Using the force of God as an excuse to have sex your son's wife?

[thesmileyone]

But equally balanced by the danger of not being able to either handle the trip / the drug in some cases, nor be able to integrate their experience into life.

As a teacher / guru you should advocate both sides of a coin not just the potential good side.

[Arcangelo]

Thank you very much!

[SgtPepper]

13 hours ago, Shiva said:

Well, the great thing about God's will is that it is unverifiable for other people. So, you can use it to justify whatever the hell you want.

You can have sex with your son's wife - God's will.

You can rape someone - God's will.

You can start a war - God's will, of course.

And as long as people believe, they will think this is a legitimate argument because God's will mustn't be questioned!

Quite convenient for the devil, isn't it?

The devil would be a fool not to exploit this, actually.

On another token,

It can also be God's will to STOP all of those things.

So back to OP, the son could've harnessed God's wisdom to put a stop to his father's act.

 

[Nahm]

@Monkey-man Hey. What’s happnin?

[Forestluv]

6 minutes ago, thesmileyone said:

But equally balanced by the danger of not being able to either handle the trip / the drug in some cases, nor be able to integrate their experience into life.

As a teacher / guru you should advocate both sides of a coin not just the potential good side.

That is why I used the term “can” rather than “will”.

I think a person needs to be open and willing with a certain level of maturity for it to be effective.

Similarly, one needs a certain level of maturity to use power tools. 

[Pouya]

@Leo Gura I've heard this phrase many many times in islam

What ever happens, is happening through the will of Allah (God)

Repeated 20 times in Quran

(I dont hold islamic beliefs)

Edited March 27, 2019 by Pouya

[Leo Gura]

@Pouya Well, that is true, but it's much misunderstood by common folk who merely believe it but have no direct experience of what those words mean.

[tsuki]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

We are sort of damned if we do, and damned if we don't. If we don't talk about God, we are not being honest and people are being mislead. If we do talk about God, we are creating representations of God, all of which are not the actual thing, and people will be mislead. That's the tragedy of our collective situation.

@Leo Gura What about the Zen approach?
These people seem to be very weary of the cultural baggage of various terms and deliberately talk in terms of things that have neutral meaning.
It may not be as flashy as talking about experiencing God and may not attract as many seekers to your internet monastery, but I'm not sure that it's appropriate to aim for quantity, or for any goal in particular.

Now that I think of it - you're obviously not aiming for quantity. Sorry.
Ignorance is blindness, there is no outsmarting the devil.

Edited March 27, 2019 by tsuki

[Leo Gura]

@tsuki The Zen approach suffers from the problem that it undersells God. It plays coy.

Virtually no one who practices Zen understands how deep consciousness goes or what God is. Only a few of the highest Zen masters do.

For example, Shinzen Young does not understand why reality exists. He's not fully woke and he does not know it. That's with 40 years of professional Zen practice.

BTW, nothing at all against his teachings. I'm just saying there are levels which virtually no one has accessed. I am just using this example to point out how tricky this work is. No one is safe. Proceed with extreme care.

[tsuki]

@Leo Gura Do you believe that the 'point' is to get as many people as enlightened as possible?

[ajasatya]

Just now, Joseph Maynor said:

Zen actually doesn't have any teachings.

zen has very straightforward teachings. zen is a practice for the discipline of the mind. have you ever been to a sesshin?

the instructions are clear. zen retreats are artificial environments for people to train the presence of awareness.

[tsuki]

@ajasatya What about the material written by Zen masters? Like Dogen's Shobogenzo, or koans.

Edited March 27, 2019 by tsuki

[tsuki]

Just now, Joseph Maynor said:

Zen Masters will be the first to tell you it's all rubbish.

Yep, and that's why I read the book instead of asking Zen masters .

