it is impossible to explain to one who has not experienced it, but i will attempt anyway.

one can enter a state of zen when there is no physical break between thought, action, and consequence.

there is a zen of pinball, when the paddles become direct extensions of your brain, and you no longer feel the little buttons on the side of the machine, nor the spring as you let loose another ball. there is a zen of music, although it is one of the hardest to reach. music takes so much concentration to maintain that it is hard to simply lose one's self. when you're not playing the music, it is possible, but then you are not actively creating. the zen of programming is truly strange. it requires that your fingers don't have to move a long way--any taint of physical thought takes you farther from perfection. this zen is when your program becomes a direct extension of your brain, and you know it all, in detail and in general. your fingers are no longer thought about. they are as quick and as accurate as the mercurial movement of masterful music, when no break exists between player and listener, nor between note and note.

the zen of love has all these qualities, but is far above them all. while all of these link a brain to an object, love links brain to brain, and what could be better? a musician cannot beam his notes to his audience; a programmer cannot write his code with a single thought; but a lover feels his beloved as himself, no break between the physical reality of a kiss and the mental blast of pure emotion that travels through it. a writer's words must be thought about, contemplated; though they may come quickly at times, the writer will always stumble at a phrase, and not be able to finish it. in love, "you will know your action. you are present there, not thinking of somewhere else you ought to be." your heart and that of yours are one. what can parallel this intensity? i say, nothing.

A Japanese word from the Chinese "Chan". From the Sanskrit "Dhyana", referring to a meditative state of deep absorption. Subsequently used to refer to a certain Buddhist sect believed to have been brought from India to China by Bodhidharma.

calmness comes after a storm in one's mind.
the stronger the storm is , the more calm the mind is.
transition of super micro view to super macro view.
after this transition, the terrible storm look as if a drop of water.

An (edited) e-mail I received from scab, interspersed with my comments. My apologies to those who have already read A Classic Zen Tale....

---

I was just sitting and thinking and I saw the Zen gardening kit Kaia bought me on one of her trips to the states and I thought, "What is Zen?"

I immediately thought of a few unsatisfactory answers, and I thought I'd pose the question to you, as you claim at times to be a Zen master (not because I think you are, by any means, but because I think you've probably read some of the literature and know a thing or two about it).

      Your confidence in me is overwhelming. I'm chokin' back the tears.

I first thought that maybe Zen is a complete elimination of passion, but then I remembered stuff I'd seen about rock gardens in Buddhist temples in Asia. You've got to have some sort of passion to make a huge-assed representation of the flowing of water, or the shadow of a tree in the morning. This one is out.

      Not to mention the times when Zen masters get angry....

      Bushido is sometimes compared to European Chivalry. This is inaccurate. Bushido is a Zen code.

      Once, a Samurai (I forget his name, it doesn't really matter) found that his master had been murdered. He became angry, and decided to exact revenge on the murderer.

      Finally, he confronted the murderer. But as he raised his sword to deal the death-blow, the murderer spat in the Samurai's face.

      The Samurai walked away, leaving the murderer unharmed.

      Why did the Samurai do this? The superficial answer would be that Zen is the renouncement of passion, and when the murderer spat in his face, the Samurai realised that he was angry, which was something he was supposed to renounce.

      But that would be the superficial answer. As near as I can reckon, the Samurai would go back, later, to finish off the murderer. Just because he halted in mid-butcher, it doesn't mean he won't finish the job. The Samurai would still be angry, and would still seek revenge.

      When the murderer spat in the Samurai's face, the Samurai became enraged. Before, he was angry, but just then he became ENRAGED.

      The Samurai had no problem acting on anger. And when he stopped himself, was that not on the basis of another emotion? Shame? Emotions come, emotions go. But Zen is a freedom doctrine. For the Samurai to act out of anger is noble, because his master was his friend, and for him to have no emotion at the murder of a friend would be reprehensible. But for the Samurai to be compelled by his anger -- well, that's another thing.

Then I thought that Zen mastery must come from a complete relegation of the passions to static things, like the gravel of a garden, or the whole "oneness with the universe" bit... but then I realized that this lends itself to an un-zenlike materialism and lack of concern with human relationships, which is counter to the traditional image of the zen master who is unconcerned with material things and is a cool guest at dinner parties.

