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Which begs the question, What reason?
Psycology seems to be all about the mind and specifically the ego. Not true of spirituality, especially the forms of spirituality being discussed presently. What is good for the ego is not neccessarily good for the spirit, especially as far as zen goes, which openly states that the "self" that psycology deals with is simply an illusion.
Barry: My first book on Zen was Alan Watts' The Way of Zen, which I still recommend to people. Also his The Book, which is not really about Zen but does a damn good job anyway. Also helpful are D.T. Suzuki's essays. Watts has a bunch of books, more than I can name right now, but The Way of Zen is still my favorite.
Also, as cusm noted, the Tao te Ching is very good as well. Zen has a huge Taoist influence. Oddly enough, many of Christ's parables and stories are just as helpful. Christ is generally regarded as a Zen master by many Zen buddhists. There's a story I read somewhere about a master who wanted to see what Christianity was all about but couldn't read English so he asked a student read an excerpt for him that outlined Christianity. The student, knowing a bit about Christianity, read him the Sermon On the Mount. When he was finished, the master said "Beautiful. That is exactly what I have been trying to teach you all these years."
I should warn you, though: These books won't "teach" you zen. They'll give you many varied descriptions of Zen, but that's really all they're good for (unless you're interested in the history and variations within the monastic tradition). You can't "learn" it from these books. You can learn it by doing just about everything else, be it mowing the lawn or playing the guitar or gardening or whatever. You learn it by living, first and foremost. Also, meditation really helps. Eventually all the wacky stories and "annoying riddles" will start to make perfect sense to you (and probably no one else around).
Mr. Illmatic: I've been meaning to read those. How much do they cost, roughly? If I have the money, I won't have to gank 'em.
Its kind of like a study of paradox until you learn to think outside of the limitations of duality and experience "enlightenment" as a form of awakened consciousness, realize how pointless and cyclical it all was untimatelty, and share a bit of the cosmic joke.
not a bad description. As far as the paradox thing goes, I like to think of it like this: all the contradictory statements and descriptions you'll read will seem confusing until you think of it like you're using two ideas to triangulate a third idea that you can't see or point to with words. |
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