Stoicism

Though Stoicism, questing for ataraxia (aταραξία), unperturbed calm tranquility untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet, the transcendently detached and balanced state of mind free and indifferent from worry or any other preoccupation, is Rationalistic and Zen Intuitionist, otherwise the two creeds run fairly parallel in several regards: 

Renouncing hedonistic free pleasure seeking, Stoicism contended that by choice of free will, self-control and fortitude the wise man should master and become free of and apathetically indifferent to the errors of passion and desire, such being the enemy of clear and unbiased reason, hence unsubdued by joy or grief, happiness in achieving virtue via reason, and willingly submissive to natural law, being order by the divine as manifest in the entirely corporeal and material world, to ultimate good in equality and the brotherhood of man, or in another other word: dharma.

In popular culture, the ancient Greek Stoics are, of course, the model for the ever logical Vulcans on 'Star Trek.'

Although, far from placid dignity, indeed much as the most notorious Zen sages likewise clearly loved to stir the pot, some Stoics actually took perverse joy in whatever shock value from publicly flouting common (or as me might say today: Bourgeois) manners, mores and taboos, as silly, irrational and entirely arbitrary.

Not merely in sheer Reductionism rests the failure of phoneme theory, but in the Phenomena of memory association and the nature of communication as a human behavior, after all consisting not merely in description, instruction and assertion, all variously Ontological reference, striving nigh transcendentally for precision and clarity in the quest for truth, but also of expression and intention, ambiguity, inner response to life without distinct objective external correspondence.

As illustrated in sophisticated dialogue with subtext, understanding one another then, may often only be conjectural, approximate and verisimilitudinous at very best. But then, what knowledge isn't?  Allowing the indulgence of metaphoric Pathetic Fallacy, science, on this score, remains sanguine, cheerfully confident, optimistic and content if not actually somewhat smug.

But what of the Zen? Now, there can be a Zen of any solitary art, archery, motorcycle maintenance, or anything else. But can there be a Zen of graceful interactions, especially such as by which people are ever thought to relate to one another? Indeed, is the cultivation of conduct within  dharma just such, a quest for the same insight of spontaneous authenticity striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? Is Transactional Analysis a properly dharmic liberation from karma? Or is the cultivation of conduct within dharma only a questing for impersonally cold-blooded and even shallow perfection in dealing with others? Indeed, must Zen prize or reject the same insight of spontaneous authenticity striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? Indeed, strictly speaking, can Zen ever even recognize as possible any insight of spontaneous authenticity striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? After all, bypassing, exchange which is not genuine communication because it lacks sufficient intersubjectivity and does not carry at all the same meanings or even purpose, intention or point at all between the participants, is all there really is, according to the Zen, traditionally.

We all tend to engage in attachment to places or settings, social milieu, to objects, events, actions and interactions, even ideas and meaningful values, but most especially bonds of affection to other individuals as according to Attachment Theory of the first core strengths attained in childhood towards adult attachment in relationships such as for couples. Whereas an attachment injury is the hurt from close quarters, so to speak, therefore that festers and engenders attachment disorder severely enough to adversely affect future interactions and close relationship throughout life. Anti-Critical Bias let alone Fundamental Attribution Error exacerbated into Hostile Attribution Bias is all mistrustfully attachment injured and disordered, let alone the controlling possessiveness of bullying. 

To quote Gian Vincenzo Gravina: "A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company." But the irritation and lonely boredom from from insensitive or just unreceptive intrusion is the very least failure of intimacy. Intimacy risks far greater disappointment and betrayals. Therefore, even eustress in the most pleasant anticipation or prospect of intimacy is often marked by even sometimes threatening sensations of shyness, much as good sex is often preceded by the churning of proverbial butterflies in the stomach.

So, can Zen non attachment really be the answer, the release into perfect Buddhist compassion as promised? -Or just more of the metaphorical baby out with the proverbial bath water...

For genuine love, compassion and friendship are all distinctly marked by such features as patience and kindness rather than envy, rude and boastful pride, ever self-seeking and quick to wrath and grudge collecting, by forthright honesty rather than hollow deceit, by protection and trust with every hope for the others' best interests, with perseverance through conflict, wanting for another all that the other person desires for themselves.

Transactional Analysis quests and strives towards the cultivation of more intuitive interaction intrinsic to more genuine relationship between individuals. But the however optimistic Nihilistic value-destruction of Zen nevertheless scorns all such attachment as relationship without distinction. Bohmian dialogue however, does seemingly strive for vindication of human communication at all, even within holistic Zen sensibilities. But even that remains problematical.

In the most Heraclitian Buddhist thinking nowadays the more current than ever in modern physics, all objects, phenomena or other events are deemed empty of self sufficient inherency which illusory. For example, the hardest rock cannot really be inherently solid in and of itself, save that it cannot readily interpenetrate any other solid mass, because to exist is to be effective upon anything else at all at large.

In accordance with the law of unity of opposites which describes in matters of perspective, the underlying unity as well as the manifest polarity of things, events and processes, Zen and Buddhism partake of a controversy and synthesis (systems theory) familiar in science and philosophy, that of profound marvel delving into the reduction of anything and everything that exists or occurs to the smallest and most basic self sufficient monads, versus serene appreciation in contemplation of the universal Gestalt of all things and phenomena existing only contingently, in context, dependant upon conditioning factors, upon other things, hence empty of adequate independent self-existence and intrinsic properties.

All such, however, is relationship in a strictly dharmic view. Whereas for Zen, dialogue, literally from dia- "across" + legein "speak," let alone human relationship, remains all quite oxymoronic. And that is why Jews do not Zen. Zen and Judaism are intrinsically irreconcilable because, after all, the attachment and belonging of human relationship, a value so Nihilistically rejected by the solitary Zen, is, indeed, the very central focus of Judaism.

Bohmian Dialogue strives to circumvent the inadequacy of conceptualization according to Zen, specifically as applicable in the effort at dialogue, only via the most protracted and arduous efforts of reciprocally Zenning of one another.

• Bohmian Dialogue

No wonder, then, that in Zen, conversation is less important as an exchange at all, than as a catalyst. Because, though each party can never be entirely on the same proverbial page, fortunately, they need not even be for the attainment of insight and even the achievement of personal growth! -All rather suggesting, if anything, the support group exchange of Constructivist Listening rather than any techniques of Active Reading or Effective Active Listening, Constructivist Listening being a process of passively allowing a person to talk without being interrupted, with nary ever a care regarding Miscommunication Competence or Conversational Adequacy, indeed wherein listeners neither overtly respond nor interpret at all, neither to paraphrase, analyze, proffer advice nor seek to relate via personal stories, all because people are simply held to be capable of solving their own problems by thinking aloud. -All very much in accord with Nihilistic value destruction as implicit to the Solipsistic Zen position upon dialogue.

For to reiterate, the Zen rejects the escapism afforded by the unique features of the idle human mind, being: imagination and cooperation. Indeed, the traditional humorous anecdotes of Zen are most often descriptive of stunning private insight, satori arising from outright miscommunication.

As when a monk humbly and fervently requested of the renowned Zen Master Zhaozhou Congshen to teach him:

Off handedly, Zhouzhou, appropriately never too full of himself and therefore for whom such moments, however auspicious to others, were by now quite, quite all routine, began by graciously concerning himself and enquiring of the monk, his guest after all, "Have you eaten your meal?" "Yes I have," replied the monk, dutifully. And so "Wash your bowl," instructed Zhaozhou casually, mindful only of the ordinary transitory passing moment and thinking little what from his own perspective was quite unremarkable.

And then, and then! by now already hanging ardently upon every word and pearl of wisdom out from the mouth of the great sage, from his own vastly heightened expectations, the monk projected and interpreted by far more than was ever intended by unwitting Zhouzhou himself, and thence awakened, entering effortlessly into his own Buddha nature lurking inside all along, in an ecstatic flash of inspiration, the monk attained satori, instantly becoming enlightened of mindfulness, heightened awareness in the enigmatic immediacy of Zen simplicity!

Now, did Zhouzhou quite unsuspecting and no doubt to his great delight, bare witness and share in the monk's happiness? Or, all the more comedic, did even the great sage, comfortable in his own routine, remain entirely oblivious and innocent of the momentous event that had transpired, no matter the sagacity accrued by his illuminated disciple of the second, the muddled monk? Did Zhouzhou and the monk ever truly connect or forever only bypass? And does it matter either way, if both should show their hearts and neither see, if nevertheless they are content and in accord? For in Zen, the important truths, universally human as they may be, are only to be found within, all along. For as the saying goes: “The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.”Indeed, the notorious Zenslap, even masterfully executed, adds nothing, but only connects unassociated thoughts into fresh realizations, even if need be, of the obvious.

In the words of Rebecca West "Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience." for, to quote Michel Eyquem de Montaigne "The word is half his that speaks, and half his that hears it." But more than this, in modern Western artistic sensibility, the very ambiguity of just such fusion is seen to validate shared experience even from differing perspectives, of that larger event, the interaction which is communication. However, in Zen, the differences between the two sides of the exchange, regardless of whatever balanced counterpoint in which they are perceived together participating, signifies far less, but merely demonstrates the futility and illusion of communication at all, save, with random luck, interaction and even misunderstanding as catalyst for individual satori.

For Zen, thus all such metaphorical argument is not Dialectic but at best, merely Heraclitian. All despite the observable cycles or renewal in societies that so closely parallel that of the individual psyche. Regardless, also of all profound immediacy of individual experience in any social historical context whatsoever, the intersubjectivity nevertheless remaining conjectural, approximate and verisimilitudinous at best, hence to be scorned by Zen as somehow inauthentic, except by the mythic legacy of direct telepathic transmission down the ancient lineage of Zen masters and their chosen protégés.

The Zen professes and exhorts practicality and acceptance of things as they are, but in succumbing to Wittgensteinean paralysis, Zen decidedly does not accept things as they are at all: Indeed, mere conversational adequacy in cooperative miscommunication repair as via hair splitting and the painstaking negotiation of reciprocal incomprehension, all has no place in the Zen, given that originality and novelty are taken as entirely subjective inspiration, intransmissible, with, objectively, Ontologically, no new thing under the sun.