      Once upon a time, there was a Zen monk who was living on the budget of a rich elderly matron. He devoted all his time to painting and calligraphy, in the Zen tradition.

      One day, after he had lived on her estate for two years, the matron decided to test the monk's progress in Zen. She hired a beautiful young girl to go to the Zen monk and try to convince him to forsake his arts.

      So the girl goes to the monk and she's all, "Oh, I love you, I'll love you forever, won't you marry me?"

      The monk remained unmoved. He said, "I am beyond such worldly concerns as love. My passion is devoted to art." And he went back to painting.

      So the girl returned to the matron and told her what had happened.

      The matron discontinued the monk's budget.

      Why? She felt that the monk had acted inappropriately. How so? In all his time working towards enlightenment, he had learned nothing. He hadn't even learned not to be a dickhead. See, he thought he had learned to control his passion, but he had no compassion. He had no common sense. He was cold and in a way, inhuman. Sure, he probably shouldn't have given up his art just for a girl, but he didn't even talk to her about it. He was just mean.

The opposite cannot be true though, the passions being devoted to the dynamic and changing forces, as this would lead to a zen master who runs the stock exchange and has a string of highschool style relationships... fucking everything that moves and trying to figure out what matters...

      There's nothing wrong with a Zen master who runs the stock exchange. And this might surprise you, being as you are a gaijin :) -- but there's nothing wrong with fucking. Even fucking a lot. Even fucking a lot of different people. It's not part of the Zen tradition, of course, which is tied to Buddhism and to asceticism in general by proxy.

      One day, a roshi (Zen teacher) and a Hindu guru are walking along the beach. In the distance they see an island, and on the island is an ice cream stand. Now, it's a hot day and they're hungry for a treat, so they decide they want to get some ice cream.

      The guru says, "I spent twenty years in isolation, meditating. I fasted regularly, eating only enough to sustain me, forcing myself through extreme pain. I read and memorised Scripture. Finally, after twenty years, I have learned to walk on water. So I'll walk on water to the island, and meet you there."

      The roshi is flabbergasted. "Why the fuck would you do all that? The ferry only costs ten bucks. In twenty years, I could have gone across and back hundreds of times, and had hundreds of bowls of ice cream. You must be some kind of retard."

any ideas...? I'm out...

      First off, let me just say that Zen has nothing to do with the Matrix. Zen is an ethical and practical, not metaphysical, experience.

      Zen Buddhism is Taoism, hiding behind Buddhism because Buddhism, once upon a time, was a new, popular thing.

      Taoism is the religion everyone adopts when they are asleep. Taoism is the religion shared by all animals except humans.

      "Zen" is a Nippongoisation of "dhyana," Sanscrit for meditation.

      When you say "Zen master," of course, I assume you're talking about someone who's achieved mushin, or wu wei, or anoesis, or no-mind, or whatever you want to call it. An instance of mushin is called a satori. I've had satoris.

      Satoris are enlightenment. Sometimes enlightenment comes all at once, in a flash. Sometimes it comes gradually, like the break of dawn. I've had both kinds of satori.

      My biggest "flash" ones came this summer, all grouped together. One day I was hanging out with Steve, and we were trying to muddle through my latest philosophical problem. You see, I was trying to figure out how people could be completely self-contained, and yet not immediately happy. How the power for happiness was innate, but that it had to be brought out in education. My Taoist readings had alerted me to the limits of booklearning. Combine that for my Nietzsche readings, which taught me to be wary of any explanation which does absolutely nothing but comfort, and I was a downright menace to society. Still am.

      So anyway, every time I would try to come up with some train of thought, I would have to stop myself and say, "No, that's a myth." I waded through myth after myth, and each one I ditched. All, throughout history, have been good enough for somebody -- but none, now, were good enough for me. My perception of failings had become so acute, but at the same time my intellectual standards had become so exacting, that no dogma, no story, no narrative, no theory, no explanation, no idea could pass my scrutiny. For the first time in my life, I looked at them all. They were all lies.

      Finally, I came to Zen. I looked at Zen, and I said, "No, that's a myth. That's a lie." And I realised that I had exhausted the myths. But lo and behold, I was still alive. And I was still happy. So I promptly forgot about it.

