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zen

nowornever said:
My plan is to have no problems whatsoever.
Once I entered a personal interview with Myong Oh Sunim JDPS and started "I planned..." and she spopped my speech and exclaimed: "Don't plan!".
It helped me a lot. Thank you Sensei.
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But you still have a plan... so the advice helped, but you ignored it?

Don't plan to have no problems - only the dead have no problems. Deal with problems as a normal part of everyday life. They're what living mostly consists of, so welcome them, learn from them, and feel better for dealing with them. Think of them not as problems but as steps on the road to equanimity (there is no road to enlightenment) - maybe then they will no longer seem like problems and your plan will have been realised.

Or not - your choice.
 
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nowornever said:
My plan is to have no problems whatsoever.
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You have already failed. But do you know why?

Once I entered a personal interview with Myong Oh Sunim JDPS and started "I planned..." and she spopped my speech and exclaimed: "Don't plan!".
It helped me a lot. Thank you Sensei.
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What did you learn from that? What did you thank her for? Or where you just copying the stories you repeat because you think that is the proper response?

In most zen stories the students that learn are the ones that challenge their teachers, not the ones that mindlessly repeat what they are told. Why do you think this is?
 
nowornever said:
Once I entered a personal interview with Myong Oh Sunim JDPS and started "I planned..." and she spopped my speech and exclaimed: "Don't plan!".
It helped me a lot. Thank you Sensei.
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Last week I was in the Nevada desert. I spent the better part of three days far enough from the nearest town that if something went wrong, I was likely dead. In order to do my work I had to bring water, food, and emergency repair equipment. This became rather important when one guy split his tire--without a spair we'd have had to abandon one vehicle.

Please explain to me how not planning could possibly help that situation. A failure to plan would mean no food, no water, no emergency supplies, and very likely sevear medical consequences such as extreme dehydration or death.

Again, something like this sounds nice when it's all abstraction, but once you try to pin down concrete examples of how to apply this principle it has disasterous results. And before you say "But you're giving an extreme example", I'm not. Last week is far from unusual in my profession, and most would have considered it a cakewalk. After all, I could actually drive to my site! I know of a few field sites (including an incredible lava lake) that require a day's hike from the nearest road. For my kind of people, this is normal, day-to-day stuff.
 
You notice that the OP is throwing together a mish-mash of unrelated terms.. 'Sensei' when talking about Korean Buddhist 'masters', Scientology tests in with made up koans and then the lineage from Bodhidarma.
 
Dinwar said:
Last week I was in the Nevada desert. I spent the better part of three days far enough from the nearest town that if something went wrong, I was likely dead. In order to do my work I had to bring water, food, and emergency repair equipment. This became rather important when one guy split his tire--without a spair we'd have had to abandon one vehicle.

Please explain to me how not planning could possibly help that situation. A failure to plan would mean no food, no water, no emergency supplies, and very likely sevear medical consequences such as extreme dehydration or death.

Again, something like this sounds nice when it's all abstraction, but once you try to pin down concrete examples of how to apply this principle it has disasterous results. And before you say "But you're giving an extreme example", I'm not. Last week is far from unusual in my profession, and most would have considered it a cakewalk. After all, I could actually drive to my site! I know of a few field sites (including an incredible lava lake) that require a day's hike from the nearest road. For my kind of people, this is normal, day-to-day stuff.
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Context is important. What the teacher was telling him wasn't "never plan, ever" (although this might have been how he understood it, that's wrong).

The purpose of zen is to help the practicitioner come to (in emotional terms) an understanding of himself, his relationship to the universe, and the events that affect him. It is a jouney of discovery, and a highly personal one as each individual is shaped by a unique set of circumstances and experiences. It is not like exploring geography, which remains objectively constant for each person.

So what the teacher was telling him is that having a "plan", a desired outcome, is foolish- on many levels, not in the least of which is that a fundamental part of the buhddist tradition is "extinguishing", or learing to look past desire itself as it clouds one's objectivity.

It sounds like weasel words and double-speak, but in a very literal sense, NON will never find enlightenment as long as he desires to find it- because until he can let go of the emotions that drive him to desire enlightenment and examine them critically, they are going to get in the way of his understanding of what is driving him and what he desires to acheive by it.
 
Piscivore said:
Context is important. What the teacher was telling him wasn't "never plan, ever" (although this might have been how he understood it, that's wrong).
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I get that. One shouldn't allow one's expectations to overpower one's observations (all KINDS of fun things happen in my field because of people forgetting that, the most obvious being that paleontologists who work on a particular group of critters will sometimes see hundreds in outcrops where paleontologists who work on other critters don't see any). Makes no sense to stick to a plan when conditions change, and you have to be open to the observations that tell you conditions change.

My goal was more to probe nowornever's thoughts on the matter. I think he took it literally: never plan, ever. And I wanted to present a situation where he could explain what he understood the advice to be.
 