• Conversational Adequacy: Mistakes are the Essence

Instead, the skilled Zen master helps to bring about the causes and conditions of insight, which, nevertheless, remains subjective and solitary. Indeed, ever it is said that the vantage for such awakening, regarded as purest, most reliable and most perfect truth and unassailable, is never far for anyone. And any seeming practical consideration of the time, effort and discomfort is to be dismissed as ego and worldly illusion, so we all may rest assured! 

"Where ever you go, there you are!" -Buckaroo Banzai

Zen criticism? 

Zen, after all, remains a field of inquiry and controversy within which different views even as to the nature of Zen itself are known to clash, spark and contend, and over human problems that must honestly stick in ones craw,, impossible neither to swallow  and stomach nor to expel.

And so, orthodoxy may be rejected even along with oppressive demands for unity.

Zen Nihilism so bleakly insists that the instant even to speak about anything, one is only doomed to miss the mark. Whereas, rational skeptical science and philosophy frankly lower any such impossible bar of perfection, spurning the futility of mythic unpremeditation, optimistically enacting any hope that the more we examine and discuss any phenomena, the closer thereby we may draw to experience the joy of better understanding thereof.

Zen and Accountability:

Zen confounds first the Prime Directive and then Zen itself!

After all, the observers observe and influence one another, not any other distinct object. Hence the sheer vanity of any Isolationist mythic 'Star Trek' Prime Directive of non intervention! We are all one and part of nature, anyhow, according to Zen. For as Werner Heisenberg pointed out, another's perspective at all, even simply being observed,in however minute the impact thereof, may nevertheless profoundly perturb.

In accordance with the law of unity of opposites which describes in matters of perspective, the underlying unity as well as the manifest polarity of things, events and processes, Zen and Buddhism partake of a controversy and synthesis (systems theory) familiar in science and philosophy, that of profound marvel delving into the reduction of anything and everything that exists or occurs to the smallest and most basic self sufficient monads, versus serene appreciation in contemplation of the universal Gestalt of all things and phenomena existing only contingently, in context, dependant upon conditioning factors, upon other things, hence empty of adequate independent self-existence and intrinsic properties.

Doing no harm is impossible, then, save not only by the rejection of ideological extremes, but also by committed benevolence. Indeed, is not the hottest circle of Dante's Inferno reserved for those who cultivate neutrality during moral crisis? One might consider that surely, if not actually doing nothing at all, then not-doing, must be the surest guarantee of committing no evil. But that can never be. Because continually bystanding in the face of suffering cannot be harmless! Only thus does Zen obtain the devout compassion of Buddhist Universalism, for which Zen austerity, The Dark Side of the Tao as notoriously manifest in Zen and the Art of Divebombing, Zen brainwashed fatalism gone war-like and cruel must and indeed should forever stick in the craw of collective memory and conscience.

But then, thereby, is not the purported great truth of futility attained and embraced by persuasive practical demonstration via Zen cessation of attachment and relation, being no more or less than in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration, extinction actually of all impulse rather than any mores specifically targeted impulse or range of impulses, then itself no more than just yet another illusion?

Indeed, since when is anything so Reactionary as Isolationism, the damnable paralytic sin of Zen indifference politicized, a Leftist bleeding-heart Liberal Progressive agenda?  We can thank Noam Chomsky, George Orwell's Renegade Liberal par excellence, who has never met a Communist despot he didn't like. For to quote Carl von Clausewitz: "The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."

Such intuitionist transcendence of ego and intellect as in Zen detachment obviously flies in direct opposition to any ideal of any Hellenized Jewish intellectual transcendence of brutishness, I and thou, deep thinking, attachment to and regard of principles or values of Universalism such as justice to occupy the minds of the righteous, only intellectual detachment in service to compassionate involvement even amid the temporal world of iniquity, integrity from the quest for fortitude in decency, to be a Mensch, in short, indeed, the very embrace of all that Zen Stoicism seemingly flees to escape. 

So, what unity or convergence can there ever be found in in these manifest polar opposites, particularly? Only, if ever, in the dawning of responsibility, of Zen and Accountability.

Explanation is irrelevant...

— As the mythically sinister Borg might intone...

The poetical sensibility of Zen strives for clarity and preciseness of allegorical imagery, pointing to that which defies direct description, all in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, wherein the Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding as such. The draw of cult initiation into the quest for enlightenment and the snares exploitation alike, is in the hope that with perseverance all that is nebulous, obscure and even dubious, will become intelligible and important later on.

But the truth is that imagery is hardly actually necessary to begin with for abstract thought, and indeed even seemingly somewhat unwieldy, indeed perhaps among the least practical of intellectual tools, but actually only the more challenging. And so, where is any advantage therein thereby? The answer is, emphatically, that the entire point of employing imagery symbolically or evocatively nevertheless remains in howsoever greater economy, stronger impression or greater familiarity with whatever selected images, than with whatever more difficult and as yet indistinct ideas represented for examination in order to be clarified.

Both Zen and Inductivism accept only personal experience, even if (very!) contrived by others, masters and educators, as the only true fit teacher, rejecting explanation as prone to error and therefore subject to critical thinking, an unreliable function of the ego. But while in some concordance with Zen in perhaps even excessively strict Empiricism, nevertheless Inductivism, unlike Zen, persists, nevertheless, Didactically in the culture of lasting progress of shared knowledge, where as Zen values only satori, the flash of transitory private intuition, a realization through direct experience.

in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding as such.

Any central hypothesis to Zen seems to be more as to questions of priorities and life style, possibly in completion with any others including those, for example, prioritizing any form of scientific curiosity, love or material standard of living and physical comfort, let alone Hedonism.

If a man is crossing the river and an empty boat collides with his skiff, even though he is a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the other boat he will scream and shout and curse at the man to steer clear. If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world, no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you. Thus is the perfect man - his boat is empty.

— Chuang-Tzu

Zen appears to be more of a competing value system or even taste, than a competing Epistemological Methodological and Ontological hypothesis. Indeed, Zen tends to define knowledge at all, by value according to it's importance as a frame of mind within Zen priorities thereof, despite any genial willingness of ancient and enduring Zen to embrace and to assimilate outside ideas and cultivate any superficial modernity in accordance with ideals of harmony via synthesis.

Zen isn't clever anymore!

"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name. 
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth." 
— expounded Tao Te Ching

Futility, indeed! Zen often generates non existent snares and worries even such as to put stereotypical neurotic Judaism to shame! "You can't solve a problem on the same level you created it." admonished Albert Einstein. Indeed, in the words of Yamaoka Tesshu: "Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap." In other words, the Zen value even of Zen itself, must needs be recognized as transitory, perhaps like unto whatever the state of the art in scientific knowledge and understanding.

After all, this before is merely a page about Zen, a despicable philosophical discourse, and not a page of Zen practice at all.

For any however lasting scientific progress of civilization even amid transience and imperfection as extolled by Scientific Rationalism must be rejected as vanity by the Zen in quest only for the acceptance of Ecclesiastical futility. -Unless, indeed, the futility of futility itself, proverbially comes out in the metaphorical wash.

Indeed, whereas the serene Tao, dwelling far less in any appeal to the terrors of disorientation, almost conjures a ghostly form in it's explorations of the void as metaphor for the untroubled life and understanding, Zen, as the quest for emptiness amid enigma, may even resort to the surreal, non sequitur, enigma and contradiction, replete with nonsense and incongruous juxtapositions. 

For Zen may prize such paradox and contradiction, where in, by a sort of Existential Heisenberg Principle, the act of repeating the right answer, even to the extent of the Tao, makes it wrong again, even the mischief of sheer irrelevance. For to quote a sage neither partakes nor shares with or imparts to others, that bygone Zen flash of insight. A dilemma! 

And all such seems by far more recommendation than an admonition, as regards the metaphorical reinvention of the proverbial wheel. Indeed, the Eastern Philosophy of Zen thus rejects any such shared legacy as in Western style social progress in favor of a strange and solitary personal quest to meditate and clear the mind of thoughts, progressively purging and emptying all that is habitual, peripheral and extraneous, and to focus attention upon one inquiry oneself rather than by placing faith in the religious writings left behind by others.

For, unlike conventionally factitiously thematic religions and philosophies, it is claimed that there can be no such object or conceptualization in Zen upon which to affix thought. Indeed, in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding as such.

For to the mindful, by heightened awareness undistracted, the Zen is revealed in the most uninteresting practical commonplace and uneventful life of the plainest person, by simplicity and unencumbered open eyed recognition of living in the midst of life as it is lived, the greatest mystery that is actually already possessed by everybody, as it is daily and hourly performed; ever serene heart enlarged to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation.

But if the no-mind is thought to perceive, thus does Zen assume perception free of self conscious preconception howsoever to be actually passive? After all, physiological sensation alone is not perception because perception is now known to be an active thought process even physiologically, neurologically, let alone psychologically, which must be learned over time by experience and practice. For it is the mind, not the eye, that sees! Hence any quest for unaltered perception is oxymoron and futile. And so, which such learning of perceptual habits are to be considered natural and wholesome as constituent to naive perception, and which are to be considered civilized and debased? And what preference can be anything but reflective and prejudicial no less?

Indeed, in so far perception is learned by trial and error, conjecturally, how much conjecture is possible without provoking reflection and self consciousness? Zen is a value preposition also prioritizing knowledge, rather than an Epistemology as such. Thus, in so far self consciousness and reflection play any part in perception, then perhaps if preconception cannot be eliminated without actually disabling perception, then conceivably self consciousness and reflection may still be deconditioned nevertheless. Or if not, then it's at least any hold of self consciousness and reflection upon affect even if not upon cognition. Or so may be claimed by the adepts.  

Indeed, with plethora of variations and syntheses, the two major schools of Zen are Rinzai, typically focusing on koan practice, and, in any departure therefrom, Soto stressing zazen meditation.

"Sit down and get glad!" is their motto. -Or just: Sit down and shut up! Zazen is body oriented and yogic, concerning itself with posture, breathing and patience. Hence, the zazen concept of doing nothing, not even thinking, pursuit of a void in which all potential choice of willful action resides, is put into practice by, instead of slouching or plopping down dead, sitting quietly in limber balance and readiness, poised as though about to rise. Some also practice a Zazen lying posture, especially when too sick for anything more, but otherwise proper sitting is said to demand more attention all too easily forgotten in the comfort of reclining.

