Talk:Zen/Archive 3

message: The Radical Zen section could use some clarification and/or elaboration.  As it is now, there's only a couple of sentences that do not answer 'how' or 'why', and the very little 'what' and 'who' given has a lot to be desired in terms of explaining what the hell is going on to the reader who comes to this article to learn or gain information.  --66.120.158.19 09:48, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I will probably soon change this section of the article - the original writer obviously had no idea what they were talking about, as the whole idea of 'killing' is metaphorical. Redxela Sinnak 02:35, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification please 

message: The picture of Bodhidarma, while nice, is more suited at Bodhidarma. It adds little to the Zen article itself, and frankly, that needs the space for the topic and link boxes. I noticed we have a  template, and I took the liberty  of using that at the bottom instead of the right-hand  (too many stuff ends up at the right as it is).
In doing so, I've lost the links to Chinese Buddhism and Korean Buddhism (these were "hidden" as country links), but since these are not specifically about Zen, I don't think that's a big loss. I would agree the structure can still be better elucidated and the box on the right can probably be made clearer still (all these transliteration systems are obscuring the "good" links Chan, Seon and Dhyana), but I still think this is a step in the right direction. 82.92.119.11 19:14, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't really agree with all of these changes. It's pretty standard for Wikipedia articles to lead with a picture in the upper right. It doesn't need to add anything other than being a picture. Why should the names box be privileged? Frankly, it's an eyesore. - Nat Krause 14:51, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shuffling things about 

message: AFAIK Bodhidharma is Indian, either this is a typo or a controversial theory?  I changed 'Iranian' to 'Indian'
: There seems to be stronger evidence that he was in fact Iranian.  According to Yang Hsüan-chih, the Chinese historian who personally met Bodhidharma in Lo Yang, Bodhidharma was a Persian Central Asian.  His exact words are "po-szu kuo hu-jen", where hu relates to Central Asia and especially to people of Iranian descent.  I suggest reading The Bodhidharma Anthology by Jeffrey R. Broughton, a translation of the Long Scroll of the Treatise on the Two Entrances and Four Practices, composed by Bodhidharma and his students.  ‣ᓛᖁ[ ᑐ] 01:28, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That doesn't seem like very strong evidence at all. One Chinese writer made one reference to a monk with the name Bodhidharma who he, the Chinese guy, thought was Persian. On the other hand, everybody else who writes about him (without citing evidence) says he was Indian. Neither claim is anywhere near well-documented, but the latter is much more commonly accepted. - Nat Krause 14:51, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Bodhidharma Iranian ???? 

message: Yesterday, I excised the article's Further reading section. It has been suggested that I should discuss this on the talk page. I could be wrong, but I don't think Wikipedia articles usually have a section like that. Certainly, I'm all for having a list of sources. But there is no particular indication that any of those particular books were sources; they appear to just be recommended reading. That being the case, I really don't know what the criteria are by which we would recommend anything. Today, an anonymous user added a "recommended translations" section, which is even worse. If the consensus is that we want a Further reading section, I won't remove it again, but we should clear about why we are including which books. - Nat Krause 07:04, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Further reading section