Dinwar said:
I get that. One shouldn't allow one's expectations to overpower one's observations (all KINDS of fun things happen in my field because of people forgetting that, the most obvious being that paleontologists who work on a particular group of critters will sometimes see hundreds in outcrops where paleontologists who work on other critters don't see any). Makes no sense to stick to a plan when conditions change, and you have to be open to the observations that tell you conditions change.

My goal was more to probe nowornever's thoughts on the matter. I think he took it literally: never plan, ever. And I wanted to present a situation where he could explain what he understood the advice to be.
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Ah, I'm sorry to derail that then. He doesn't seem to be very eager to explain his thoughts, though. I get the feeling he came here expecting us to simply marvel at the luster of his new, expensive imperial clothes.
 
No worries. :) I doubt it'll affect anything anyway--as you said, he doesn't appear willing to discuss his ideas, he just wants to state them. I just can't resist trying to understand the logic behind apparently insane ideas. The only person worth learning from is your enemy, after all. Sadly, many who espouse insane ideas don't seem to do much in the way of introspection, even those who espouse insane ideas related to introspection like NON.
 
Piscivore said:
Ah, I'm sorry to derail that then. He doesn't seem to be very eager to explain his thoughts, though. I get the feeling he came here expecting us to simply marvel at the luster of his new, expensive imperial clothes.
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That would be more believable had he been at all consistent with what he claimed to be studying, instead of jumping from one form of woo to another.

Do we really think anyone has the time and money to buy their way through 100 levels of the Korean cult and breeze through the enneagram 'tests' at such a young age, but they can't get even the most basic details right and they refuse to give forthright answers to questions, or discuss zen and enlightenment with people who offer up genuine discourse?
 
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nowornever said:
My zen is not mature. I can only quote. I respect all your answers as I am not a master.
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Piscivore said:
I get the feeling he came here expecting us to simply marvel at the luster of his new, expensive imperial clothes.
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Nailed it, it would seem.

nowornever, if you know the quotes but not the concepts behind them you don't know very much. And given that others better versed in zen philosophy than you or I have shown that your quotes are from numerous different, unrelated schools of thought, I'd say you don't stand much of a chance understanding them all together.
 
crimresearch said:
That would be more believable had he been at all consistent with what he claimed to be studying, instead of jumping from one form of woo to another.
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Actually, from my experience that's very common. most of the people that get into this sort of thing are looking for easy answers, and from the outside zen looks easy. It's not. (caveat: I am in no way claiming any sort of expertise or authority here. I only know what I've read on my own.) When they don't get easy answers, they move on to something else, or grab something from another tradition to fill in gaps- hiduism, shamanism, voodoo, ersatz native americanisms. Go to Sedona, AZ sometime- the place is crawing with people like NON. "McZen" is dead-on.

Consistency and repeatability are things we as skeptics and scientists value, but these people are more concerned with immediate gratification.
 
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Piscivore said:
Actually, from my experience that's very common. most of the people that get into this sort of thing are looking for easy answers, and from the outside zen looks easy. It's not. (caveat: I am in no way claiming any sort of expertise or authority here. I only know what I've read on my own.) When they don't get easy answers, they move on to something else, or grab something from another tradition to fill in gaps- hiduism, shamanism, voodoo, ersatz native americanisms. Go to Sedona, AZ sometime- the place is crawing with people like NON. "McZen" is dead-on.

Consistency and repeatability are things we as skeptics and scientists value, but these people are more concerned with immediate gratification.
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LOL! I've got a friend who did exactly that.

American... going from Jewish upbringing to Zen, Krishna, communes, something else, and converting to Islam 2 years ago at age 60.

Super nice guy, very smart, serious about being a good person... and apparently still on his journey.

ETA I've lived in Virginia Beach, and Charlottesville, both teeming with human like objects.
 
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Piscivore said:
Context is important. What the teacher was telling him wasn't "never plan, ever" (although this might have been how he understood it, that's wrong).
The purpose of zen is to help the practicitioner come to (in emotional terms) an understanding of himself, his relationship to the universe, and the events that affect him. It is a jouney of discovery, and a highly personal one as each individual is shaped by a unique set of circumstances and experiences. It is not like exploring geography, which remains objectively constant for each person.

So what the teacher was telling him is that having a "plan", a desired outcome, is foolish- on many levels, not in the least of which is that a fundamental part of the buhddist tradition is "extinguishing", or learing to look past desire itself as it clouds one's objectivity.

It sounds like weasel words and double-speak, but in a very literal sense, NON will never find enlightenment as long as he desires to find it- because until he can let go of the emotions that drive him to desire enlightenment and examine them critically, they are going to get in the way of his understanding of what is driving him and what he desires to acheive by it.
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How do you know that? You're just making up what you think the teacher meant to fulfill your beliefs.
 
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