[ajasatya]

1 minute ago, tsuki said:

@ajasatya What about the material written by Zen masters? Like Dogen's Shobogenzo.

those are attempts to explain their first hand direct experiences and comprehensions about what awakening is and how the process of awakening occurs in the human realm.

but if you ever get really close to a serious zen lineage, you will notice that there are teachings about how to behave and (thank god) they are very rigorous.

the difference is that zen does not teach you about Truth. zen is only a method for you to experience it by yourself. a true zen master is awakened to the nature of God and is able to recognize students who are seriously aware of God.

the teaching of "there are no teachings" is not absolute. it serves people in a very specific level of practice. but such teaching does not qualify as a general teaching of zen. serious zen lineages come from the teaching of the original buddha and their teachings are the noble 8-fold path.

[tsuki]

@Joseph Maynor @ajasatya Alan Watts' description of Zen in his book "The way of Zen" fits both of your posts pretty closely.

@Joseph Maynor Have you read it? He even references Suzuki's book several times.

Edited March 27, 2019 by tsuki

[tsuki]

14 minutes ago, ajasatya said:

but if you ever get really close to a serious zen lineage, you will notice that there are teachings about how to behave and (thank god) they are very rigorous.

@ajasatya These practices have been added to the core teaching of Zen to make it manageable as a vehicle of growth for the general public.
Zen became very popular very rapidly at one point and it became unmanageable.

Not saying that the core teaching is better though. Things evolve for right reasons.

Edited March 27, 2019 by tsuki

[ajasatya]

7 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Zen is best thought of as just Zen, not as Buddhism at all.  I'm pointing these out to be helpful not to be a smartass.  I've actually researched a lot about Zen and studied a lot about Zen in the last few months.  Zen is a very special animal, best thought of as only itself.  What Zen is pointing to has nothing to do with teachings.  Zen is pointing to transcendence of the Mind, a transcendence of the believing brain.  That doesn't have anything to do with ideology -- that's a transcendence of ideology.  Zen pops you out of the Mind-Matrix, but that doesn't mean that anything changes, if that makes sense.  Whatever you had going into Zen is what you'll have coming out of it.  That's the whole point.  Zen is not about paradigms at all.

that's what i thought as i was doing my "research", but that's not what i found when i got closer and closer to experienced zen teachers from zen lineages. zen training is a copy+paste of the traditional training proposed by sidhartha gautama and his silent method has been passed on by dozens of generations of super responsible people (thank god again).

what you see on the current picture of "buddhism" is very distorted from what it really was.

[tsuki]

9 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Suzuki is da man for "explaining" Zen without screwing it up.

I think that Watts would respectfully disagree. He puts Zen in a context that is more appropriate for the Western audience.
Traditions can't be copy-pasted across cultures. The history of Zen is the story of how Buddhism evolved when it changed locations.
I haven't read Suzuki's book myself, so I'm just parroting what Watts said. Even if I resonate with it.

Also, do you use Suzuki's authority to justify your choice of source? Asking, because I don't understand its relationship with your point.

Edited March 27, 2019 by tsuki

[mandyjw]

52 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@tsuki The Zen approach suffers from the problem that it undersells God. It plays coy.

Virtually no one who practices Zen understands how deep consciousness goes or what God is. Only a few of the highest Zen masters do.

For example, Shinzen Young does not understand why reality exists. He's not fully woke and he does not know it. That's with 40 years of professional Zen practice.

BTW, nothing at all against his teachings. I'm just saying there are levels which virtually no one has accessed. I am just using this example to point out how tricky this work is. No one is safe. Proceed with extreme care.

How can you have any true approach that doesn't undersell God? You can't paint a grand picture of something that someone can only attain in the future if they do the right things. That's religion, not non-duality. That's seeking a conceptual future instead of understanding that you're already divine in this moment. 

[ajasatya]

1 minute ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Read that Suzuki book I posted.  That will clear up a lot of things for you.

engage in a real zen sangha, go to retreats and live with zen masters/practitioners for a while. it will show you way more than the perspective of a single advanced practitioner.