      That was not the satori. The satori came two days later. I was making some spaghetti. Then, I realised (and I think I even shouted it out) "Holy shit! That was Zen!" Then I ate the spaghetti. Then I cleaned the dishes.

      Another satori came later that week. I was feeling a little down, and I thought to myself, "Fuck, I had a satori this week and I'm still not happy." But then I really thought about it, and I realised, "Hey, satoris aren't supposed to make you happy." Then I had another satori.

      Lately, I've been feeling better and better about a "dawn"-type satori I think is growing on me. See, for the past couple of months I was pretty depressed because I'm lonely. But then, I realised that it's completely within my power not to be lonely, but I still want to be lonely because I'm proud of my high standards when it comes to women. But furthermore, my being alone is making me more independent. Being alone isn't making me lonely anymore. And with this independence is coming a satori.

      I don't know if everyone has satoris. I doubt it, knowing some people. Also, mushin is not a permanent, perpetual state. Zen is not impossible to understand. It's not even particularly difficult to understand, once you divorce yourself of traditional ways of looking at things. THAT INCLUDES THE TRADITIONAL WAY OF LOOKING AT ZEN IN THE WEST! Zen is too popular not to attract a bunch of ignorant idiots.

      A good book is "The Tao of Zen" by Ray Grigg.

A Zen story told to me many years ago, which I can still remember and which still has relevancy at least once a day:

Two monks were walking down the street after a heavy rain that left the streets quite muddy. They came upon a a lady of very easy virtue vainly attempting to find a dry path across the road without soiling her kimono.

One monk, more compassionate than the other, picked up the woman and carried her across the street, setting her down on the other side of the road. He returned to his companion and they continued down the road for some minutes until the second monk chided the first with the remark, "You really shouldn't have done that."

"Done what?"

"Why, you contaminated yourself by touching that impure woman."

"Oh, are you still carrying her? I put her down on the other side of the street."

One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. ... It might seem, then, that all efforts to explain Zen are complete wastes of time. But that is not the attitude of Zen masters and students. For instance, Zen koans are a central part of Zen study, verbal though they are. Koans are supposed to be "triggers" which, though they do not contain enough information in themselves to impart enlightenment, may possibly be sufficient to unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that lead to enlightenment. But in general, the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth.

...

Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism. Now what is dualism? Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories. ... By prefixing the word "division" by the word "conceptual", I may have made it seem that this is an intellectual or conscious effort, and perhaps thereby given the impression that dualism could be overcome simply by suppressing thought (as if to suppress thinking actually were simple!). But the breaking of the world into categories takes place far below the upper strata of thought; in fact, dualism is just as much a perceptual division of the world into categories as it is a conceptual division. In other words, human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon--which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least.

At the core of dualism, according to Zen, are words--just plain words. The use of words is inherently dualistic, since each word represents, quite obviously, a conceptual category. Therefore, a major part of Zen is the fight against reliance on words. To combat the use of words, one of the best devices is the koan, where words are so deeply abused that one's mind is practically left reeling, if one takes the koan seriously. Therefore it is perhaps wrong to say that the enemy of enlightenment is logic; rather, it is dualistic, verbal thinking. In fact, it is even more basic than that: it is perception. As soon as you perceive an object, you draw a line between it and the rest of the world; you divide the world, artificially, into parts, and thereby miss the Way.

Here is a short koan which demonstrates the struggle against words:

Shuzan held out his short staff and said: "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"

...

Why is calling it a short staff opposing its reality? Probably because such a categorization gives the appearance of capturing reality, whereas the surface has not even been scratched by such a statement. It could be compared to saying "5 is a prime number". There is so much more--an infinity of facts--that has been omitted. On the other hand, not to call it a staff is, indeed, to ignore that particular fact, miniscule as it may be. Thus words lead to some truths--some falsehood, perhaps, as well--but certainly not to all truth.

...

If words are bad, and thinking is bad, what is good? Of course, to ask this is already horribly dualistic, but we are making no pretense of being faithful to Zen in discussing Zen--so we can try to answer the question seriously. I have a name for what Zen strives for: ism. Ism is an antiphilosophy, a way of being without thinking. The masters of ism are rocks, trees, clams; but it is the fate of higher animal species to have to strive for ism, without ever being able to attain it fully. ... Zen is holism, carried to its logical extreme. If holism claims that things can only be understood as wholes, not as sums of their parts, Zen goes one step further, in maintaining that the world cannot be broken into parts at all. To divide the world into parts is to be deluded, and to miss enlightenment.

