What Is Seon?

<What Is Zen?>

(Questioner) Good morning, Sunim.
This is my question.

I'm curious about what is Zen?

How is it different from
other schools of Buddhism?

What does mean to say that
speaking the true words

will only miss the point oxen ####is trying to convey

What does it mean that
Zen has nothing to say or teach at all?

And how does Zen could help people
in today's modern society

who are being overly civilized,
overly self-conscious, and too anxious

and tend to thinking too much
about unnecessary things

that causes unnecessary problems
and suffering. Thank you.

(Interpreter translating the question
into Korean for Sunim)

(Sunim) You can classify it as Zen as Zen
or Zen as Buddhism.

The perspective of Zen supersedes Buddhism
in the actual taxonomy of religion.

At that point, Zen is not classified
necessarily as part of Buddhism.

Zen is in itself Zen.

On the other hand, there is Zen
which is a part of Buddhism.

It's another tradition of Buddhism.

Zen started in China.

It came out of a sense of repentance
of the state of Buddhism in China.

The time where Zen arose in China was a state
in which Buddhism was a national religion of China.

Zen arose in China during a period when Buddhism was established as the national religion."

That means the ruling monarch used Buddhism
as the ruling ideology of his country.

He built a lot of temples
and built a lot of pagodas.

There was a lot of translation
and publication of original Indian sutras

into Chinese.

And there was a lot of ordainment education,
ordainment of Buddhist monks.

There was also extensive training and ordination of Buddhist monks."

There was a perception that this was
the advancement of Buddhism.

But whether that was Buddhism,
it could have happened to be Islam,

it could happened to be Hinduism
or it could have been something else,

but it just became another core principles,
a way of ruling his country.

And people started questioning
"Is this really Buddhism?"

"Is studying the sutras,
the word on the sutra,

is that really Buddhism?"

"Isn't that just academic study?"

"Building temples is that really Buddhism?

"Isn't that just construction projects?"

"His ordainment in graduation
of a lot of monks is that Buddhism?

Or isn't that just producing more clergy?"

And they said "This is not Buddhism"

If we want to say the core of Buddhism is
to awaken the ignorance in our hearts

and liberate ourselves
from that ignorance.

Buddha is somebody who has
liberated himself from his own ignorance,

not somebody who sits far away
or far beyond.

So, I am Buddha as soon as I break through
and liberate myself from my own ignorance.

Reading all these sutras,
it's all about academic achievements.

But you're not liberating yourself
from your own ignorance.

You can't study words and arrive###
at enlightenment through intellectual pursuit.

Basically, they say truth cannot be
examined nor validated through words.

The only way to get to that truth is
to awaken your own mind.

Therefore, you don't need large temples,

you don't need to build pagodas,

you don't need to memorize its thousands
of sutras in study Buddhism.

The only thing you need to do is
awaken your own mind,

which means you can do this anywhere.

Anybody can do it and
you don't have to be ordained as a monk.

Those were the questions in the perspective
that drove a new Buddhist movement.

The mainstream Buddhism at that time
denied Zen as a Buddhism.

Because there was a certain discipline,
hierarchy and process

by which you became an ordained monk.

But these new Zen people were saying that
if you awaken your own mind,

you can be a spiritual practitioner.

So, they were going against the order,
prevailing order of things

You had to study for 10, 20, 30 years
reading the sutra and disciplining yourself

to get to the enlightenment.
And even then it's very hard.

But these new people were saying
that they could be enlightened

by awakening just their own heart.

A spiritual practitioner should be a monk
living in temples,

not somebody who lives in their own house,
in the caves or in a forest.

We can't recognize them
as fellow spiritual practitioners.

So, they were prohibited from the temples.

But the New Zen practitioners
did not need to live in temples.

They lived wherever in the forest in nature,
in cases they just practiced their own selfqzq -;OP.

The methodology by which they
taught others was through a Q A system

by engaging in dialogue and
in conversation with everyday people.

ometimes they would ask abstract questions like"Who are you?"

And that's how actually they made
inroads into mainstream society.

Then after a certain time has passed
and a lot of intellectuals started joining.

Then what happened in China is
that a new Chinese country came in

and they were prosecuting Buddhists.

