101–110 of 112 posts
Zen is a Japanese word that comes from the Chinese “Chan”, which in turn comes from the Sanskrit word “Dhyana”, which roughly translates to focus/meditatiin.
That trajectory Sanskrit —> Chinese —> Japanese reflects the geographical trajectory of the spread of Buddhism out of India.
Same word in Vietnamese and Korean is “Thien” and “Seon” respectively.
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Who doesn't call stoicism Roman?
The idea that "being stoic" means to be emotionless isn't a roman idea. Its a modern one.
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"To be done with doing", from Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea novels, always struck me as such a powerful phrase. An entire state of mind boiled down to 5 words. But then again I remember her saying eastern philosophy greatly influenced her writing, if I'm not mistaken
The 'Le Guin' series actually had similar kinds of stories in Asia before. There's a strong Taoist influence, you see—more specifically, Chinese-style Taoism rather than a Buddhist perspective. From the viewpoint of '不立文字 (Bù lì wén zì): truth is not confined to language; language is merely the finger pointing at the truth' — this is closer to Taoism than to Zen. In fact, the Chinese worldview runs deep throughout he…
Ah, I guess that helps explain why Studio Ghibli did an Earthsea movie.
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"To be done with doing", from Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea novels, always struck me as such a powerful phrase. An entire state of mind boiled down to 5 words. But then again I remember her saying eastern philosophy greatly influenced her writing, if I'm not mistaken
To be done with doing, would appear to require passive income?
I feel that the Zen used in the West and the Zen in East Asia are quite different. I think the Western Zen is probably the one from the 1970s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It usually carries a sense of equanimity and beginner's mind. But in East Asia, Zen actually emphasizes aimlessness or non‑purposefulness. The point where I really feel the difference is that Western Zen seems to be about how to t…
When I read the title I thought it was about running machine learning algorithms on AMD/Zen processors
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You seem to know quite a lot about the East. Buddhism and Taoism are a bit different, of course, but your understanding is largely in line with how Eastern popular thought actually sees things. It seems like you've done a fair amount of business with Easterners.
After watching how much the east misunderstands western religion (i.e. Neon Genesis Evangelion), there's no benefit to "actually understanding" the religions of the east. They make little effort to understand western religion in their popular media, so why should we do it for them? As far as I'm concerned, Lisa Simpson is the quintessential Buddhist and will remain that way until Japan proves they understand what the…
By design, it’s impossible to understand what the Trinity actually is. Baffling with bullshit is a longstanding religious tradition.
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To be done with doing, would appear to require passive income?
> To be done with doing, would appear to require passive income? who is asking this question ?
So much better on holiday!
That's why we only work when
We need the money!
--Franz Ferdinand
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The idea that "being stoic" means to be emotionless isn't a roman idea. Its a modern one.
I believe that is correct. Part of the problem is that similar words in different languages are actually not quite identical. “Not having emotions” is not quite the essence of stoicism: I understand it to be “avoiding highs and lows - being equipoised by recognizing what is and isn’t under our control”. A very closely related idea is proposed in the Bhagawad Gita.
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You seem to know quite a lot about the East. Buddhism and Taoism are a bit different, of course, but your understanding is largely in line with how Eastern popular thought actually sees things. It seems like you've done a fair amount of business with Easterners.
I am just another western poser that has sought peace of mind reading Eastern philosophy. I am no expert.
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There exists a long history of shallow practice of religious / philosophical schools for as long as we have recorded history of anything? This isn't surprising or particularly profound news.
There's probably that, too, but there exists a long history of "lengthy 'it's not this it's that' explanations trying to display superior knowledge of what the real genuine thing from somebody else's culture is." It's just human nature and it happens at every level. I've seen, firsthand, primitive villagers in Asia do it about the culture of another village five miles away, I've seen people all over do it about somet…
In Software Development we always had "Gurus".