I recommend zen book Zen Mind Beginners Mind. There are no quick answers to this. You've... - got to somehow learn to see the big picture with things and brush away your usual way of thinking - got to talk to actual practising Buddhists, or preferably, followers of zen; WARNING: Buddhists who profess as so and who got to all the celebrations, ceremonies/rituals, and so forth...please BEWARE. Their belief in the Buddha(or, how or what is 'buddha' exactly to them) may not match their daily behaviour, especially moral and honour values Keep talking to Zen/zen people and other Buddhists and persist, but please be kindly reminded that there's nothing MiddleEastern(Christian, Jewish, Muslim) in concept or practise within zen, or Buddhism in general. Put the MiddleEastern influence and other crap in the rubbish bin and you may find that understanding zen can get easier. After all, there's nothing unclear about all things to do with zen, eg. sitting, walking, sleeping, eating, etc in peace Mel
--- On Fri, 8/7/11, dragoon6779 <[email protected]> wrote: From: dragoon6779 <[email protected]> Subject: [Zen] Zen and Deism? To: [email protected] Received: Friday, 8 July, 2011, 5:42 AM Hi, I am interested in Zen. I have read that Buddhism is non-theistic, and I have been told that actually it is not that Buddhism is non-theistic, rather Buddhism (originally in a pragmatic approach) does not take a theistic or non-theistic stance. I know there are many who consider themselves both Christian and Zen, but given the 4 Noble Truths, and the 4 Seals, I am not sure how it is reconciled, furthermore, Deism is not the same as theism of course, so I wonder if the apparent problems are reduced if not gone by holding to deism. I have searched high and low online and cannot find much. thank you