And the Judo equivalent is said to be the neutral Mugamame stance, from which an easy transition to every offensive or defensive move most easily and readily flows. Although, Mugamame just as every other traditional martial arts stance, is passively stable much as are fixed wing aircraft in flight, where as the Pilipino Mutai Pantadyakan, like unto ballet en pointe and therefore likewise even at whatever far higher cost in energy, but thereby free from the resistance of passive stability, must instead maintain dynamic stability like unto a bird in flight in constant fluid change, for such advantage as of those notorious devastatingly powerful kicks. So, perhaps Mugamame should instead be likened unto the quiet Tau, and the en pointe of Pantadyakan to whatever center of Zen agitation.

With the practice and experience yielding the subtle cultivation of sensitivity, Zazen promotes certain attractive and healthful pleasurable sensations, along with the meditative free flow of transient thoughts and emotions, vanishing, it is said, as the drifting clouds passing to reveal the moon, for such likened is the observation of serenity.

“Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.”
— Dogen

• Be sure to permanently enable pop-ups from do-not-zzz.com in order to enjoy this charming interactive Flash presentation on the basic technique, experience and sensibility of the Zen! 

And on the path of moderation, Siddhartha's famous middle way, relaxed and healthy posture may accrue. But from the extremes of time and dedication, comes numbness, even atrophy, hence effective escape not only from reason but embodiment, the rewards of blissful vegetation. For, indeed, Vipassana meditation claims to foster insight into physical sensation with sharper awareness, unconditioning all predisposition to favorable or unfavorable reaction at all into sheer indifference.

Or to put it another way, protracted passive endurance of extremes of mounting boredom achieves the purported great truth of pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity attained and embraced by persuasive practical demonstration that is Zen cessation, being no more or les  than, in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation and frustration and extinction, but of impulse globally, in general, wholesale and in total at all rather than merely any application only to any specifically targeted impulse or range of impulses.

Whereas, the koans are often surreal paradoxes intended for meditation, typically a statement with an opposing corollary, to derail or simply exhaust linear thinking and aid in the attainment of satori. Koans, fables or questions as case study for contemplation, are like unto the Bodhidharma's unanswered "questions which tend not to edification." There is no answer because they are object lessons in the futility of all but once again, the serenity of apathetic Zen emptiness, that great truth of futility attained by persuasive practical demonstration, again in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely in the repeated elicitation and frustration and extinction, but of impulse globally, in general, wholesale and in total at all rather than merely any application only to any specifically targeted impulse or range of impulses.

For, in the words of Huang-Po: "The ignorant eschew phenomena but not thought, the wise eschew thought but not phenomena."

And because Surrealism either seeks to disorient an audience unless they are slyly in on the gag, either way, Surrealism demands it's own blithe conviction, never overt superiority. Hence, the true relevance and impact of Surrealism is only undermined by vastly unfunny adolescent smug camp. And likewise with the Zen. 

So how may one ever respond to whatever the question to the satisfaction of the Zen master? With an answer just as meaningless, irrelevant non sequitur and surreal as the question. Or if all else fails, then perhaps by administration to the Zen master a long over due and well deserved beating himself!

Never so hard core in Relativism, and too common sensible as to actually deny Ontology, Zen, nevertheless, disdains any achievable clarity of intersubjectivity as failure, on grounds of purported dearth of inspiration. Hence, despite all Radicalist spirituality or Progressive Humanism, their remains in Zen the enduring temptation to Reactionary Ludditry, save by the restraint of moderation and common sense. And even then, the vaunted Zen synthesis of opposites may tend only to superficial modernity, admitting nothing uplifting in any progress save that of the private spirit.

Indeed, analysis is, literally, deconstruction. And even Gestalt, concerned with overall structure and network of relationship, still then works with parts to resynthesize the whole. But Zen Epistemology and practice insist only upon whole perception realizable only in the wonder of natural immediate experience as authentic and revelatory of innate self even if not otherwise certain as such.

• not-two  

In short, Zen Epistemology is Heraclitian. Indeed, understanding is a verb, an act, an event, arising as a transitory flash of inspiration, satori. But knowledge (especially of anything valued as profound by the Zen) as an enduring artifact that can be shared, much less built upon, is deemed a dubious proposition. And so Didacticism never obtains, neither experientially, Empirically and Phenomenologically, nor from First Principle even of self, even though all of that remains fundamental to Zen no less than to Didacticism.

Thus, individual character development, growth, perhaps sagacity, even that ineffable Zen wisdom, is the best to be hoped for Methodologically.

Metaphysics especially as concerning the nature of being much less any broader range of usage even unto the transcendently magical and mystical, by extension then often embraces the most arcane controversy upon nothingness. Indeed, Physics delves into vacuum finding therein plenum, and Cosmology into void, and chaos finding even therein some qualities giving rise to existence in our universe. For even sheer self consistent logical validity demands that nothingness, zero, be defined indeed as no more than the empty set, rejecting as oxymoron any notion of nothingness as an entity, mooting as specious all profitless and futile arguments premised thereupon.

Indeed, the quest emptiness is central to the Zen much as the quest for truth is to science, even if likewise the destination will never be arrived.  

Nihilism

Zen Nihilism so bleakly insists that the instant even to speak about anything, one is only doomed to miss the mark. Whereas, rational skeptical science and philosophy frankly lower any such impossible bar of perfection, spurning the Ecclesiastical futility of mythic unpremeditation, optimistically enacting any hope that the more we examine and discuss any phenomena, the closer thereby we may draw to experience the joy of better understanding thereof.

Psychiatrically, Nihilism even denotes Solipsism, and behaviorally, peculiar involvement and engagement in actually self defeating and counterproductive action. But then again, Anti-therapy or Therapeutic Nihilism is the disbelief in the efficacy or value of therapy! After all, a particular long standing criticism of Psychotherapy and Psychology, by Thomas Stephen Szasz most notably, is the assertion that we do not know why Psychotherapy works when it works, or why it fails when it fails, only that anyone often benefits from getting attention.

In any case, while only few philosophers would actually claim to be Nihilists themselves, nevertheless the indifference of Nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and Metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history.

"On the one hand, the term is widely used to denote the doctrine that moral norms or standards cannot be justified by rational argument. On the other hand, it is widely used to denote a mood of despair over the emptiness or triviality of human existence."

- Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Macmillan, 1967) Vol. 5

Indeed, Nihilism is often associated with the pointlessness of anomie," the situation which obtains when 'everything is permitted.'" Cf. Rosen, Stanley. Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969. p. xiii.

• Theo-crypto-Nihilism - Desperate cynicism in denial lurking behind the sheer heroic effort of lunatic faith...

To be, or not to be? Or in the words of Albert Camus: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." And gloomy Nihilism is the position or conclusion that life really is not worth living, after all.

In the 20th century, such Nihilistic themes as Epistemological failure, value-destruction, irrelevant meaninglessness, alienation and even surreal cosmic purposelessness and Antinatalism, have all preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Mid-century, for example, the Existentialists are said to have helped popularize tenets of Nihilism in their efforts to blunt its destructive potential. Surrealism followed. By the end of the century, Existential despair as a response to Nihilism increasingly gave way to an attitude of gloomy indifference often associated with Postmodern social Relativism, indeed all as often expressed in depressing sheer Postmodern Literature.

Nihilism is constituted from the positions that because all thoughts and feelings are merely the deterministic effects of prior causality, all values, are all arbitrary unprovable unjustifiable nonsense (Existential pointlessness) and that nothing can be certain or knowable (Epistemological failure) or even communicated (Wittgensteinean paralysis).

Nihilism is more than mere unhappiness out of hard realism. Nihilism is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that actually condemns existence. Like unto the Zen, Nihilism spurns any optimistic hope of growth and progress via learning from our mistakes.

Nihilists: We are Nihilists, Lebowski. - We believe in nothing. - Jah, nothing.
The Dude: Oh, that must be exhausting.

—'The Big Lebowski' (1998) scripted by Ethan & Joel Coen

Hoping for no other liberation and embracing no love, theme or value, save that Zen Ecclesiastical futility, a true Nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an indifferent impulse to destroy anything and everything. And such, indeed, is the thrust of Anarchistic political Nihilism holding that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake, independent of and even pessimistic towards any constructive program or possibility.

As with the Zen, some may even hold Nihilism as transitional to enlightenment emergent from the rubble, and personal liberation from the folly of the herd. And such is precisely the precious hope at all for any progress in Philosophy which Nietzsche wrests from the bottom of the Pandora's box of Nihilism.

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry upon Nihilism

Existential Nihilism means that because all thoughts and feelings are merely determined by prior causality, there is actually no willing choice. Therefore, even such cherished illusions of virtue as equality, pity and justice, are no more commendable or praiseworthy than wrath, malice or any other shortcoming or misdeed can be anyone's blame or responsibility.

However, exactly to the contrary, Zen and Accountability extols exactly such karmicly deterministic view of situational  forces as Buddhist compassion and forgiveness,

Zen influenced Existential social Nihilism and detachment from everything, is distinctly manifest within the sense of isolation, futility, veritable well of sorrows and black hole of despair, angst and the hopelessness of existence increasingly prevalent in the modern world, all consistent with Nietzsche's prognosticated downward spiral.

Zen Nihilism standing in denial and value-destruction not only of objective material wellbeing, improvement of situation and circumstance, but subjective wellbeing  and intrinsic reactive happiness in response thereto as well, naturally engenders inward turning futility. Intrinsic reactive happiness stands perhaps as no less than the prime target of alienated Nihilistic value-destruction against any enticement whatsoever howsoever of engagement within the external world at all.

Nihilistic value-destruction regards all motivating human values as entirely arbitrary and senseless. Indeed, all values, even so much as survival instinct to begin with, cannot be logically reducible, but are simply a matter of human nature, biological and in that way indeed arbitrary. For as Socrates famously argues, how can the oblivion after death be any more painful than the oblivion before birth?  Thence, the Nihilistic value-destruction of the Zen in particular, is premised upon Nirvana Principle which aims at the alleviation of suffering by reducing and indeed even eliminating all need and desires on a purely subjective Phenomenal level. The Zen, devaluing objective reality at all, perhaps even somewhat obsessively strives at complete subjective destruction, effective Phenomenal annihilation of ego and maya and thence liberation from their intrinsic fraudulence.

