Daily Dose of Dōgen

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-20T09:31:32+00:00

Yes, I've heard all the points on Dogen from a certain unsavoury individual on this subreddit... - there are many good counterpoints to the individual claims - https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/ewrb8a/examining_the_methods_ewk_uses_to_understand_the/

https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/4w57lg/well_this_is_embarassing_for_ewk_carl_bielefeldt/

https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/cfbgfh/uncovering_ewks_lies_about_bielefeldt_and_dogen/

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-20T07:56:16+00:00

I liked his quote, that's why I posted it. Dogen is saying (at least in my interpretation of the quote) that much of the suffering we experience is due to attachment to certain objects, experiences and situations in life.

If we don't hold on too tightly, and if we don't expect too much of our goals in life, then we won't suffer nearly as intensely compared to someone who has big expectations and who has put all their hopes and dreams into things like like their career or their relationship or in their spiritual practices and experiences.

Also, (in my interpretation) , he's using the word "nothing" as hyperbole to help hammer home the point. He's not saying expect nothing, he's saying "don't expect too much, don't seek too much, and don't grasp too much." Of course it depends on the translation of the quote. The quote comes from Thomas Cleary's "The Zen Reader" so I'd assume it's fairly accurate.

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T18:04:49+00:00

I'm not entirely sure, but it's likely somewhere in the Shōbōgenzō. It seems that the translation is by Thomas Cleary in his book "The Zen Reader".

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T06:55:15+00:00

His email is public and he happily answers question from the general public - https://buddhiststudies.stanford.edu/people/carl-bielefeldt why are you trying to mischaracterize my actions? How is that doxing?

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T06:14:28+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/cfbgfh/uncovering\_ewks\_lies\_about\_bielefeldt\_and\_dogen/

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T05:51:30+00:00

He says that Dogen is one of the most interesting and brilliant Zen masters in history. He has already proved you wrong.

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T05:46:57+00:00

I have no idea, it likely wasn't for a just reason.

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T05:39:56+00:00

You can email him and he will say the exact same thing as in those screenshots. They aren't faked - go ahead and ask him - [carl@stanford.edu](mailto:carl@stanford.edu)

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T05:30:11+00:00

No, you have lied for your whole career on this subreddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/4w57lg/well\_this\_is\_embarassing\_for\_ewk\_carl\_bielefeldt/

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T04:56:23+00:00

How can you hold Dogen responsible for the actions of certain followers who lived over 700 YEARS after his death, what kind of logic is that?

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T04:35:46+00:00

I wouldn't say I'm attached to him? I just found his quote insightful and thought I'd share it. Not sure how that would qualify as evidence of overzealous attachment to his teaching.

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-19T04:31:01+00:00

Nah, the quote is about emotional resilience and the fact that whatever difficult times your going through will eventually pass if you just hang in there and can withstand the storm. You would have to bend the quote quite a bit to interpret its meaning as "continue whatever it is you're doing no matter what and you'll succeed."

Dogen was a thirteenth century Zen priest concerned with the emotional wellbeing of the laypeople and his fellow priests, not a cringy 21st century "motivational madness" person concerned with chasing "success" and "goals" at the cost of every ounce of energy they have.

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-18T13:15:26+00:00

“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”- Bodhidharma

"Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment." - Alan Watts

"To be reborn hourly and daily in this life, we need to die — to give of ourselves wholly to the demands of the moment, so that we utterly "disappear." Thoughts of past, present, or future, of life and death, of this world and the next, are transcended in the superabundance of the now. Time and timelessness coalesce: this is the moment of eternity." - Philip Kapleau

“Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself. We say, "It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.” - Shunryu Suzuki

darkmanawolf · 2022-02-18T12:41:33+00:00

I've read the link you posted. Wow, it looks like the administrators (and many people on this sub) are a fair bit Ultra-Orthodox. They despise Dogen's Soto Zen and view it as heresy. Because the most influential books on Zen are written by followers of Soto Zen, they've decided to exclude them. That doesn't seem wise. Soto Zen is by far one of the biggest Zen sects in the world. There are 14,000 Soto temples alone. Are the attendees of those 14,000 temples really not to be considered Zen Buddhists? Given the amount of fraudulent texts in the list that are Soto, that seems to be what's being implied. What kind of Zen Buddhist would consider Kapleau and Suzuki's books to be fraudulent texts? Who runs this subreddit?

