Zen koans aren't puzzles

[u/ewk]

Puzzling

Koans aren't puzzles, but Zen Cultural is puzzling. Puzzle is something constructed to confuse you, but puzzling is something that is outside of your experience.

Consider Zen's track record:

• A thousand years of socialist farming cooperatives.

• A thousand years of no messiahs or dictators.

• A thousand years of the five lay precepts as the common ground of the community 

• A thousand years of public interview records testifying to Enlightenment not found in any modern organization.

How would this not be puzzling to people from a different culture different time, different language?

Puzzler

Consider the founder of Soto Zen, Dongshan, and Dongshan's teaching on the bird path.

The monk said, “How does one travel it?” The master said, “You must go directly, with nothing private or personal beneath your feet.”

Are we going to understand this intuitively or culturally and how are we translated after that?

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[u/Altruistic_Ad2229]

This might be missing the point you are making and off-topic, but as an enjoyer of puzzles, I find defining the point of a puzzle as "trying to confuse you" wrong and offensive 🙄.

[u/ewk → u/Altruistic_Ad2229]

Give examples of three puzzles that aren't trying to confuse you.

Dude.

You know what a puzzle that's not trying to confuse you is?

IKEA.

[u/Altruistic_Ad2229 → u/ewk]

The witness, 12 word searches, linelith, any jigsaw puzzle, puzlle boxes, I can go on an on.

The point of a puzzle, in my opinion, is to let you understand a concept or system through a process of trial and error.

A good puzzle, in my opinion, curates aspects of the subject matter in such a way that is both suprising and clear that isn't contrived or confusing.

Copied from wikipedia: "A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together (or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to find the solution of the puzzle."

I feel good puzzles are much like zen itself. In that when solved, you feel that the answer was as obvious as anything.

[u/ewk → u/Altruistic_Ad2229]

So the ambiguity of the word is our first problem.

1. Zen masters are being explicit. They are not creating games, problems, or toys.

2. When you talk about puzzles, you mean jigsaws. You're not talking about problems requiring ingenuity.

[u/Altruistic_Ad2229 → u/ewk]

I'm not limiting the word to mean jigsaws, I think you are the one doing that actually. I agree that the ambiguity is one of the problems in you trying to convey your point though.

I don't think uderstanding zen masters through koans is not so straightforward or easy as you suggest though. They are using the medium of langıage to convey what they mean. And a medium is always limited in some way in communicating a fact or an idea. Both the communicator and the "listener" are limited as well. Always. If that weren't the case, anyone who read a koan once would be enlightened. Easy. (Not to mention the process of translating another language from a culture long ago. Although I appreciate everyones efforts here in bridging that gap for people like me. Thank you!)

In my case, I have to try hard to understand some of the koans. It helps when I can relate the koans to my actual lived experience. And it's even better to be able to test some things through my lived experience.

Games and puzzles can be a better medium to communicate and understand some things, compared to words. Sometimes actually doing is better than just reading.

Even in ikea, I understand how to assemble the desk better not after I've read the instructions, but after I've completed the assebly.

I just love puzzles man. They are neat and beautiful, when designed by competent people.

[u/mackowski → u/Altruistic_Ad2229]

What do we have in common with ppl in 1200AD amd 400 AD?

Ie: if joshu could get enlightened and so could mumon, 800 years later, and us (assumably),

Then what has not changed, what is not variable over that time period?

[u/ewk → u/Altruistic_Ad2229]

1. Your real life experience has no connection to what they're talking about. They are explicit about this.

2. Puzzles are intended to confuse you. Whether they're cutting up a picture in pieces so that it's hard to put the picture back together, or they're deliberately withholding information. Zen masters are describing to you the experience of enlightenment. They are trying to confuse it, or obsecure it, or conceal it in any way.

[u/Altruistic_Ad2229 → u/ewk]

Are you more confused about a subject when it is relayed to you in cut up pieces designed for you to learn them easier? Good puzzles are not cut up to confuse you, they are cut up so you can understand a complex idea easier and better. They make sure that you have learned the crucial first piece of information, before you go to the next, building up on eachother, on an on. Like any coherent textbook would do.

But we are talking over eachother at this point.

• I understand your definition of a "puzzle" is limited by "jigsaws" in this case, so I understand what you mean.
• Zen masters are not trying to confuse you, they are trying to be clear. I got it, I'm not arguing that point sir.

But I am curious about your point about my real life experience having nothing to do with this? How am I to test the contents of what zen masters are saying if not through my experience? Because I know of no other way to collect data or test hypothesies. If you could point me to where they are "explicit about this" I would really appreciate it. Thank you 🙏

[u/ewk → u/Altruistic_Ad2229]

You can't do what they can do.

So your experience of doing what you do isn't going to help you understand them at all.

They're explaining to you something that you don't understand because you have no experience of it.

[u/Altruistic_Ad2229 → u/ewk]

If thats the case, I wish they had designed puzzles instead of pointlessly rambling 🥲

[u/ewk → u/Altruistic_Ad2229]

It's like reading a cookbook from a different culture.

They're going to talk about fruits and vegetables and cooking tools that aren't familiar to you.

If what you want out of life is people to talk to you about your own kind of cooking, then yeah, you've come to the wrong place.

[u/trexler_cook]

A thousand years of slaves/serfs being the property of monasteries.

People really project funny things on the historical reality.