In this new country where mainstream conventional Buddhism was persecuted,

they lost gradually a lot of their power.

But on the other hand, Zan Buddhists
did not have a lot of huge temples.

They weren't getting sponsored
by the government.

So their influence actually grew
in this new environment.

But as then Buddhism became bigger
and more mainstream,

they had felt the need to justify itself.

Because the most vulnerable question
they had to respond to is that

they weren't traditional Buddhists.

So, they created their own vernacular.

They said Zen represents
the mind of the Buddha

and then Buddhism represents the teaching,
the words of the Buddha.

When you say that the mind becomes
more important than words.

In a way, they created this new word
called Zen Buddhism

with each one representing different aspects
of the Buddha and kind of established that kind of hierarchy

And then started claiming that
this did not start indigenously in China.

But this was a longstanding tradition
that came over from India.

One of the claims they made is that
Zen actually started with Buddha in India

and it was delivered from disciple to disciple
through the mind, the venerable dharma who actually is reputed to have brought from India to China the Zen tradition was the 28th patriarch who actually brought it over from it.

Since this was the original mind
of the Buddha

who has been transitioned
this Zen started with the Buddha himself.

and this was, you know, what was his mind was the one that was transitioned ah, and handed it down to his closest disciple.

What is important is that
the legend has said
that this wasn't taught through words, but it was transitioned directly through the mind without words.

Basically, they created this concept
of teaching or transitioning

your own mind without words.

It saw in three different ways.

By creating this narrative,
Zen Buddhists were able to claim that

they are the true inheritors
of the original mind of the Buddha.

But since then, since then, Buddhism had the advantage of kind of a simple transmission of his teachings through a specific kind of Q, a method of delivering and with they declined due to persecution of the conventional kind of Buddhist traditions.
Now we have Zen Buddhism, really the mainstream Buddhist tradition across East Asia.

This is basically when you see you know, high ranking Buddhists, the monks as kind of teachers of the monarchs living in luxury and palaces and having a lot of influence in the state of affairs.
People see them not as spiritual practitioners but as just another powerful figure.

You buy them. But in comparison, when they saw the Zen practitioners with their own simple lives, eating meager food, but really focused on their own spiritual practice, they garnered a lot of public respect and support.

So after several 100 years of this phenomenon, Zhen has today now become the mainstream Buddhism in a lot of countries in East Asia or at least a huge part of a tradition of the taxonomy of Buddhism as a whole.

It is mostly mainstream in China, Korea, Japan, in Vietnam.

But in the past as it evolved in Buddhism, it started kind of consuming other parts of the traditional Buddhism.
So it became more of an inclusive and more comprehensive set of Buddhism.

In that sense that kind of purity of Zen tradition Zen thought in the beginning of its journey has largely disappeared in today's Zen.

So I follow up question from him.
So I want to ask why in today's society like in Japan or in Korea why that then Buddhism is not so much

in the younger, younger generation is not so papula, not so many people in Korea or Japan is helping interest and learning about Sen.
So that's why I noticed that because of that, so many people or younger generations is developing depression, mental health problems.
What's the current reasons?
Why is that? Thank you

I think a lot of young people are very difficult approaching sin because right now over the years, it has become too rigid as it is a tradition, it has become mainstream and as mainstream, it has become authoritative, heavy and instead of using simple words, simple vernacular they used to use now it has been jargonized.
It is really specific, difficult words.
So it really makes it difficult for young people to approach it.

So if we want to go back and draw the interests of the young people, I think Buddhism really needs to be made much easier and much simpler

and try to approach them through the suffering that they're feeling by asking the question like why do you suffer?

So let go of the dogmatic aspect of Zambuddhism but approach them through everyday questions and problems.

You know, for example, you know, I'm as a young people I'm more concerned about dating or schools but then if they try to teach me by force me to meditate on the concept of emptiness, it doesn't really touch me and I get bored.

So I think if Zen today were to go back to his original genesis, which started as a simple, approachable way of trying to liberate oneself I think and try to approach young people by questioning and trying to resolve their everyday issues I think be much more approachable.

Thank you Sooning for our wonderful answers for my question.
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.