[net.religion] Zen

harkins (04/19/83)

first, recall that zen is only one sect of buddhism, which, somewhat like
christianity ('a prophet has no honor in his own country' more or less),
really fluorished outside india; other sects (from memory here) include
Hinayana and Mahayana, both in the Burma Cambodia area and still going
strong; zen though, and you can check in Britannica for this, took off
as a sort of reborn confucianism in japan.  My personal favorite is
Alan Watts, but also appreciate Suzuki.  My reading of what is zen is
something along the lines of 'doing,' ie, living a religious life, but
not worrying too much about form and rules, as long as it all fits into
a concept (Eightfold path) of 'rightness.'  All the blather on the net
would be regarded, i think, as noise instead of signal; the essence is
'just sitting,' ie, getting rid of the noise and letting the signal
(wisdom) flood your being.  BTW, Alan Watts (not at itt; dead in fact)
has a really funny essay about the need to kill to eat called "Murder
in the Kitchen," in which (sorry, don't recall which book, but there
are several worth reading) he goes into the 'fact' that plants feel
pain, and therefore, even the most righteous vegetarians are killers
too!!  You might also reread Jack Kerouac: On the Road and Dharma Bums,
as he seems to get the zen flavor down.  ernie harkins

jwp (04/23/83)

There has been some discussion of Zen in net.religion lately.  It has
always seemed to me that classifying Zen as a religion rather than a
philosophy is somewhat incorrect.  It is probably incorrect to try to
classify it at all.  In any case, since I have available a rather large
collection of Zen storie, and since I've always thought Zen is best
described by attempting to show what it *is*, I will post one occasionally
for the enlightenment of us all.

Before I do that, however, I ran across an item that I feel illustrates
a "Zen" response, though it was not originally intended to be:

Most of us are, I'm sure, familiar with the paradox involving a card with
"The statement on the other side of this card is true" on one side, and
"The statement on the other side of this card is false" on the other.
Take a strip of paper and write "The statement on the other side of this
paper is true" on one side; write "The statement on the other side of this
paper is false" on the other side.  We have duplicated the paradox.  Now,
take the paper, give it a half-twist, and join the ends.

			John Pierce, Chemistry, UC San Diego
			{ucbvax, philabs}!sdcsvax!sdchema!jwp

myers (04/25/83)

Thanx, John; the occasional Zen koan would be a welcome addition to this
newsgroup (in my humble opionion).

A simpler version of the paradox you described is
	"This statement is false"
which is known as the Epimenides (sp?) paradox.  Well known to
connesuers (sp? my ignorance is showing) of Godel's incompleteness theorem.
For a fascinating discussion of this, Zen, AI, ad infinitum, read
Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach", a book no self-respecting
computer scientist should be without.

Anybody wanna discuss the implications of Godel's theorem for scientific
thought, AI, etc.?  I personally feel that the theorem offers a great deal
of insight for a characterization of truth as a unity of opposites, of
rational and irrational truth.  Godel's theorem, transfinite counting, etc.,
never fail to instill a feeling of awe in me!

				Not afraid to tout irrationality on the net
				(there's a great deal of it already here),
				Jeff Myers   ...seismo!uwvax!myers