Earlier quoted context omitted.
seriously. appropriating buddhism / zen (or any culture) just to look cool and wise is so condemnable to me. i really dislike the fetishized, orientalist view of eastern religions i often see in the hacker community. ESR is full of himself to begin with, but for him to be writing koans is so arrogant. these have nothing to do with actual zen koans anyway, they're just programming lessons obfuscated by self-indulgent…
What's so terrible about it? Why should buddhism or zen be exempt from the sort of emulation, attempts at understanding, fun-making, and mixes of all three that we apply to essentially everything else? I mean, these particular writings are terrible, but that's because of how they're written, not what they're attempting to do.
Re: Unix koans
#41i don't think it should be exempt from those things. on the contrary i thought he was missing the "attempts at understanding". koans aren't riddles or parables, they're not to be figured out - i dont think you can draw a meaningful parallel with them and computer programming problems, which require critical thinking and problem solving. (sidenote: i think making fun of cultures that aren't your own is always disrespectful...)