A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk.
"It is right before your eyes," said the master.
"Why do I not see it for myself?"
"Because you are thinking of yourself."
"What about you: do you see it?"
"So long as you see double, saying 'I don't', and 'you do', and so on, your eyes are clouded," said the master.
"When there is neither 'I' nor 'You', can one see it?"
"When there is neither 'I' nor 'You', who is the one that wants to see it?"

Apparently the master wants to get across the idea that an enlightened state is one where the borderlines between the self and the rest of the universe is dissolved. This would truly be the end of dualism, for as he says, there is no system left which has any desire for perception. But what is that state, if not death? How can a living human being dissolve the borderlines between himself and the outside world?

Douglas R. Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

The web browser Zen, is a small modular browser with different output targets. It is written in C, and runs on Un*x based platforms. The structure of the browser consists of 5 major parts.

The Protocols, loading files, coming from the local file system, from an HTTP source, or an FTP server.

Once the raw, unparsed HTML data is loaded into Zen, the Parser kicks in, and outputs a parsed tree of the page.

Now it's time to go through the tree structure, and look for other files to load. The Images will be downloaded, and converted to the internal format from the original PNG, JPEG or GIF format.

From now on, it's a matter of output. Layouter goes through the tree and builds a page with usable coordinates and widgets.

Finally the User interface puts all things in place using the layout data, and the library for the selected output target.

Available output targets are a plain dumb text dump, a GTK interface, and a framebuffer alternative using oFBis.

More information can be found at:

http://www.nocrew.org/software/zen/

zbeba = Z = zero

zen vt.

To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it." Contrast grok, which connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system. Compare hack mode. See also guru.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

``when you are hungry, eat; when you are tired, sleep.''

Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being.¹ The only adequate description of this ``self-nature'' is mu, that is, ``nothingness'' or ``void''... but, alas, mu helps nobody in understanding the spiritual, philosophical, and social reverberations of Zen.

Spiritually, Zen leads one to the ultimate freedom from the ultimate bondage (ignorance) via meditation. Literally, Zen means ``thinking'' or ``meditation'' and through ``thinking'' or ``meditation'' we come to the realization that we are all of the One, the void, and from this knowledge we attain spiritual tranquility.
Philosophically, Zen proposes that the infinite is indistinguishable from the finite, that the One is inseperable from the Many, that we are all God yet none of us are. It is radical empiricism: the Buddha, the originator of Zen (as will be explained later), took life as it is and did not try to read it according to his interpretation, though that is impossible epistemology speaking.²
Socially, Zen is either an amazing release from the bondage of the Mind, a cute way to title a book (``Zen and the Art of ______''), or a radical cult that promises the impossible. From most it is looked at in awe, though few have more than a vague idea about its meaning, while others see it as the currently chic trend in Hollywood (much like yoga); however, there are also many who see Zen as an excuse, or verification, for believing that all is meaningless and morality is relative. Unfortunately, and oddly, considering its awesome significance for the individual who attains Enlightenment, a devoted follower is a rare find (in America, that is).

In order to understand what Zen truly is, one must first understand the origin. The beginnings of Buddhism and Zen are so old that the historical record is vague at best. Orthodox Zen Buddhism understand the following to be the origin of Zen: the Buddha, Sakyamuni, was once preaching at the Mount of the Holy Vulture to a congregation of his disciples. He did not preach through thick rhetoric, but simply held up a flower (or a bouquet of flowers) before the people, which was presented to him by one of his lay-disciples. He spoke not a word. Nobody understood the meaning of this except Mahakasyapa, who quietly smiled at the master, as if he fully understood this teaching of the Enlightened One. The Buddha saw this and proclaimed solemnly, ``I have the most precious treasure, spiritual and transcendental, which this moment I hand over to you, O venerable Mahakasyapa!''³
Many Zen followers describe that moment as the first incident that disclosed the inmost mind of the Buddha as well as the secret of the religion. As Zen claims to be the inmost essence of Buddhism (that is, Enlightenment) and to have been directly transmitted by the Buddha to his great disciple, Mahakasyapa, followers naturally search for the moment when this transmission took place. It is known that Mahakasyapa succeeded the Buddha as the leader of (Zen) Buddhism, but as to his special transmission of Zen, there is no record in the Indian Buddhism writings.⁴ Regardless of whether the event at the Mount of the Holy Vulture is authentic, it can be stated that Zen really became a separate faith when the Bodhidharma brought Indian Buddhism to China (Hui-neng was the receiver of Bodhidharma's wisdom), dated to be in 520 C.E. He came to China with a special message that can be expressed as such:

