Word: zenning
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...Thin Zen...
...marvelous mind, but his most recent pronouncements regarding the futility of looking to Asia for enlightenment and spiritual guidance seem exceedingly irresponsible, unfair and misleading. By dwelling on the extremes of Oriental religions and their mystifying mysticism, he grossly distorts the wisdom of the East. He rejects Zen Buddhism and at the same time discounts the essence of Zen, which is not a spiritual doctrine, not a religion, not even a philosophy. One who understands Zen has no gods to fail him. For Zen is not a faith, but faith; not hopes, but hope; not beliefs, but belief...
Intuition v. Reason. In Japan, Koestler observed, the techniques of Zen "show remarkable psychological insight and produce some equally remarkable results." But the results are far from remarkable when Zen is exported overseas and seeded among Western intellectuals with an entirely different cultural background. "They tried hard to obey its command: 'Let your mind go and become like a ball in a mountain stream'; the result was a punctured tennis ball surrounded by garbage, bouncing down the current from a burst water main...
Arthur Koestler's own Western approach to things reveals itself in his complaint that Zen has little to offer to "the moral recovery of Japan." Actually, the concept of morality or immorality, good or evil, does not exist in Zen; enlightenment, rather than making the world a better place to live in, is the goal...
...irrationality, and the messianic arrogance of the Christian crusader is matched by the Yogi's arrogant attitude of detachment towards human suffering. Mankind is facing its most deadly predicament since it climbed down from the trees; but one is reluctantly brought to the conclusion that neither Yoga, Zen, nor any other Asian form of mysticism has any significant advice to offer...