Zen equivocation and the answer  

Without entering into the semantics of whether or not Zen qualifies as a religion or a cult, both or neither, Zen indeed does qualify in one regard, to wit that even after frankly owning up to every dark excess and even to the worst prior crimes against humanity in nigh demoniacal nonattachment from Buddhist compassion, entirely, nevertheless Zen and even Buddhism likewise, must ever either succumb and embrace the evils of its own fundamentalism once yet again, or else dance forever round and thereabout, coy, fetching and flirtatiously. Because, any temperance in Zen practical values of plain and profane common sense and moderation which is an intrinsic duality with immoderation, are all quite opposite and irreconcilable with the overreach of mystical idealism and perfectionism in the totality of being. The unraveling of the core enigma thus annihilating the Zen is in that obviously, the overreach of mystical idealism and perfectionism in the totality of being is all intrinsically immoderate and, honestly, in the very name of sanity, for freedom from the notorious vexation that is attachment to nonattachment, must be utterly surrendered as impossible and Ecclesiastically futile. However didactically, that is the Zen of Zen,

And any impression otherwise must be attributable only to the façade of reasonableness standing before the Zen abhorrence of all such conceptual dichotomy as ought to expose such flagrant doublethink to any adequate intelligence. But critical thinking in defense of autonomy, clearly depends entirely upon any sort of naive set theory for the grasping of principles. Indeed, it's and old cult intimidation maneuver to quickly disparage any such categorical thinking  as indeed demonstrating on the part of the mark or duped disciple, any slightest hint whatsoever of any dangerously discerning knowledge of metaphorical shit from proverbial Shinola!

Indeed, erosion of individuality undermining invalidation and suspension of critical faculties always forms the first wave of attack in standard methods used in cult brainwashing. There is also typically on offer, some alleged superior gnosis and a perception of high stakes. For the oneness of all things and ideas, makes for an ideal platform for every abusive hypocrisy.

• Combating cult-like mind control

By evasive convolutions of such sophistry as Ignorato Elemchi, valid argument that, however, in actuality demonstrating an entirely different position than as purported, by shifting ground, by splitting hairs, by irrelevant qualifications and empty semantic quibbles trying to have things both ways in violation of the excluded middle, even by implicit appeal to values of Zen moderation and conceivably even Buddhist compassion, Zen adherent apologists often deny that Zen says what it actually says, even while continuing to say it in ever greater urgency!

Zen promises the return to trusting innocence, but only out from sublime introversion and radical mistrust of the world we live in. Indeed, Zen all too often embraces all humanistic values, but only amid the flower beds springing up from the Zen Nihilistic rubble of the soul quieted by the sheer weight of draconian turmoil, because, after all, no lesser or worldly measures may ever be deemed adequate. Although, perhaps, sitting cross-legged and staring at the cave wall until the limbs atrophy and shrivel, may seem somewhat like tastelessly showing off! Hence the appeal to the value of Zen moderation, often entailing defensiveness and denial regarding the draconian nature of the purported great truth of pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity attained by persuasive practical demonstration that is Zen cessation, being no more or less than, in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration and extinction, but not merely of any specific targeted impulse, or range of impulses, but of impulse globally, in general, wholesale and in total at all, for example, evasive qualification to the effect that nonattachment is to be practiced only to whatever degree necessary in order to forestall risky excessive attachments that can lead to suffering. However, plainly, such is life indeed, exactly as Zen complains in the first place, that any attachment whatsoever still risks consequent suffering. Thus the manifest ambivalence of only partial nonattachment can be useful only for all of the foment of Zen melodrama vicissitude and excruciating self-conscious torment ultimately to liberate by impossible tormented striving under what amounts to careful suicide watch provided within the Zen Dojo, unto nervous collapse breaking ones spirit, or in jargon to express the idea less threateningly and more equivocally: crushing the ego shell! Thus, implicitly, it remains that the only allegedly adequate nonattachment is exactly the complete and utter nonattachment or Zen cessation, that purported great truth of futility by persuasive practical demonstration being no more or less than, in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation and frustration and extinction, but of impulse globally, in general, wholesale and in total at all, rather than merely any application only to any specifically targeted impulse or range of impulses, so prized of the Zen all along, and the embrace of  pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity. Lesser measures are embraced only as points of spiritual progress towards the ultimate objective, indeed, of utter cessation and the embrace of pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity, or else as the best that any silly Bourgeois American will likely ever accomplish.

But the truth remains that only an explicit rejection of mystical idealism and perfectionism can truly and clearly prioritize moderation, the middle road between ideological lunatic extremes, and truly abandon perfectionist mystic immoderation. Indeed, as will be expounded at greater length later on, perhaps exactly such was the true intent of Gautama Siddhartha.

If anything constructive and uplifting is every truly to be lucidly and incisively salvaged from the Zen for all time, then compassion demands nothing less than the explicit renunciation of all such enthusiastic violence and hate speech against the unjustly maligned ego! We all know full well that any healthy ego needs love too! Therefore, to find clarity, do not meditate in oblivious serenity, but reflect self-consciously thereupon.

Zen Nihilism

Paradoxically, motivational power of positive thinking often appeals to the Nihilistic de-motivating adaptive Zen ideal of universal acceptance, loving whatever one does, taking joy in any task that comes to hand, and likewise the embrace of every experience with equanimity, in truth all too often a desperate psychological  rationalization not merely of acetic self denial, but blocking out suffering by living a lie even to the extent of  moral void and no-mind of not-doing in blithe and listless service to evil, deadly hypocrisy exactly as the fictional character of Misuzu the exploited would be acolyte of Panaru, instead fallen into the orbit of the facile and predatory Manticore, recognizes to her own desperate horror but only far too late, in 'Boogiepop Phantom' episode 3: 'Life Can Be So Nice' scripted by Sadayuki Murai. Indeed, Zen is also referenced as by George Orwell in '1984' as Eastasian death worship, the Oriental counterpart to doublethink in Oceania, ever extolling noninvolvement and the virtues of inertia, automatic obedience, not-doing achieved by no-mind, the extinction of ego and autonomy, Oh, double plus good! 

No surprise, then, how just as Zen cessation and the embrace of  pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity, aim at the Behavioral elicitation, frustration and final extinction of desire and thus dissatisfaction in the individual, likewise, with or without the animus and hostility of soft-flame, the committee ambush of Zen apologetics aim at the obliteration of the very topics of desire and dissatisfaction as taboo from public discourse, accomplished by changing every conversation in pursuit of worldly happiness by doing what one loves, particularly interpersonal interaction and bonding (another word for attachment) therein, or even the very concept of happiness as state variable inner subjective response to external favorable circumstances, hence a transitory but renewable experience to be enjoyed only in leading life, all abhorrent ideas of such deadly error to the Zen sensibility, instead into yet another discourse upon the Zen, indeed consistent with Zen practice, a debate inevitably proceeding forward until exhausted cessation (in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration and extinction, but of all impulse globally, in general, wholesale and in total at all, rather than merely any specifically targeted impulse, hence the embrace of  pointless futility and Ecclesiastical vanity), never returning to initial topic. Comedian and pundit Bill Maher even has a gag about Columbus facing constant agenda highjacking on the part of chronic Zen inertia, had he lived today: All his friends would all kvetch and schmaltz: "But Chris, first explore the new worlds on the inside? " By design, the loneliness of Zen has no bridge. You might as well beat metaphorical head against proverbial wall. By contrast, the most superficial Behaviorist crass materialistic Reductionism of whatever stripe, simply tends toward the stone deaf power play when likewise confronted with such incomprehensibly alien values as intrinsic motivation, never recognized as ends unto themselves but merely subverted into further manipulative "motivators". Zen cessation, that purported great truth embraced in futility and Ecclesiastical vanity attained by technique of such persuasive practical demonstration that is no more or less than. in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration and extinction but actually of all impulse rather than any specific targeted impulse or range of impulses, also comes in handy for inevitable and inextricable extinction or cessation also of such features of autonomy as doubt and curiosity as to truth (assertions in correspondence to reality) and desire for knowledge. (awareness of truth). No wonder then, how Zen cessation in pursuit of Nirvana Principle, independence by the elimination of all needs, readily comes into service of the most oblivious and obedient heteronomy and atrocity.

Indeed, among the tenacious snares of the ego so scorned of the Zen, are every human emotional need and cherished illusion, including the yearning for sympathy and understanding. But there remains every question, just whom are the ones truly ensnared? For such fundamental impulses that they so prudishly abhor, are indeed the very wellsprings of every intrinsic human bond (Zen despised attachment) or value (worldly snare of illusion). Hence, all regard, values and bonds derivative from emotional needs are, tautologically, values of attachment. Otherwise, there are values that are radically intellectualized, or values of detachment or of utmost pragmatism. And chief among these is the Nihilistic and Solipsistic Nirvana Principle, the strategy of overcoming this world, escaping distress by reducing one's needs, not only material but principally, all regard of emotion, ego, perception, transitory illusion, maya that is the snare of attachment, much as desire and pleasure are the trap of sin according to Christianity. 

To be, or not to be? Or in the words of Albert Camus: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."  But this is somewhat imprecise. Rather, it is a matter not of deciding only whether life is always worth living, generally speaking,  but of judging whether life is ever worth living or not, whether, even in principle, life can be worth living at all. Indeed, judging whether life ever can be worth living, and perhaps even under what abstractly possible or conceivable conditions of practical implementation, might even be deemed the most central of all questions to the human condition. And hope for life worth living is either actively vested in the quest for honest integrity together with the pursuit of happiness and functional relationship or else Nihilistically rejected and condemned as by the Zen, rightly so often called out as a cowardly religion, being so loath even to risk living life.

Indeed, Zen explicitly and Nihilistically condemns and rejects worldly life as worthless, questing, regardless, only for some comfortably numbed inner life devoid of attachment, from which a return to introverted solitary innocence will bring a promised Narcissistically rapturous unpremediated satori. Zen, in short, famously and fantastically preaches it's optimistically Procrustean half measure of suicide.

"Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are." wrote Lao Tzu "When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."

But in the cutting prose of Kathleen Norris: "When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?"

Indeed, in like sentiment Jonathan Swift quips: "The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."  

