What is Chan/zen?

[dwid]

A favorite zen poem of mine, by Yuan Hongdao...

The time has come to devote myself to my hiker's stick;
I must have been a Buddhist monk in a former life!
Sick, I see returning home as a kind of pardon.
A stranger here - being fired is like being promoted.
In my cup, thick wine, I get crazy drunk,
Eat my fill, then stagger up the mountain.
The southern sect, the northern sect, I've tried
them all:
This hermit has his own school of zen philosophy.

[David Jamieson]

there's bird scat on the handle of my car door

[David Jamieson]

Chan/zen is misused nowadays to promote a service or a product.

Zen spa, Zen tea, Zen massage, Zen food, Zen dating--

Ch'an / Zen probably doesn't care about being misused to promote positive things such as listed. The concept is invocation of another deeper meaning which without being voiced is more or less understood.

zen tea invokes an idea of calm, mellow, aware and so on and therefore is not really all that culpable as far as misuse goes. same with the other examples, with the exception of the dating one which even I am having difficulty with. lol.

Having said all that, if I had to explain verbally what Ch'an or Zen is, then I would defer to the generally accepted idea of it as being - ...described as an intuitive method of spirtual training aimed at the discovery of a reality in the innermost recesses of the soul, a reality that is the fundamental unity which pervades all the differences and particulars of the world. This reality is called the mind, or the Buddha nature that is present in all sentient beings. In common with other Mahayana systems Ch'an teaches that this reality is sunya, empty or void, inexpressible in words and inconceivable in thought.-

[GeneChing]

Chinese Archery. A Brief Discussion on Shaolin Ch'angong's Concept and Practice of Health Preservation Part 1 by Chen Haidong and Qi Shilong



Archery
What-is-Chan-zen
Chinese-Archery-lost-martial-art

[GeneChing]

Shaolin Archery. A Brief Discussion on Shaolin Ch'angong's Concept and Practice of Health Preservation Part 2 by Chen Haidong and Qi Shilong



Archery
What-is-Chan-zen
Chinese-Archery-lost-martial-art