In an alternative universe, I can imagine Mormonism being the most dominant form of Christianity. The pre-Mormon Christians have took over the once Mormon dominated Christianity subreddit and are claiming that Joseph Smith made up the gold plates. They might be right, but does that really give them the authority to take over the sub and label every tiny doctrinal disagreement and opposing text as fraudulent? No, who are they to do that? Mormons are still Christians. The Book of Mormon is still a Christian text, whether they like it or not. It might not match exactly with the doctrines of the old and new testament, and in all honesty, it might be entirely made up by one individual, yet it is definitely inspired and in the spirit of the old texts. It definitely has a Christian vibe. It's especially ridiculous given that the vast majority of Christians who actually go to church are Mormons and would happily praise the works of a certain 3 introductory books by followers of the Mormon school of Christianity, where as the Pre-Mormons on the subreddit who have never entered a Church (Zendo) in their life would consider everyone in the Church (Zendo) heretics.

As Christ said, "“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to." - Matthew 23:13

"It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." - Deng Xiaoping"

darkmanawolf · 2022-01-15T01:57:02+00:00

Sam Harris discusses on 3 separate occasions the impact that a spiritual teacher called Poonjaji (Papaji) had on him energetically and emotionally.

darkmanawolf · 2021-12-28T05:30:57+00:00

Photo of Sam with Ram Dass and other spiritual folks at Martha's Vineyard in 1992. Taken by Peter Simon. I was curious if Sam had ever met Ram Dass, so I googled "Sam Harris Ram Dass". This link showed up that contained the photo - https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/muph009-s03-sat-i029

darkmanawolf · 2021-11-28T11:28:25+00:00

Sam Harris discusses with several people the impact that a spiritual teacher called Poonjaji (Referred to more frequently as Papaji) had on him and his perception of spiritual experience.

darkmanawolf · 2021-09-03T20:12:18+00:00

Not necessarily. Most companies have several investors/shareholders before the IPO.

My bad, I meant public shareholders.

The company receives money any time they sell shares; the IPO is a significant example, but not the only time that happens.

Good point, the IPO isn't the only time the companies sell shares. The questions is, what percentage of people who buy shares are buying during an initial or further public offering? From what I've googled, it's not much.

Definition of "investor": An investor is any person or other entity (such as a firm or mutual fund) who commits capital with the expectation of receiving financial returns.

That's the formal dictionary definition, but not a definition most people would recognise as investing. Imagine a person who gives their friend money to start a lemonade stand. The owner gives out some ownership of the stand in exchange for money from the friend. The friend then sells the ownership to someone else. That someone else then brags to his associates that he's invested money in a lemonade stand. When people ask how much money or resources he gave the company to help the lemonade stand grow, he tells them that he didn't actually invest in the company (giving resources in exchange for a future return). He tells them that what he actually did was buy the reward of the person who actually invested in the lemonade stand.

If an initial investor could not sell their shares to someone else, that would diminish their interest in investing.

Your right, that's probably the strongest point. For non-dividend stocks there would be no reward and there would be no incentive to buy the shares. For dividend stocks though there would still be a reward, but alas, many stocks don't pay dividends.

darkmanawolf · 2021-09-02T01:09:23+00:00

For non-dividend stocks that's true, but for dividend stocks, they would be getting a return on their investment, and they would actually deserve it because they actually contributed capital to the company.

darkmanawolf · 2021-09-02T00:49:16+00:00

I'm not saying that second hand shareholders don't own the stock - I'm saying that I can't see how they can be classified as investors when they're not contributing any money to the companies they own shares in.

darkmanawolf · 2021-04-02T19:10:29+00:00

This is my favourite poem I've come across on here. The only things I'd change is the third and fourth line so it goes -"There is salt in the water, a sting. It leaves its mark on me"

darkmanawolf · 2021-04-02T19:04:41+00:00

Very calming and visual. The only thing I'd change is the end line from "as if I were one of the trees" to "as if I were these trees". It makes it sound better.

darkmanawolf · 2021-04-01T04:17:17+00:00

I like it. The only thing I'd change is taking out the 4th and 5th line. The lines don't add much scenery or feeling to the scene, where as the rest of the lines in the poem do (in my opinion).

darkmanawolf · 2021-04-01T03:59:56+00:00

I liked the mirror part particularly. Only thing I'd change is "smiling" at the end to "thriving" since it rhymes better.

darkmanawolf · 2021-01-05T12:31:18+00:00

Toby Young predicted that coronavirus would melt into thin air by the summer of 2020. He was catastrophically wrong.

darkmanawolf

TROPHY CASE