Unsupported Speculation

I meditated everyday for five years while facing a wall in sessions lasting approximately 40 minutes a day, and for much of the first two years would often meditate twice a day as well.

My opinion on Zen Buddhism is that no matter how long you sit, nothing will happen. There is no enlightenment whatsoever, and instead it is a simple trick to exploit young people who are more apt to believe that wondrous things can be done to alter the universe, or at least one’s subjective universe, if they endure rites and rituals with enough discipline and reverence.

‘Enlightenment’ is simply a bait that is dangled in front of people interested in Buddhism, and if they accept it, they implicitly accept a concept of some sort of final event after the culmination of their long efforts. AND, they could be the lucky fellows that get INSTANT enlightenment, and if that happens, then they are awesome, inexplicable, SAGE-level masters. Imagine some shady-looking screwball trickster trying to get you to buy that pamphlet.

I also believe that people that attempt to ‘Pierce the Veil of Delusion’ will only get in the habit of reflexively negating virtually all ideas, good and bad, that they ever think about. This process is an intellectual one, and Buddhists at that stage only give something a brief dissection and then label something delusion and attempt to go about their business.

What happens though is that they end up bleeding the very life out of their lives until all that’s left of themselves is a wraith, and after suffering this for whatever length of time is sufficient for them to realize their mistake, they have to face the choice to accept that all the effort it took to get to the point in their ‘progress’ was a terrible mistake, and to risk letting delusion back into their lives like opening the floodgates, hoping that it will make them happy again.

We are SUPPOSED to be delusional, because all happy and sad things are just that, but they are what give us life. The only way to emulate someone who has transcended delusion is to negate virtually everything, no matter how small, and end up living a life without joys and hobbies.

This is why the old woman burned down the hut of the zen monk who practiced for ten years and couldn’t even flirt with a girl. It’s also why the famous zen ‘masters’ all basically threw zen buddhism into the waste basket and started looking for awesome stuff to do instead.

It’s because no matter how long you sit, or how perfect your posture, or your state of mind, or your discipline is, nothing will happen except for wasted time.

Zen NOTHINGNESS isn’t some esoteric profundity. It’s a joke.