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Comment by bayareaguy | Hacker News Reader

Zen and the whole "enlightenment" thing is a basically a sedative which some people mistake as some kind of puzzle or IQ test. The whole point is to help you achieve a kind of inner peace. Although it may be entertaining to some, that's not its purpose and it has little to offer anyone already living a healthy life.

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You're quite wrong. It's not really about achieving an inner peace, it's about being right here, right now. If you're angry, you're angry. If you're ecstatic, you're ecstatic. It's about learning to not waste the time we have by paying attention to what we do have.

It's not about being sedated at all, if anything, it's about waking up.

bayareaguy read jkush's comment, and was at that moment Enlightened.

Heh heh. +1 for good humor. ;)

But what if you are thinking about why you shouldn't be angry and how society would look down on you in this moment. To just throw that all away and be "angry" instead of "was starting to be angry and then restrained youself" you are not practicing Zen because you are artificially restraining yourself from restraining yourself.

Well, I have no first hand experience of the phenomenon we're talking about ;) But the way I understood it, it's about no longer not seeing reality by being distracted by your own thoughts.

Most people talking about it have no first hand experience either, which is why the talking is mostly useless.

Edit: I include myself in that.

You are all wrong and you are all right - that is Zen.

Wrong.

Frog.

Your comment is tea.

The interesting thing about Brad Warner (author of said article) and generally Soto Zen (his practice) is that "Enlightenment" is really just a distraction and not important at all. It is not intended to be the point of zazen/meditation.

Dogen's insight (and the core of Soto Zen teaching) is that practice and realisation (here, 'enlightenment') are fundamentally the same thing. So, the act of sitting IS enlightenment itself.

That's a better way of putting it. :)

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