Or to quote George Orwell, "The main motive for ''nonattachment'' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual  is hard work." 

We all know how perversely people can actually wallow in their own misery! Indeed, paradoxically, in extreme cases, often many actually seek dangerous refuge in the depth of their own despair by simply giving up and effectively invalidating themselves. Such are typically inconsolable in their Nihilism, denying not only the reality, possibility or feasibility of happiness,, but the desire and very value.

And of course, there is no counter argument simply because needs, desires and hence values, are at best only reducible biologically, never logically, and hence, indeed arbitrary after all. Indeed, in the words of Steve Novella: "You can't argue someone out of a position they didn't argue themselves into."  Nevertheless, much as anyone might ever struggle to deny it, the very agony evidenced of such an individual in so wretched a condition only corroborates and affirms how greatly and deeply we all do care after all.

No indeed, all such harrowing misery certainly falls somewhere short of the indifferent serenity and joy in the moment ever extolled of Zen futility! So, is such a wallower in misery simply stranded foolishly somewhere on the harrowing path to enlightenment, or is Zen just unrealistic or simply unreasonable? And is invalidation perhaps the actual lie, rather than the ever despised maya?

"Happiness is fine as a side effect," opines Adam Phillips, British psychoanalyst and author of 'Going Sane' “It’s something you may or may not acquire, in terms of luck. But I think it’s a cruel demand. It may even be a covert form of sadism. Everyone feels themselves prone to feelings and desires and thoughts that disturb them. And we’re being persuaded that by acts of choice, we can dispense with these thoughts. It’s a version of fundamentalism."  Adding: "Read a positive-psychology book, and what would a happy person look like? He’d look like a Moonie. He’d be empty of idiosyncrasy and the difficult passions." Indeed: “It seems to me that if you were to take a rather stringent line here,” concludes Phillips, “then anyone who could maintain a state of happiness, given the state of the world, is living in a delusion.”

And of course, lest the point be missed, every such criticism as above of the rank self-dishonesty of bogus Power of Positive Thinking as ever may be redeployed and marshaled in quest of futility, however applies no less readily also to the discipline of Zen. Indeed,  Isaiah Berlin considered vibrant and creative Stoical inner happiness an heroic resistance to oppression, yet deplored glamorization thereof that might even be twisted into recommendation of tyranny as incubator for great dissident literature.

Moreover, on a personal note, I must confess, that for my own part, much as my heart may ever ache from the vicissitudes of life, yet, at least all things being equal, and being as I understand restless obsession or distress on the level of Freudian emotional inner conflict, I cannot say that my head hurts from mere thinking so that I'd actually ever yearn to quell or even slow down my very thoughts alone, however indirectly representational or abstract.

Of course, nevertheless, neither can I state from experience the benefit or not of such achievement or capability, for whatever the value or reliability of any such anecdotal evidence. But then, would one even remember?

After all, Chaung Tzu says that the true sage is absent-minded, forgetful of good and bad deeds alike.

Indeed, Zen tends to define knowledge at all, by value according to it's importance as a frame of mind within Zen priorities thereof, despite any genial willingness of ancient and enduring Zen to embrace and to assimilate outside ideas and cultivate any superficial modernity in accordance with ideals of harmony via synthesis.

Likewise, what exactly is signified by deeming the self an illusion? Again, there are several possibilities: Putting aside conundrums raised thereby, literally, to deem the self illusory, asserts no such thing as self, and inner reflection thereupon and hence all sense of self at all, if not actually hallucination, then howsoever vaguely misguided. Indeed, Otherwise, again, instead freely interpreting the Solipsistic metaphor, perhaps reflective sense of identity is so woefully inadequate and distorted as to be considered illusion. Therefore, we often do not know ourselves at all. Or else or perhaps hence, to deem the self illusory is another value judgment to the effect that identity and/or ego are howsoever trivial or unworthy by whatever standards and for whatever reason.

And with even the value of self in question, one by one values pertaining to every facet or experience of the human condition likewise must come into question. Indeed, there can be no scientific reason to live, and neither any scientific refutation of however optimistically Nihilistic value destruction as of the Zen, because no matter how biologically innate, values simply are not Ontology. So, can Zen be made scientific? That would require conditions of failure and refutation. And what would those be, if not already long obtained? The famous paradox of elusive Zen, is how it's all there for the taking. Indeed, the very same may be said of suicide outright. And yet, most people neither Zen nor suicide, and most that attempting either never seem quite to get it right because what they really need is attention. And true indeed, even amid our human condition and circumstances of endless miserable suffering, the culprit in common remains no more or less than those ever demonized persisting motivating attachments of bored lonely unresolved fear, frustrated desire and yes, even Philosophy, the endless reflection upon the values ultimately derivative all therefrom, even biologically.

And in the face of such failures, one is left either like any other religious zealot, to blame one's own lack of determination and conviction of faith, or else, to responsibly reevaluate all such draconian solutions. Because autonomy and the embrace of human fallibility to carry on, remains by far a more moderate and productive option.

So, much as with all the other bogus support group motivational positivity and Behavioral conditioning even in the service of manipulative would-be Machiavellian social success, could the true motivation behind the Zen, long lambasted as the cowardly religion shying from life, indeed be no more or less than the same simple and dishonest decidophobia?

Zen in a pill? Be a happy brain!

The very best and most fortunate outcome from lobotomy indeed conferred peace from anxiety, but also the loss of motivating drive. And Thorazine was initially marketed as a less invasive means to similar results. The increasing resort to lobotomy was never a scientific error, but a Zen value judgment. likewise in even either circumstantially desperate or simply obsessive preference of the perfection of peace and tranquility over suffering and struggle, at whatever cost to ineffable ntangibles of flawed and troubled humanity.

 

But nowadays, despite how 81% where found to want the government’s prime objective to be the ‘greatest happiness’ rather than the ‘greatest wealth,’ nevertheless polling data collected by GfK NOP for the BBC series 'The Happiness Formula,' revealed that 72% simply would not take a legally available drug that made them happy, even if there were no side-effects.

 

And yet, behold the medicalization of unhappiness. Yes: Doctors are now medicating unhappiness. Zen in a pill, better living through chemistry for being a happy and better regulated brain! Or, is American fallacy simply heedless of Soviet experience?

 

Or then again, rather, is happiness not even merely a condition, but actually a disorder?

Ancient and enduring Zen ever strives to embrace and to assimilate outside ideas and cultivate any superficial modernity in accordance with ideals of harmony via synthesis. However, if ancient Zen will never truly modernize, nevertheless, Zen may nonetheless, so to speak, find itself reborn in contemporary incarnation.

Indeed, Zen pragmatic Nihilism in dismissal of human needs and values as arbitrarily meaningless Ecclesiastical vanity, futility and the illusion of ego, reoccurs as bleeding-edge psychopharmacological neurochemical Reductionism, palliative psychopharmacology questing after bio-happiness, in treatment of everything under the sun, including, and I quote: "the human condition" as nothing more than evolutionary maladaptation behind the times and civilization.

Yet exactly all such distressful evolutionary traits or response that are defensive may nevertheless be valued as useful even if aversive, rather than blithely pathologized as maladaptive.

So, how may be assessed the prospect of ongoing neurochemically assisted cessation or Behavioral extinction and retreat from life?

In truth, life drug free demands responsibility at all for one's own safety and any cultivation whatsoever of self-agency, and self-efficacy. Otherwise, narcotics, prescription or recreational, really do become necessary to survival. And of course, leave us face it, at least given current state of the art, addiction rather might qualify as emotional baggage, a considerable and burdensome attachment. Modern Psychopharmacology is almost exclusively uppers and downers, prescription addiction in service of further reaction formation for the sake of repressive Behavioral Modification. Other few drugs to the contrary inducing disinhibition lowering hardened defenses and liberating repressed emotions to the promising facilitation of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for the most severely disturbed, quickly become controlled substances deemed threatening to the social order.

Zen Nihilism Shock Therapy Vs. Zen Moderation

For 'Scientism' is the term coined by Karl Popper for what he saw as the religion of science, the making of science into the object of a religion and the practice of science, likewise the more superstitious, all motivated in clutching so desperately for the chimera of certitude or whatever certitude surrogate therein, much as in conventional religion likewise the appeal to faith. But what shall herein be dubbed as Scientism Lite, instead of actually expecting certitude or whatever certitude surrogate in science, nevertheless derives a satisfaction, even dependable reassurance and meaning in the deeper sense, in a word: solace, from hope in the rational and Empirical explainability of the universe embraced through science.

All such, however, remain intangible values. And, strictly speaking, the Ontology of science investigated via the Epistemological Methodology of Scientific Method and Empirical evidence, experiment and repeatable observation, is entirely empty of, all value judgment or attitudes, even motivating optimism of character towards scientific rationalism.

However, in the ardent cultivation of immediacy and  awakening to mindful heightened awareness of experience, and thence the rejection of conceptualization as burdensome self-conscious encumbrance and suffering, Zen quests for the complete abandonment of understanding as such that is, indeed, the goal put forth  of scientific investigation.

In the story, Katharine Janeway, redoubtable captain of the starship Voyager, lost in the reaches of uncharted deep space and ever burdened with command, must undergo a baffling and protracted ritual ordeal in order to safely traverse a dangerous and mysterious symbolic ceremonial archway or gateless gate in order to save her vulnerable dear friend and crewmate Kess from the consequences of her own unsuspecting curiosity and the puzzling injury resultant of a fateful accident at an alien temple cave where sensor readings are forbidden.

The rituals, however, are all confabulated from Janeway's own projected expectations, ambition and determination, all as so obliquely provoked by the oracular and obscure guidance so affably proffered her in the shrine.

And by the time Kess is saved and conscious once again, and the riddles both of the somewhat bizarre malady or injury and also of the rather paradoxical cure (The mysterious cure for Kess, unconscious and in critical condition throughout, apparently first requiring biochemical changes in Janeway's own biochemistry as manifest from her final state of desperately bewildered and demoralized near collapse and acute exhaustion) are finally open to rational scrutiny, Captain Janeway, harrowed, dazed and exhausted beyond caring, helpless throughout the baffling and seemingly arbitrary ordeal and desperate leap of faith, has attained enlightenment of Zen futility, cessation. that purported great truth of futility as attained by technique of persuasive practical demonstration being no more or less than, in terms of Behavioral Modification, merely repeated elicitation, frustration and extinction of impulse, forever beyond the former solace of any Scientism Lite now quite crushed.

