Submitted by ewk in zen

  • Sudden school: Zen Masters teach a single enlightenment experience makes you a Buddha.
  • Original Enlightenment: Zen Masters teach that you are inherently already a Buddha.

Both of these conflict with very old Buddhist doctrines about causality, having a selfness, and the need for merit/karmic purification, as well as the Buddhist belief in impermanence.

Why would anybody be interested?

Understanding Zen in a modern context involves unraveling hundreds of years of Zen v. Buddhism conflicts, propaganda, and censorship. It is a hot button topic among evangelical Buddhists *that we would even get to read Zen teachings ourselves without a "teacher".

At the core of the Zen v. Buddhism dispute, which goes back past the Chinese records that started in 600ish, are several doctrinal differences that are more extreme than Satanism v. Christianity.

. . .

Here is an exchange from over on Reddit about what "gradual" really means...

(spoiler: it means a specific doctrinal position about who you are and what you should be)

Question: Why is there either enlightenment or no enlightenment? Why isn't there gradual stages?

...

ewk: Good question.

  1. Original Sudden enlightenment is a core conversation in Zen. Buddhists reject original enlightenment. Buddhists doctrines of gradual attainment depend on not having something to begin with.
  2. If you are originally enlightened, then gradual practices of refinement, purification, and self improvement are unnecessary... and that's the bulk of what "gradual" people are up to.
  3. Either you have seen the self nature or you haven't. There is nothing gradual about that.
  4. Zen Masters also argue that enlightenment is non-causal, so doing stuff to get enlightened is as problematic as doing nothing. But non-causal enlightenment means you can't "work your way up to it" or "get a little closer by practicing every day" because those would be causes, and also because you can't get closer to yourself. You are already you.

. . .

Question: About point 4: what about ‘working your way down to it’. Like saying ‘yesterday I was convinced I needed to do xyz, today I’m convinced I need to do z, and then nothing’

. . .

ewk:

you can't work your way to... yourself.

You are already you. You can't get closer or father away.

But again, part of the debate is about what specifically religions mean by "gradual".

It turns out that religious "practices" are depend on doctrines; doctrinal investments get you doctrinal returns.

Zen isn't gradual because there is no doctrine, let alone an investment or a return.

To say that there is a "gradual" you would need all three elements; when saying "gradual" you are drawing together those three parts.

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