really blame you, but I ask you to consider the idea of mysticism as “techniques for consciousness alteration” detached from any particular beliefs about the universe.
This is why both cultures a have a use for Zen. It is a very well developed school of mystical technique whose connection to religious belief has become tenuous. You can take the Buddhism out of it and the rest is still coherent and interesting.
Perhaps this implicit mysticism is part of the draw for you. It is for me.
Probably, but there is something else more subtle.
Both the cultures you’re pointing at are, essentially, engines to support achieving right mindset. It’s not quite the same right mindset, but in either case you have to detach for “normal” thinking and its unquestioned assumptions in order to be efficient at the task around which the culture is focused.
Thus, in both cultures there’s a kind of implicit mysticism. If you recoil from that word because you associate it with anti-rationality I can’t really blame you, but I ask you to consider the idea of mysticism as “techniques for consciousness alteration” detached from any particular beliefs about the universe.
This is why both cultures a have a use for Zen. It is a very well developed school of mystical technique whose connection to religious belief has become tenuous. You can take the Buddhism out of it and the rest is still coherent and interesting.
Perhaps this implicit mysticism is part of the draw for you. It is for me.