And so, in the end, though optimism strictly in the quest for literal truth being correspondence to reality and even knowledge thereof, the efficacy of science in rational Empirical inquiry reestablished as a matter of ordinary practicality, stands plausibly enough vindicated once again, nevertheless the enthusiastic technobable rings somewhat hollow forever more in Janeway's ears. 

Hence and thus does the striking and deeper pent-up irrelevance exposed in the dénouement form the true climactic anticlimax of the tale. But the question must remain open if ever thence accrues any grace and more serine acceptance for Janeway of her situation.

For the question of meaning in the deeper sense, especially as in the proverbial meaning of life actually signifies whatever valued prospect of fulfillment or else only futility, sheer Ecclesiastical vanity. And in case of just such utter futility, then there is no use bemoaning thereof. Yet even so much as the aforesaid common sense may seem easier said than done, given actual human nature and behavior. And indeed, the embrace of apathy and surrender to futility is the primary motivating goal put forth of the Zen.

Thomas Szasz famously defined happiness as "[a]n imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children and by children to adults."

Life is suffering of one kind or another, an Earthly Hell in which to abandon all hope. Thus the cold succor and sublime satori of stunned Zen apathy is merely requisite pain management.  Or then again, is Zen really all just colossally sour grapes, maybe? 

The program of becoming happy, which the pleasure principle imposes on us, cannot be fulfilled.

— Sigmund Freud

 

Some say that one becomes addicted to shame when another's heart is closed to one, because, however excruciating, the sheer megalomania of taking the blame protects one from the ugly truth that we really have no control over others and the universe or God. We can't make either love us or, ultimately, even protect those who do. Put more simply, then, and in complete good faith, powerlessness, the impotent helplessness of the human condition is terminally demeaning.

Indeed, in this or any one life alone, let alone any others past or to come if such there be, all human suffering is seen in Zen as the emotional baggage of the ego; the ego, baggage and all, being an Ecclesiastical vanity that must, in a stunning cathartic moment of insight and confrontation with the truth of all such Ecclesiastical vanity in worldly things and attachments and desires, all regard whatsoever, be relinquished entirely, for the attainment liberation, Nirvana during this life, by which to overcome this world.

All cooperation in baffling and perplexing cult initiation persist upon suspended judgment and the hopes that things will begin to make sense later on. -A false hope to be dashed in Zen Surrealism. For Zen seeks to duplicate or simulate, less dangerously, an overwhelming effect sometimes observed of sudden devastating and even life threatening trauma, that of renewed vividness and shattered priorities, sometimes called: enlightenment.

Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic. 

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Indeed, the authoritarian peer pressure of traditional Japanese society engenders such crushing self consciousness that might even be metaphorically envisaged as a great rising bullying tsunami wave of shame and anguish such as might, at long last, in a moment of great and dramatic suspense, finally crest and crash at the threshold very sanity, redolent with the promise of well earned peace and gentle sunshine on that beach of the land beyond all cares!

But without fundamental catharsis or transformation one will be unable to advance, and only remain, metaphorically, asleep. Drastic measures, harsh regimen and great sacrifice may be indicated in order to be jolted from complacency and crack open to finally attain the serenity of blissful apathy.

And so, the Zen Master provokes or evokes the disciple's distress, by sympathy or cruelty, sense or nonsense, by any means fair or foul that the Zen Master may choose in whatever opening as may ever present itself, until nothing makes sense, and so nothing matters any more. -In terms of Behavioral Modification, eliciting response repeatedly only for purposes of frustrating every impulse to reach out emotionally, unto extinction. Because the painful Existential conundrums of life, none the least of which surround Zen itself, investigated by uncompromising Zen must stick in one's craw, impossible neither to stomach nor to expel. And freedom from Mammon and Maya must be attained by passage through the barrier (for such is the role of the Zen Master) and not the gateless gate. 

By paradoxical intention, never striving or exhorting to motivate disciples, but actually struggling to drive them away, thus does the Zen Master leave it, instead, to the disciples to try to motivate the Zen Master himself, thus perhaps allowing the disciples the latitude for developing a sense of responsibility for their own wishes, be that a minimal, moderate, realistic and healthy self accountability, or else an impossible transcendent ideal of responsibility engendering or revealing desperate sycophancy.

Thus, whereas the professional compassion of the basically Freudian talking cure of traditional Western Psychotherapy coaxes out Catharsis from the patient via acceptance and even affirmation of the values of human needs, actually striving to heal whatever damage to self image, by contrast, Zen seeks to liberate inner Buddha nature finally by crushing the ego shell which is seen as the root of all suffering, fear and doubt, according to Buddhism and Hinduism the motivating goal put forth  of which is to need less and cease caring so as to finally embrace not simply any Western value of ingenuity and creative problem solving born of frustration, but the great truth of Ecclesiastical vanity, sheer futility. 

And they're not kidding!

For as long as the world abides in tragedy, mad and damaging, madness of some kind or other will have it's plausible defenders as the only true sanity and succor.

Hence, Zen is Draconian pragmatism in the service of optimistic Nihilism.

Indeed, manipulation is best defined as undue advantage from trickery via the exploitation of affective innate and conditioned triggers or "push buttons" to undermine and overwhelm, even barrage, resistance, better judgment and autonomy of the target, via subtext of emotional incentive and disincentive. –As distinct from open coercion alone or substantive disinformation, lies. Typically, the manipulator obfuscates the nature of their coercion exercised, along with whatever self-serving advantage thereof. And for the Zen, life amounts no more that to an endless and wearisome succession of manipulation, via the diabolical "push button" triggers and strings attached, escapable only by surrendering all attachment without regard. Whereas, for example, Transactional Analysis, by contrast, is less radical and more selective, and may even be found appealing to Zen moderation.

So, if anything in life does deserve to be accorded any greater importance or legitimacy, then what is essential and what is extraneous? And essential or extraneous to what purpose, motivating goal put forth, agenda or value? Unless relative to any clear and discrete purpose or strategy, assertion or implication of the primacy of one aspect of human nature, Phenomenal condition or state of consciousness over another is surely more often the very height of value judgment, not objectivity and Ontology of reality per se. And, indeed, the ancient and ongoing debate to this very day, is one over not only purposeful strategy but very much of value preference. Even the Zen rejection of values is in and of itself an ultimately pragmatic value. And madness of any stripe is perhaps more often marked by the lack or distortion of values than by any other more concrete delusion. Hence, arguably, values, then, are inherent to perspective and hence indispensable to clarity and sense, no less than reason itself. Yet the greatest sense of clarity often belongs only to madness, exactly as advertised by the Zen.

Because, whereas in Western Psychology, the break from involvement in external reality leaves only desperate lonely Narcissism, in mystical traditions such as the Zen, only a fully realized psychosis facilitated in Zen practice, achieving the lofty abandonment of worldliness, is the only path to restore genuine spontaneity, clarity and compassion, by freedom from suffering.

Little doubt can there be that there is no despair save by even the last fading embers of hope. And with the abandon of all hope, most beguiling and mesmerizing of all motivating snares of illusion, so too, obviously, will despair be quelled at long last, and peace attained. And such exactly is the radically pragmatic and advice of the Zen, indeed, the Socratic next best thing to being dead.

The ever begged value question remains, however, in that another somewhat less flattering euphemism than the perhaps somewhat cavalier lofty and romantic metaphor of crushing the ego shell, and no less value loaded, is in the tragic pathos of the expressive figure: to break one's spirit. -Indeed, surely a high cost and a grave risk for contentment, such as ever may accrue thereby, from resignation and utter complacency in the literal abandon of all hope! In Psychiatry, after all, futility and loss of interest are considered signs of disordered depression, not revered as the royal road to enlightened serenity, and nervous collapse is seldom actually a recommendation, even under what amounts to the scrupulously careful suicide watch provided within the Zen Dojo.

If anything constructive and uplifting is every truly to be lucidly and incisively salvaged from the Zen for all time, then compassion demands nothing less than the explicit renunciation of all such enthusiastic violence and hate speech against the unjustly maligned ego! We all know full well that any healthy ego needs love too! Therefore, to find clarity, do not meditate in oblivious serenity, but reflect self-consciously thereupon.

Boredom: the desire for desires. 

— Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy, 'Anna Karenina'

 

And ironically, perhaps whatever famous achievements of Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha, where necessarily contingent upon exactly the sheltered posh life that he came to reject as such a sham. Indeed, whereas perhaps the closest Western analog of the Eastern concept of satori, namely Mazlow's famous model of self-actualization, abiding or episodic, very much depends upon social and technological progress towards the very highest standard of living and comfort, explicitly making prerequisite any experience of the satisfaction and satiation of worldly physical, emotional and social needs of deficiency, rather than at all, transcendence thereof via their abnegation, suppression, reduction and elimination in accordance with Nirvana Principle, and even though any such Western Psychopathological characterization as Psychotic break may seem harshly prejudicial in connotation, it may rather even be just such stunned apathetic detachment, in turn exalted as true inspiration into long denied dawning grasp and acceptance of overwhelming reality, the awakening that is the specifically Zen Catharsis pain management, suffering unto burnout ad apathy at the natural safeguard tolerance threshold of Ecclesiastical vanity, sheer futility, all cold comfort as such may offer, thence enlightenment, attainment of the Socratic "next best thing to death," a perfect neutral balance and harmony, inner peace, awakened undistracted mindful heightened awareness of the momentary and common place, awakening to freedom and true autonomy that will be extolled as the path to perfect selfless compassion, sharper wits even from perfected detached rationality (though never exactly Rationalism per se), or even better Tantric sex, depending upon who one asks. After all, according to the Zen, even without the sheer Nordic sense of darkness and menace of an Odin the Mysterious Stranger, nevertheless, the Buddha performs not only as Psyche Pomp and guide but scam artist trickster! For, to find oneself, one first must loose oneself.

And, there fore, all this dissertation is useless. Because in Zen, explanation actually undermines persuasive practical demonstration of Zen enigma. Only the harrowing experience may be beneficial. For the essence of Zen is Ecclesiastical vanity, sheer futility! -Ecclesiastical vanity. Thus, it must be presumed that if any of this is utterly confusing or, perhaps better still, emotionally unimaginable, then understanding may dawn!