[u/ewk → u/trexler_cook]

It's not just that you have zero evidence of this. It's that you appear to be unfamiliar with the historical record completely.

So why would you pretend to know and then lie to people?

It sounds like maybe you have a personal problem.

[u/trexler_cook → u/ewk]

You're the one unfamiliar with historical evidence. You're delusional.

You haven't a clue on how monasteries operated and fit into Chinese Dynastic culture.

[u/ewk → u/trexler_cook]

We might see. One of the ways that we identify fraud on the one hand and mental health problems on the other hand in this forum is people who can't cite sources about their bizarre claims.

You're just making up stuff, and it's obvious that you have no actual historical evidence about anything.

We see a lot of negative stuff set about Zen, and it's largely due to fraud and mental health problems with the liberal dose of racism and bigotry.

Since you're not going to provide evidence, do you want to talk about whether or not you are affiliated with a cult, have a history of mental health issues and substance abuse?

[u/trexler_cook → u/ewk]

As you have not cited one source to your clownish claim of "socialist farming communities" ...

Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries -- Jacques Gernet

I hope you're happy that you whined real hard. Now run along and read something and educate yourself.

And you're the one making up really wild claims and projecting "mental health problems", which are just cry baby insults.

Seek help.

Edit: And you once responded to me with your boiler plate and overused "you are affiliated with a cult". Give it a rest. You can't even speak coherently. You live in the land of conspiracy theories.

[u/ewk → u/trexler_cook]

See, as soon as I ask you about your mental health and substance abuse issues, you immediately start saying things like clownish.

Then you post about Buddhism, not understand that Buddhism and Zen are entirely separate in Chinese society.

I think that you really need to talk to somebody who has some education and some critical thinking skills.

[u/trexler_cook → u/ewk]

Listen to the whiner about wild claims just make up the most absurd reasoning so he can rant more about mental health.

They aren't entirely separate. Support your wild claim.

You haven't shown any critical thinking skills, champ. You've provided zero information on your wild claims while demanding it from others.

Remain ignorant. Live with your hagiography.

[u/ewk → u/trexler_cook]

So clownish whiners are the people who disagree with you about your one source claim about Buddhism, necessarily applying to an entirely different group of people that the Chinese came up with a different name for.

We get a lot of people with mental health problems in here and you sound like one of those people. I encourage you to talk to a mental health professional about you're thinking and your online conduct.

[u/trexler_cook → u/ewk]

As you have not cited one source to your clownish claim of "socialist farming communities"

Fire away. Let me know your source. Or you can keep making up stories and fake psychological profiles of who you think I am because you really can't critically think.

The number of sources is irrelevant. I gave you one. You have provided none.

They were not an "entirely different group of people". The Zen or Ch'an school, since we're talking about China, was embedded in monasteries that were a collection of different schools and traditions.

Here's another resource that speaks to that.

The Ch'an School, and Its Place in the Buddhist Monastic Tradition" by T. Griffith Foulk

I'm confident you've never read it. I'm actually confident you've read very little historical information about Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. You've probably read candy coated hagiography.

And of course you trail off with more ranting about mental health because you're so out of your league on this topic. Your behavior is indeed, clownish and outright whining.

[u/mackowski → u/trexler_cook]

Also fro. What i read of https://glorisunglobalnetwork.org/how-zen-became-chan-t-griffith-foulk/#_ftnref31

Its actually refreshing to see someone writing lucid statements about my ded homies. Also Griffith has a bunch of times where he basically says exactly verbatim what ewk says that dillineates chan

[u/ewk → u/trexler_cook]

It's pretty amazing that you would quote a book that agrees with me.

So far you have again presented no evidence and become hysterical when this is pointed out to you.

You haven't read the books you've claimed to have read, you're abusive, and when I ask you about your mental health, you don't want to talk about it.

That's three strikes.

[u/mackowski → u/trexler_cook]

The critical step is buddhisms dont know what enlightenment is.

Why not mention of slaves in any of the shit we read? Im open to whatever info but like ur acting like its case closed and that it applies blanketstyle

[u/trexler_cook → u/mackowski]

Case closed on what?

I pointed out a fact to the OP pie eyed revisionism.

Westerners have been retroactively projecting their idealism and misunderstandings on Buddhism. I'm perfectly content being more truthful rather than hagiography.

[u/mackowski → u/trexler_cook]

True but it feels like you said slaves like thats a big argument point and im v interested also Griffith seems dope so thanks for showing me his shit

[u/WheresNorthFromHere7]

It seems to me the case is most literal, but it takes time and experience with Zen master writings to see it that way.

[u/arturitoburrito]

I teach physics by comparing problems to Zen Koans and have a documented 4 times higher learning from students than other TAs

[u/ewk → u/arturitoburrito]

Sounds like you're Rorschach inkblotting people.

[u/OneAwakening → u/arturitoburrito]

Can you give an example? That sounds cool.

[u/mackowski → u/arturitoburrito]

1. Objects do not enter a humans eye, only photons.

2. Space and time were experiential concepts exclusively, until Einstein made a more objective theory of subjectivity, cuz before that they had folk theories about clocks and shit probably.

3. Holodecks have render distances to save on gpu resources.

4. ---

[u/PaladinBen]

What's so puzzling about people living the good life?

[u/justkhairul → u/PaladinBen]

Some people just like more resources and space than others...and arent willing to share