<story><title>Zen Buddhism and Alan Watts</title><url>http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/tim-lott-zen-buddhism-alan-watts/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yoodenvranx</author><text>So how else do I do Zen?&lt;p&gt;(That is a serious question!)</text></item><item><author>nabla9</author><text>&amp;quot;Well, there is Sitting Zen (zazen, meditation), there is Walking Zen. Oh, and then, of course, especially in the West, there is Talking Zen. No good.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Many Zen practitioners have received their first contact with zen trough Alan Watts. He was really good writer. But eventually you must realize that he was philosopher, alcoholic and religions scholar who looked Zen from the outside. Talking and thinking about Zen is like talking and thinking about physical exercise. Philosophical thinking about koan  is like treating bench press as a philosophical problem. You can&amp;#x27;t lift it with your toughs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nabla9</author><text>Zen is meditation first school of Buddhism. You must  learn to do zazen (zen meditation). In other words, sit down and shut up. If you want to become Buddha, do what Buddha did and don&amp;#x27;t just listen and think about what he said.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m myself a Zen Buddhist, I train with a teacher and have spend time zen training in a zen temple and attend sesshins regularly. I&amp;#x27;m also very secular and atheist person who don&amp;#x27;t like organized religion. It&amp;#x27;s miracle that I can coexist with religious setting, but I do it because I see Buddhsit Zen teachers as experienced coaches and temple as training facility. I also know that he is not going to indoctrinate me for anything superstitions despite his own beliefs that are different from mine (there are number of rotten zen teachers though).&lt;p&gt;If I were to describe what zazen meditation[1] is using as scientific terms as possible, I would say that it&amp;#x27;s developing and directing your attention towards higher temporal resolution and developing the ability of keeping it there (always below 1s and it can go as low as ~40 Hz).  You can put your poet hat on and call it &amp;quot;living in this moment&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;looking at the reality&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;awakening to reality&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;seeing the world as it really is&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;impermanence&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;looking into yourself&amp;#x2F;mind&amp;quot;, but that&amp;#x27;s what it really is in my opinion. You can&amp;#x27;t have complex philosophical toughs in such a short time.  You can only see &amp;#x27;thoughtlets&amp;#x27; (small incomplete toughs) forming and fading away in fractions of second. It&amp;#x27;s like using low level debugger into the functioning of yor mind (debugger being directed attention).&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;[1] Same thing with most other awareness style Buddhist meditation traditions. You learn to see similarities with other traditions when you practice. Zazen is often more spartan and simplified and vital (not for everyone).&lt;p&gt;Nice description of the differences between Zen and Vipassana styles by Shinzen Young &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WiM-w5qqmE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=7WiM-w5qqmE&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Zen Buddhism and Alan Watts</title><url>http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/tim-lott-zen-buddhism-alan-watts/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yoodenvranx</author><text>So how else do I do Zen?&lt;p&gt;(That is a serious question!)</text></item><item><author>nabla9</author><text>&amp;quot;Well, there is Sitting Zen (zazen, meditation), there is Walking Zen. Oh, and then, of course, especially in the West, there is Talking Zen. No good.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Many Zen practitioners have received their first contact with zen trough Alan Watts. He was really good writer. But eventually you must realize that he was philosopher, alcoholic and religions scholar who looked Zen from the outside. Talking and thinking about Zen is like talking and thinking about physical exercise. Philosophical thinking about koan  is like treating bench press as a philosophical problem. You can&amp;#x27;t lift it with your toughs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nemo</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a practice more than an analysis, so to do it you practice Zen exercises.  The central exercise is meditation.  Thinking about meditation is like thinking about push-ups.  A little analysis helps to refine the form, but it&amp;#x27;s not the point.</text></comment>