Or, else, perhaps, also if the information rich juxtapositions may be pleasing, even despite being coherently and logically sequenced, and not because of it.

Although, in the words of Yamaoka Tesshu: "Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap." And to that latter very end of sobering letdown, Didactics of critical demystification may yet find paradoxically Zen application.

Indeed, even the traditional Zen scorn towards Philosophy typically rife with contradictions and also conundrums such as in this very sentence, is, in and of itself, nevertheless, a crucial Philosophical position. Much as Zen embraces the void by process of elimination ad infinitum, likewise the Socratic Method strives for enlightenment by refutation, also questing for truth in a process of elimination. So why does Zen tradition, so prizing of paradox, spurn the contradictions discovered in philosophical discourse?

At any rate, the prized karmic misanthropy of Zen is lofty and paradoxical. Indeed, by the rationales of Zen, perhaps even the most exploitative liars and frauds do God's work in crushing ego. For the sincere tough love of Zen, or so we are assured, is not intended as any sort of demonic and heartless Sadistic gloat, but, rather, just to the contrary, a sacred quest into the heart of the tragic human condition that is the rightful object of causeless perfect compassion.

Zen claims to offer nothing that isn't there for the taking. And yet, Zen is supremely difficult and troubling. If Zen ever patronizes, then even such a position might even proceed from integrity and consistency. And so, hypocrisy is seen only entering from human weakness thwarting true ideal Zen, to gullible disciples and their arrogant Zen celebrities. And so, is any of that indication of the radical utopian overreach of the Zen?

In confrontation with this very question, what will be the demands of Zen moderation and controversy? 

Comedian and host of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart, lamenting the polarization of politics by extremists, and yearning for the better centered and generally less excitable masses to rise and storm the seats of power, assailing the clashing ideologues, chanting: "be reasonable! Be reasonable" also likewise has suggested a qualified pledge of allegiance "one nation under our reasonable God."

But is such ever to be Zenned? And in which heaven abide reasonable gods?

Wise men make proverbs and fools repeat them. -as the old saying goes...

Indeed, if even the Lord Krishna to Arjuna cautioned how he could never tell his story, as it slipped from him, the same way twice, then what did Gautama Siddhartha really discover, and nearly never expound at all, convinced that no contemporary could possibly understand?

Indeed, can whatever distortion of ages past ever be pierced, even today? Can the Zen mischief of repetition only yet compound and confound upon itself? Or in all this time, might we dare be optimistic ever of better readiness to receive and understand?

Perhaps the clue may yet be had in that which does not reconcile, not even as dualistic opposition. Namely, moderation, the famed middle way of Gautama Siddhartha the Buddha on the one hand, with such flagrant ideal Manichean extremes of perfectionism as manifest in any motivating goal put forth of total release or escape on the other hand, thereby necessitating, instead, such jarringly immoderate Draconian self negation, crushing of the ego shell (meaning: nervous collapse breaking the spirit under what amounts to a careful suicide watch provided within the Zen Dojo) and utterly complacent resignation and surrender of all attachment and regard in the abandon of all hope.

For Zen engages in the denunciation of human sympathy as a deadly attachment ensnaring the unwary from attainment of Zen futility and emptiness awakening into mindful heightened awareness of the transitory and common place. Indeed, Zen extols dissolution of the bonds of society, all because of suffering in society. Zen is so Philistine and anti-intellectual in such dread of risking disconnection as entailed in the employ of layered abstract reasoning.

Indeed, what oversimplification can there be the worse and falling further from the mark in any hoped for apprehension of the totality of being, than perhaps among the greatest of immoderation nigh inherent to the Zen even abandoning perfectionism in practice, nevertheless enduring in the fanatical Radicalist insistence upon pure Cartesian justification for every cognition or affect whatsoever!

And, surely, what a fuckin' drag! For to quote Thomas Moore:" But, faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast to some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last." 

Again, in the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic." Indeed, any feeling creature in suffering and sorrow can reach a threshold of despair into learned helplessness lauded by the Zen as sublime apathy, the endorphin biological defense mechanism of disassociation ramped up to its utmost extreme, Zen enlightenment into the great inner truth of futility, thus promising life in the moment without attachment, indeed an achievement of immeasurable practical value, but only given Nihilistic value destruction in such profound contempt for Mammon. -And thus all whether by intent or merely as a byproduct, nevertheless no less intrinsically, thereby dangerously disintegrating all manner of emotional and intellectual defenses against conditioned cult obedience and the dissociative behavior of automatic action.

And it can never be enough simply to qualify that the true Zen master should never be so gullible. For all such as above, indeed, is exactly the dilemma of the human condition that should stick forever in the craw of Zen agitation, impossible neither to stomach nor to expel, at least until Zen, indeed, exactly as according to Yamaoka Tesshu, like unto soap to wash with, must finally likewise be washed off as well, cleansed in the crystal clear water of the transparently obvious and therefore often forgotten and nigh invisible, the return to common sense practicality. -Not by dropping the soap in the shower and bending over blindly groping to find it! Especially not when life is regarded as such a prison. -metaphorically that is.

Instead, if any sort of Zen practice is truly to be all that much safer than real life tragedy, then perhaps deconditioning of mind and body, like anything else, will generally be more fruitful in harm reduction, progress, improvement, systematically correcting errors and deficiencies, traumatic or otherwise (-and ideology, especially!), as they come to light, than so immoderately clinging to, and thereby turning truth into, the dire Manichean falsehood of exhorting wholesale attack upon whatever will howsoever be simplistically and enthusiastically demonized as the ultimate root of all our suffering, whether as ever the case may be, the demon of the hour be attachment as in Zen, desire as in traditional Christianity, property as in Marxism, or any other woefully half-baked target.

Indeed, just as fancy upscale Psychotherapists are often so roundly mocked for treating" the worried well,", likewise Gautama Siddhartha is sometimes criticized and perhaps unfairly misunderstood, for allegedly addressing only posh ennui of the privileged ruling class instead of overcoming far greater worldly suffering,

But by contrast to Zen perfectionist idealism, the motivating goal put forth  of Sigmund Freud was far more modest, the transformation of the extreme emotional misery that he witnessed constantly, just as he often said, into ordinary unhappiness. For surely such must be the first step to anything at all grander. And perhaps, likewise, Gautama Siddhartha, who rejected extremes both of excess and of deprivation, was also not such an ideal perfectionist at all, but only sought, more reasonably, to address such suffering as he discovered out in the real world, only via sensible harm reduction, improving life tolerably by common sense healthy living, mind and body. -Indeed, the optimism of progress, imperfect, open transparent reasonable and fallible ongoing improvement, being a position frequently misunderstood, nay, if not quite entirely incomprehensible, from any all-or-nothing transcendental ideology doggedly insistent upon the perfect ideal as the only true measure of all situations for anything to be knowable at all, that it must be complete and certain.

Perhaps the idealists deserve praise for any vision of anything however impossibly better even amid the most crushing conditions of the ancient world and endless human suffering. Nevertheless, such may yet profit from a gentle reminder how even the fire-bringer and redeemer Prometheus sacrificed all only for the sake of progress and opportunity, in other words: to improve the hitherto dim, damp, chill and dismal human condition, howsoever incrementally.

Another definition or hypothesis of the middle way of Siddhartha, just possibly consistent and reconciled with any sort of Zen idealism, is again, of neutrality and hence void, returning to the putative great redeeming truth of Ecclesiastical vanity, sheer futility, awakened totality and sheer serene apathy free of distraction from mindful heightened awareness of the ordinary and transitory. So the question remains: is the latter rationalization actually reconcilable and consistent with Zen moderation? Indeed, can the middle way metaphor expand to encompass both latter and former definitions as aspects in Gestalt synthesis?

To promise anything so impossibly extreme and complete. as complete escape from all suffering at all, only tempts if not actually extorts, hypocrisy. All too often, getting to the root of a problem demands bloody mindedly throwing out the proverbial baby with the metaphorical bathwater. And the core radical premise of Zen is extremist to the ultimate, and simply irreconcilable with Zen moderation. Given ongoing controversy within Zen, any number of conceivable qualifiers can always be attached, indeed in evocation of such Zen values as of moderation and practicality along the middle road of Siddhartha. Yet all such qualifiers seem disingenuous, typical Zen equivocation, remaining as they do, implausible and irreconcilable, unless until ever even moderation and practicality are openly accorded priority and core fanatical extremes of perfectionist idealism of the Zen can first be explicitly abandoned, rather than all cloaked in evasive sophistry and qualification in order the inexorable logic later to reassert itself surreptitiously as perhaps somewhat disingenuously intended. As things stand, indeed, even the infamous moral vacuum of Zen seems the more consistent than much lauded Buddhist compassion requiring all manner of ad hock doctrine tempering the uncompromising extol of sublime apathy.

For the manifest immoderation and human perversity to be explained away, remains so manifest in all of the melodrama of uncompromising Zen rectitude and cathartic breakdown, perhaps only long overdue for a big Zenslap or just a gentle smile, from some latter-day avatar or inner specter of serene and clean living Siddhartha. For the reasonable moderation to truly walk the middle road of Siddhartha may first demand the open and explicit abandonment of impossible perfectionist idealist excess baggage.

Alas, Zen, preaching Nirvana principle, lowered earthly expectations, instead so often remains fixated upon impossible and ideal perfectionist demands of miraculous introversion. For such are the notorious snares attachment to non parchment. But even so, in calmer alternative to the Zen foment of inner crisis, yet there remains the seemingly safer, gentle, simple and moderate recommendation of the mind with no reference point in meditation toward the quiet cultivation of Zen inner peace, void, indeed, fruit of the very same great redeeming value of totality awakened in mindful heightened awareness of the ordinary and transitory, sheer Ecclesiastical futility and serenely apathetic surrender of all attachment without regard, and most especially the goodbye to agitated worry, especially lunatic ideology.

• Ultimate loneliness and enlightenment

What is "Not-Doing?"

You can observe a lot just by watching.