A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence upon words and letters;
Direct pointing at the soul of man;
Seeing into one's nature and the attainment of Buddhahood.

The message was very different from the common mystic understanding of Buddhism in India. While Buddhist followers were mostly more preoccupied with following the ethics and society teachings of the Buddha, the Chinese Zen followers tried to obtain Enlightenment, the root and purpose of Buddhism. Suzuki explains the situation well in his ``Introduction'':

At the time of the introduction of Zen into China, most of the Buddhists were addicted to the discussion of highly metaphysics questions, or satisfied with the merely observing of the ethics precepts laid down by the Buddha or with the leading of a lethargy life entirely absorbed in the contemplation of the evanescence of things worldly. They all missed apprehending the great fact of life itself, which flows altogether outside of these vain exercises of the intellect or of the imagination. Bodhidharma and his successors recognized this pitiful state of affairs. Hence their proclamation of ``The Four Great Statements'' of Zen as above cited. In a word, they mean that Zen has its own way of pointing to the nature of one's own being, and that when this is done one attains to Buddhahood, in which all the contradictions and disturbances caused by the intellect are entirely harmony in a unity of higher order.

Therefore, it is said that though Zen originated after Buddhism, Buddhism is a sub-sect of Zen, a social-ethical dogma layered on top of Enlightenment. While Buddhists praise the Buddha and his teachings, Zen Buddhists praise Enlightenment and its emancipation power.

What, then, is the essence of Zen? Firstly, we must understand what the Buddha taught. The most fundamental truth the Buddha discovered after his spiritual quest is the Four Noble Truths:

1. Life is suffering
2. Suffering is due to attachment (desire)
3. Attachment can be overcome
4. There is a path for overcome attachment

Nearly every human suffers; this is obvious. But this suffering exists because we ignore or we are unaware of the fact that nothing is permanent, even ourself. We grasp to the false ideas that desire can be satisfied, that loved ones will always be with us, that `I' is fundamentally different from `you'. Because of our ignorance, we suffer; however, there is a path out of suffering: the middle way. The middle way is the crevice between idealism and materialism, hedonism and asceticism, the one and the many; it can be thought of as neither indulgence nor starvation, but the perfection in between. Via the middle way, one understands that anger and joy, for example, leave the mind as quickly as they came, if allowed to do so. One is no longer a slave to the rise and fall of all that is, but he exists outside of that realm; he steps aside and simply observes. The essence of Zen is the essence of non-attachment. Suzuki states, ``One may not be conscious of all this, and may go on indulge in those momentary pleasures that are afforded by the senses. But this being unconcious does not in the least alter the facts of life. However insistently the blind may deny the existence of the sun, they cannot annihilate it. The tropical heat will mercilessly scorch them, and if they do not take proper care they will all be wiped away from the surface of the earth.''
Zen cannot exist in the barriers of the intellect. When Zen is cut and categorized by the analytical knife something is lost... infinity cannot be understood using numbers. Because Zen is the ``alpha and the omega'' of reality, the ``infinity'' of life, it cannot be captured in words and ideas. The common analogy is: ``to point to the moon, a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon; a basket is welcome to carry our fish home, but when the fish are safely on the table why should we eternally bother ourselves with the basket?''⁵ The intellect is a barrier to our understanding of Zen but, like the finger, it must be utilized as a catalyst; Zen never explains but indicates. Logically considered, it is full of contradictions and absurdity but as it stands above all things, it goes serenely on its own way. And therefore, the truth can only be discovered through personal, direct, intuitive experience. ``Just as two stainless mirrors reflect each other, the fact and our own spirits must stand facing each other with no intervening agents. When this is done we are able to seize upon th