What Has Zazen Done For Me?

[@adamdacevedo]

“True Victory = Self Victory” (Morihei Ueshiba)

[@CureCreation]

"There is only pain, no one suffering it there is action, but no actor Nirvana is, but no one looking for it there is the way, but no one traveling it"

[@adamdacevedo]

STUDENT (To Osho): Do heaven and hell exist? OSHO: yes. STUDENT: please tell me about them… OSHO: simply remember- tension is Hell, relaxation is Heaven… (Folks, Zazen creates Relaxation!)

[@osip7315]

call a spade a spade, its "RAJANEESH", not osho ! ashamed of something ? well you should be

[@adamdacevedo]

@@osip7315 Okay, let me correct myself…”BELOVED BHAGWAN…”🤭

[@joeg3950]

Great video. Good start before going tot he dentist this morning!

[@minhacontaize]

After practicing meditation on and off for over 20 years, i am in a kinda of superskeptic mode. I´ve seen people overcome personal problems thru soooooooo many things: Jesus, Buddha, Allah, medication, therapy, sports, romantic love and of course, Zazen. While meditation has done me a lot of good, 99,9 % of the most wonderful people i´ve met never practiced Zazen. I can´t seem to find a common theme in all the things that have brought people out of misery, except for love. The highly intelectual way of phylosohy and meditation seem to be for a few. Most people seem to find their way in a simple devotion.

[@macdougdoug]

Are you saying that most people have some psychological safe space they can hang onto during hard times? Should we conclude that this is the best we can hope for?

[@fernandocea5703]

I think it’s not those things that are the cause of it, they help and are tools, but I think it’s the people themselves who are getting through they’re issues. It’s kinda beautiful when you think about it. I think zazen helps the person, gives them a certain perspective.

[@minhacontaize]

@@fernandocea5703 Of course it does, but im kinda sure its not for everyone. Some people prefer religion, philosophy or psychotherapy. To be honest, at the moment im a yoga fanboy. That´s where i met some wonderful gentle people. The zen people i know tend to be a bit too tough.

[@kw1ksh0t]

I’m not sure that it really matters where we find relief

[@minhacontaize]

@@kw1ksh0t I agree, but as a seeker i´d like to know the nuts and bolts of it.

[@bowser_inthe_darkworld2]

Really good answer!

[@pearlyung168]

Practicing zazen made me realised that what I read, and hear about meditation achieving a state of awareness that I am not my body or my thoughts, is true. Benefits of sustained awareness: 1. Less accidents while driving or walking 2. Remember better where the keys, phone are etc 3. Less prone to scams and lies

[@minhacontaize]

Some zen masters would say that is also just a point of view among many...I think they would say clinging to ANY point of view, including "im not my bdy or my thoughts" is clinging, and not the way to go.

[@pearlyung168]

@@minhacontaize Well, while practising zazen, I found that the state of awareness to be true. It's not a point of view or a hypothesis.

[@minhacontaize]

@@pearlyung168 I agree that the state of awareness is true. It´s the "im not my body or my thoughts" part that i disagree with.

[@Dave.O]

I really enjoy these shorter videos. I've changed my mind about them over the course of a year. I'm not sure whether it is caused by a lack of time or attention span.

[@HardcoreZen]

Yeah. Maybe I should make them shorter. Then again, when I do that people ask for longer videos.

[@Dave.O]

@@HardcoreZen You can make some for the people happy some of the time, but...

[@mojomike]

It gives me panic attacks lol

[@minhacontaize]

Does Zazen give you panic attacks?

[@HardcoreZen]

I've done a few videos about that subject. Here is one of them. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nneTmoh6lNp_gZo

[@leehillary6932]

Very new to this - however this is literally 20 mins from where I live in Durham.

[@torritaite2880]

There really is no need to advertise if it works and you get the benefits.

[@djfailure0]

Why not just answer "Stillness begets stillness"?

[@chilldragon4752]

Thank you Brad. Do you know anything about the Chinese and Japanese Buddhist warrior monks in ancient Japan? I always wondered how Buddhist monks back then were able to kill and use violence when Buddhism is all about non-violence. I know there's more to it that I just don't know about. From what I understand in Japan at one point they were undefeatable for awhile. Thanks as always.

[@HardcoreZen]

I don't know a lot of details about this. It happened. Not every monastery had warrior monks. Most of the Buddhist literature I have seen in which this practice is referred to is critical of it. It wasn't ever about trying to force people to convert to Buddhism. It was initially about defending the monasteries from attack by others, although there are stories of warrior monks from one monastery attacking a rival monastery.

[@gunterappoldt3037]

If I may put in: The World of Buddhism also knows kinda "two-worlds" theory, a bit like the Lutheran theology: There is a "real--symbolic" divide between the Buddha-Law and the World-Law, which opens many real/virtual spaces for interpretation and action/non-action. As I understand Japanese socio-history, taking a gross over-view, the "profane powers", for the most times, clearly dominated the scene und controlled the Buddhist community to a high degree; moreover, the sacral-profane "loyalities" of the denominations and local movements shifted, some were - seen from the side of the worldly Law - more "orthodox" (or "filial" to the profane powers), some were more "heterodox", like some early Pure-Land schools, which challenged the Ruist-feudalist "orthodoxy" and, thereof, got in big political troubles, being accused of "rebellion", and so forth. Several Zen-masters followed the traditional disposition towards "transworldly asceticism", which meant "retreat to the mountains". But, all in all, one can find a whole spectre of attiudes, ranging - to name only two extremes (by freely following Max Weber´s religio-sociological taxonomy) - between "trans-worldly asceticism" and "this-worldly hedonism" (often critisized as "fox Zen" by the "purists"). So, the overall-picture one gets is rather a mixed one, a "multi-coloured" one, including black and white, and even "infra", "ultra", or "none at all", so to speak... PS.: According to D.T. Suzuki, one of the early Rainzai-missionaries in the West, Zen is "at core" (or "in his mark", as Dogen might have said) "trans-moral". This is his interpretation, as presented, namely, in "Zen and Japanese Culture" - and it sounds to me rather Vedic in the vein of the Bhagavad Gita...

[@osip7315]

meditation is a double edged sword, it can maintain you in strange loops for unhealthily long periods and even worse amplify conformance to the "escherian staircase" another extreme is amplifying meantal illnesses like schisophrenia and pzychosis, an ambivalence that the staircase going both ways can give, ie its not necessarily all negative though in this context it is

[@roberto125919]

lol whos to say mental illness is bad or good...i think we miss the point of all this

[@osip7315]

@@roberto125919 you are totally clueless ? absolutely no real life experience of people with these "difficulties" ? unreal !

[@SBCBears]

@@roberto125919 Truly a zen statement and equally misguided. Meditation does not beget wisdom. Restraint and virtuous behavior do. Hardcore zen was popular with the ruling elites of pre-WWII Japan, if that tells you anything. At that time, zen had largely abandoned its Buddhist roots-- if that tells you anything.