—Yogi Berra

 

 

Descartes seized upon, as the beginning of his philosophy, his famous declaration: "I think, therefore I exist." But if you are not thinking, what? This is where Zen begins. The Zen rejects the escapism afforded by the unique features of the idle human mind, being: insight, imagination and cooperation, alll as byrdensome self-consciousness. For Zen means doing things willingly and cheerfully, and not-doing means letting actions control the doer rather than the other way around.

 

So, can there be any Zen of effortless Altruism? Indeed, what numinous clarity of right action transcends any dichotomy of selfishness versus Altruism?

Even in the stillness of sitting meditation, Not-Doing needs must remain distinct from mere inertia, laziness, sloth, laissez-faire or, indeed, any mere passivity, but perhaps more properly, action in disregard, without attachment. The point being that apprehension is often known even to bring about the very dreaded results. Don't force it, just let be.

By the sense of relief from pressure of Not-Doing, Wu-Wei, the Taoist precept of action not from agenda but rather with with zijan,.
natural spontaneity, may one gain the freedom and sense of relief to simply be (or Not-Be) oneself. In equilibration, free of the striving and preoccupation of intention, the bliss of ever unfolding oneness may reveal itself to the quieted mind.

Wu-Wei is the Taoist expression for the power of positive not-doing. It is the action in non-action, the knowing in not-knowing, the something in nothing, the doing in not-doing. Wu-Wei is following the way of the water, the way of the wind. It is the not absence of action, but it is the absence of trying. Wind is never still, but it has no intention. Water ever seeks its own level, but not on purpose. 

 

Or in the words of Chuang Tzu: "detachment, forgetfulness of results, and abandonment of all hope of profit."

Not-Doing defined as action from Buddha Nature, however, only shifts the question. And Buddha Nature as opposed to what else? Why, ego, of course. So, Not-Doing, not by explanation or conceptualization, but as the fruit of practice of Zen just as any other system of principles and methods employed in the performance of any routine or  set of activities, denotes automatic skill, easy effortless action ingrained to second nature without even trying, as in the practiced facility granting the sense of ease in the conduct of any art achieved in unselfconscious perception without distraction from the process that has finally become second nature, all from No-Mind, fearless and free of all cares, empty of thought and without self conscious premeditation nor by impulse either.

The arrow is said to fall from the Zen archer like the first snowflake, with salvation from sin, escape from karma and no weight of responsibility on his own part as he acts without attachment or regard, without the ugliness of thinking about it.

As a glittering generality, mythical promise of the miraculous is epitomized in the immortally trite platitude of Yoda the Jedi Master: "Do or do not, there is no try." 

Likewise, skilled dharma is thought to accrue in Not-Doing, supremely adaptive and unpremeditated right action going with the flow and rising to situation unfolding, behavior that arises from a sense of connection to others and to one's environment and the experience of unity, for everything to take care of itself, including morality, all too easily dismissed with all other passions, emotional attachments, regard or conceptual and rational issues.

Or to drop the ever passive voice of the Zen and frame the entire conceit most plainly and concisely in the ever Zen despised active voice:

No-mind blind submission to Behavioral conditioning absolves all weighty cares of responsibility!

 

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

Yes, yet another charming Zen snow job!

And a similar fashionable pseudo-sociological rationalization for the same age old cowardice likewise frequently snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, might be that of spontaneous collaboration, especially when likewise to the exclusion of intentive planning and action by association with crank ideologies of paralytic radical anarcho-holism, the diligent cultivation of memetic influence upon the sublime confluence of appropriate conditions for whatever particular desirable and foreseeable outcomes, and all to the rigid exclusion of events in crude linear progression especially as from any such abhorrent crassness as of direct action.

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. 

— Benjamin Disraeli

 

For the problem with any Nihilistically unsympathetic morally void Zen, is that, just as the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. And such a Zen readily adapts itself to whatever authoritarian ethos and duty of obedience that history brings, however deranged. So, what, precisely, ever distinguishes masterful adaptability from pliant resignation or even sheer murderously violent psychotic disassociate states of fanatical marauders? Indeed, is not the hottest circle of Dante's Inferno reserved for those who cultivate neutrality during moral crisis? Because by standing in the face of suffering can never be harmless!

But in the alternative to simply going with the flow, at least there is still also the Zen that prizes the honesty of agitation and intractable discomfort with Existential dilemma.

• An otherwise fairly accurate even if dogmatically Trinitarian Critique of Zen
• Concise critique plus comparison to Christianity

Paradoxically, motivational power of positive thinking often appeals to the Nihilistic de-motivating adaptive Zen ideal of universal acceptance, loving whatever one does, taking joy in any task that comes to hand, and likewise the embrace of every experience with equanimity, a mechanism of psychological denial to rationalize not merely acetic self denial, blocking out suffering by living a lie, but even moral void and no-mind of not-doing in blithe listless service to evil, deadly hypocrisy exactly as the fictional character of Misuzu, acolyte of Panaru, recognizes to her own desperate horror, but only far too late, in 'Boogiepop Phantom' episode 3: 'Life Can Be So Nice' scripted by Sadayuki Murai. Indeed, Zen is also referenced as by George Orwell in '1984' as Eastasian death worship, the Oriental counterpart to doublethink in Oceania, ever extolling noninvolvement and the virtues of inertia, automatic obedience achieved by the extinction of ego and autonomy, Oh, double plus good!

• Zen and the Art of Divebombing
  or: The Dark Side of the Tao

And make no mistake, such was not the merely a tragic abuse of Zen, historically, but nigh inevitable from the inherent flawed weakness of Zen all along and unto this very day, still crying out.

There is even a fashionable Anarchistic concept of collective not-doing somewhat disingenuously designated: spontaneous collaboration.

Actual spontaneous collaboration is indeed observed in different species including humanity, arising organically under various particular circumstances to serve whatever particular range of needs. But spontaneous collaboration as an ideology is radical anarchism, questing for personal liberty via the attachment disordered and Nihilistic rejection of all intentive and structured interactions throughout society. The ideal of reciprocal and symmetrical spontaneous collaboration is manifest in the Open Source format of entirely noncommittal voluntary collaboration on a whim, both the achievements and practical imitations whereof are all well known and understood, in the world of computing. But it is no secret that in actuality, behind most every successful Open Source initiative, there is somewhere a commuted steering committee securely nested within the corporate world.

Just as individual not-doing is supposed to rise to whatever the occasion, so does actual spontaneous collaboration as observed arising organically, within whatever limits of application. -Very much unlike the radical anarchist ideological lifestyle of spontaneous collaboration, really little more than profound alienation in deep denial, bush-league anarchism, in reality nothing more than trendy pseudo-sociological rationalization for age old decidophobic paralytic radical anarcho-holism, frequently snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, especially when likewise to the exclusion of intentive planning and action by appeal to crank ideologies of  the diligent cultivation of memetic influence upon the sublime and nigh magical confluence of appropriate conditions for whatever particular desirable and foreseeable outcomes, firmly eschewing any such abhorrent crassness as of individual direct action seeking to guide events in crude linear progression.

The main motive for ''nonattachment'' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual  is hard work.

— George Orwell,

Unfinished Tantricfanfic: 'Frisco Babylon

Join in and help develop the mere footnote into a more compelling theme

• Stories of Zen  
• Japanese Aesthetics and the Garden
• The Book of Tea  
• Buddhatronics!
• Zen arts
• Capturing the haiku
• TangoZen
• TarotZen? (How absurd! For did not the Buddha explicitly advise Buddhist monks not to use their psychic powers for divination?)

The Maya and Samsāra: Eastern Ontology

The central at least seemingly fantastical premise or Solipsistic metaphor of all schools of Buddhism and Hinduism, including also the Zen, is that of the maya, the veil worldly illusion masking the true unity of all being, that there are not really many living beings populating the universe, but that, actually, a dreaming and multiple personality disordered God is essentially trapped veritably multitasking countless simultaneous nightmares, innumerable illusory POV sharing some element of narrative cross-continuity, in each of which eventually struggling by the means of Eastern religion and practice, to pierce the dual illusion of self and the outside world, by the cultivation and attainment of void, totality and sheer serene apathy, purportedly achievable in Zen futility, all so as to escape the snares of attachment and involvement, regard whatsoever, in illusion and vanity and thus awake, to finally halt each ongoing karmic cycle, until none remain, and ever completely return to innocence in the blissful unaware nonexistence that is the ultimate, the self-communion of God.

Whereas the fantastical premise or Solipsistic metaphor of the maya is popularized for the cinema in the Matrix movie franchise. But unlike the Matrix, the maya is more than the machination of sinister conspiracy, rather the maya is metaphor for samsāra, being merely our Existential conundrum of hapless bumbling involvement as the offish hard luck chumps, losers and utter schlemiels that we are.

• Zen and Accountability

• Why can happiness be so elusive?

Of karma and dharma 

Or is the cultivation of conduct within dharma, rather a questing for impersonally cold-blooded perfection in dealing with others? Indeed, must Zen prize or reject the same insight of spontaneous authenticity striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? Indeed, strictly speaking, can Zen ever even recognize as possible any insight of spontaneous authenticity striven for in Transactional Analysis between individuals? After all, bypassing, exchange which is not genuine communication because it lacks sufficient intersubjectivity and does not carry at all the same meanings or even purpose, intention or point at all between the participants, is all there really is, according to the Zen, traditionally.

According to Zen, individuals may be perfectly genuine, but dialogue, never mind the attachment snare of relationship, never can be genuine or true. Hence, Zen must regard Transactional Analysis as quixotically futile. For only the individual quelled into conduct within dharma can conceivably ever be however cold-bloodedly receptive to others, according to Zen.

In the most Heraclitian Buddhist thinking more current than ever in modern physics, all objects, phenomena or other events are deemed empty of self sufficient inherency which illusory. Such, however, is relationship, indeed, in a strictly dharmic view. Whereas for Zen, dialogue, literally from dia- "across" + legein "speak," let alone human relationship, remains all quite oxymoronic. And that is why Jews do not Zen. Zen and Judaism are intrinsically irreconcilable because, after all, the attachment and belonging of human relationship, a value so Nihilistically rejected by the solitary Zen, is, indeed, the very central focus and very cornerstone of Judaism.

For the skilled Zen master helps to bring about the causes and conditions of insight, which, nevertheless, remains subjective and solitary. Indeed, the vantage for such awakening is never far for anyone.

Where ever you go, there you are!

— Buckaroo Banzai