Zen in america is kinda cringe (in my experience)

[funkychunkymonkey]

why the fuck they try so hard to be japanese? Its cringy! I love zen the practice of zen, the teachings of zen but dude! WTF! so much dogma! and i cant help but cringe when we do the chanting (which does have legit concentration benefits for the intensity of it) and the not the jiki-jitsu but whoever leads the chant puts on this Japanese's tone! i dont mean to talk shit but i just had to get this off my chest.

[Thought Art]

Judgement that is

Allow you must

[funkychunkymonkey]

@Thought Art :< your so right thank you master yoda!

may the consciousness be with you!

[Parallax Mind]

4 hours ago, funkychunkymonkey said:

why the fuck they try so hard to be japanese? Its cringy! I love zen the practice of zen, the teachings of zen but dude! WTF! so much dogma! and i cant help but cringe when we do the chanting (which does have legit concentration benefits for the intensity of it) and the not the jiki-jitsu but whoever leads the chant puts on this Japanese's tone! i dont mean to talk shit but i just had to get this off my chest.

War is more cringe 

[Thought Art]

@funkychunkymonkey I also relate to that cringe. Part of why I was lucky to study under Lee Holden for Qigong. 

I don't really like, the feeling of when white people are really grasping at the culture which these techniques come from. 

I want to learn the core of the techniques, but I don't need to Chinese, Japanese, whateverness as much. It has some beautiful aesthetic qualities and I think it's important to respect the roots of techniques... But I try to avoid the culture cringe as much as possible in my Qigong teaching. 

[funkychunkymonkey]

maka-hannya shing-YOOOOOOOOO! >:o 

[tuku747]

[Thought Art]

@tuku747 Crrrrrringe 

I am a little cringe

there’s a little cringe in each and every one of us

[funkychunkymonkey]

6 hours ago, tuku747 said:

i make myself cringe. 

[deci belle]

pffffffff~ it's not just Zen, or America, or even just now.

Even though we're all wearing horns in accepting how it is, such embarrassment arriving hand in hand with open sincerity goes far in quelling anger and cupidity.

[Porphyry Fedotov]

isn't chanting as much zen as doing zazen itself? Chanting aims to help you focus your mind and be more intentional as you noted yourself

zen has a lot of formal chants for this and that, like meal chants, are very special

Also, if you go to a Gelug temple in Russia you'll see monks in traditional Tibetan robes all of them chanting Tibetan mantras during formal service for example. Are they trying to be Tibetans? Hell no, like they usually got educated in Buddhist Gelug monasteries in India and stuff. That's simply the way of this tradition

[deci belle]

Zen is how one says Chan in Japan. Dogen brought Chan to Japan in the 1200s from China. While in China after 1225, he eventually found Tiantong Rujing, who helped him realize that viewing reality from the empty philosophical perspective of the Absolute, is just as deluded as viewing reality from the incremental perspective of one's self-reifying human mentality.

The whole point of effective, authentic spiritual practice is simply abiding "before the first thought." The foremost crystallization of Chan transmission is to activate the mind without dwelling on its contents. What's worthy of cringing here, hmmmmm?

Evidently, the cringers are already hung up on form, it seems… emptiness would be needless to say, at this point.

Methinks the "cringers" around here are assuming themselves to be woke apologists— who are convinced the bell is tolling for someone else…

Even so, reality is formless. Since the formless is not empty, therefore neither formal rites, meditation regimens, dogmatic postures, nor traditions, teachers or teachings or any such culturally-grounded shenanigans transmit true reality that has no remainder~ that is, an absence of the self-inclusive that has nothing whatsoever to leave out, including those who are habituated to leaving themselves out of the scene when "cringing" on account of others.

Sorry, but …the bell tolls for thee, dearies❤︎