message: The current text of this section is not very good:
:Zen is not necessarily a Buddhist religion. Rather, it is a way of living. Nevertheless all Zen schools stress the admiration of the historical Buddha as their principle inspiration.
:Though Zen meditation practice does derive from the Buddha's original Eightfold Path teaching, where dhyana is one element of the eightfold way, Zen has been occasionally criticized by other Buddhists for not adequately emphasizing the other elements of the Eightfold Path and for not emphasizing study of the traditional Buddhist canon or for being ignorant of or unconcerned with Buddhist philosophy in general.
:Such claims are often overpublicized. In practice, most Zen teachers, monks and centers have good relationships with those of other Buddhist schools and often cooperate with them. Much of those claims is probably due to the personal, sometimes paradoxal and often disconcerting methods of transmission that Zen uses.
The first sentence goes to the difficulty of defining Zen. Some people, such as a previous editor, would say that Zen is necessarily a Buddhist religion. Some would make a distinction between Zen and Zen Buddhism. Some people say that Zen is a way of living; some people would say that Buddhism is a way of living, and Zen is a Buddhist way of living. Some people (such as Yasutani as quoted in Three Pillars) use Zen to refer to any dhyana-related practice, and therefore Zen is present in Hinduism, Taoism, Transcendental Meditation, and many other somesuch. Somebody once said that Zen is everyday thought, meaning that it is not necessarily anything. I have no idea how to present these perspectives in the article.
It would be good to have some specific documentation of the criticisms that have been made of Zen. I'm sure it has been criticized (I've heard that Soka Gakkai people sometimes really lay into it in private), but it's good to know exactly when and by whom. I already took out some criticisms that seemed kind of questionable and had no cite. The response to criticism that was added sounds defensive and is likewise undocumented. - Nat Krause 05:16, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Zen and Buddhism

message: The book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig, deals with the notion of "quality" from the point of view of the main character.
OK, but:
  The book is largely based on the author's experience with archery instruction.
This is about the book "Zen in the art of archery", by E Herrigel. That's also the one that is misrepresenting zen (see older version).
So, the message, if any at all, should be, in my opinion:
* read Pirsig, but it's not explicitly about zen
* read Herrigel, it's about zen (and archery) but it's controversial.
pw 14:41, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pirsig 

message: I wanted to emphasize the plurality of Zen schools in the article.  In places, it talks about "Zen" as if it was one single school, whereas it is in fact several (Rinzai, Soto, etc.)  I then noticed that the text refers to these sometimes as "traditions" and sometimes as "schools".  Which is correct?
In the article, Mahayana is called a "branch" of Buddhism, which I think is ok, and Zen as a tradition of this branch.
This, I think, leads to the taxonomy
*Branch (e.g. Mahayana Buddhism)
**Tradition (e.g. Zen)
***School (e.g. Soto)
If no-one objects, I'm going to edit the article to fix this where appropriate within the next few days (I'm travelling at the moment).  Maybe there's other Buddhism-related articles that needs fixing as well?  Do we care about this at all?  Is there a standard?
Andkaha 23:32, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
:Well, I did some changes along the lines I mentioned above, but I don't know if they turned the text to the better or not...  I felt I couldn't be as consistent as I wanted to be.   Andkaha(talk) 19:27, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Branches, traditions, and schools 

message: User:Baphomet. is damaging Wikipedia: he his trying to label Religious articles as Superstition (from a POV view of positivism, that he calls Science). At the article Reincarnation he just went on to add to category "Superstition" and later on without discussion put a POV msg in the article. Please see the discussion page between both of us Talk:Reincarnation#Superstition.
Through the use of a Culture created by extremism in Science, he is clearly trying to do the job that the Inquisition did in the Middle Ages in a Culture created by extremism in Religion. He is damaging Wikipedia in a subtle invious way! 
: Please see also the Alert message I have created at Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#September_4, Thank you! --GalaazV 20:25, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for your aid dealing with actions from a user against Religious, Spiritual and Esoteric articles 

message: The first sentence in the "Spread of Zen" section is incorrectly structured and doesn't make clear sense:
Traditionally, Zen traces its roots back to Indian Buddhism, while not an independent school of Buddhism there, takes its name from the Sanskrit term for meditation "dhyāna"
The sugject of the phrase after the second comma is unclear. What does it mean? That Zen is not an independent school of Buddhism in India? Or that India lacks an independent school of Buddhism? This should be split into two sentences at the comma, and the second one given a subject.
Vanwaffle 21:01, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spread of Zen into 

message: Dear Friends,  I have added a somewhat lenghty paragraph on Thich Nhat Hanh.  In a few days I will move the bulk of this to his biographical page.  But it seemed important that this information be seen here in view of the misinformed text that previously was here.
BertMayo 21:41, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Thay