https://www.reddit.com/r/zenbuddhism/comments/1i3fazq/zen_solves_all_your_problems/
created by JundoCohen on 17/01/2025 at 12:30 UTC*
0 upvotes, 14 top-level comments (showing 14)
In recent weeks, I have been speaking with Dharma Friends and Sangha Members who are struggling with a variety of health, family, life and world problems. (The following are not based on specific individuals, but are composites of many folks.) There is grief at the death of a loved one, as well as health worries either for themself or a close family member, sicknesses ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's to failing hearts to more. There are folks going through rough divorces, business bankruptcies, problems with troubled kids, their own addictions. There are people under threat of domestic violence. There are some who are truly heartbroken at world events, poverty, natural disasters and more. I offer an ear for deep listening, what words of comfort that I can, a shoulder to lean on, words of love and friendship, and sometimes I cry with them. But if they ask me how Zen and Buddhist Wisdom can help them deal with all those troubles, I may offer something more that they may not expect ...
I reply that Zen can solve these problems, all problems everywhere, resolve every disease and right every wrong.
Troubles vanish, never were. Thoroughly and completely. Truly.
Some may doubt, scoff, not understand or think I must be joking or exaggerate. So let me explain, for I mean exactly what I claim. I am not lying to my friends:
This Path opens us to a Face of reality Clear and Whole, in which there is no death, no loss, no being apart. There is no separate self amid Wholeness, nor is one ever bound by this body and its burdens of aging and illness. There is nothing to resist, no losses nor anything needed to add or regain. In this Completeness, there is not a thing to crave or desire in any way, not a drop lacking. There are no victims of violence or oppression, no threats, no place for winds and rains to blow or fall, no fires to burn. There are no wars, no opponents, no conflict or tension for no two. Zazen opens this Doorless Doorway never apart from here, even when obscured from view by our divided thinking, clouded by our little self's fears and demands that cut up the world into broken pieces.
Thus, there can be no loss or broken heart, no disease and no disappointment, no flaw or anything in need of gain, nothing more in need of fixing, nothing to cure, nothing to regret or resent, nothing to crave, no coming, no going, not even death. There never was, is not, and never will be.
... Except I also must tell these same friends that Zen Practice, and all the Buddhas in the world, can do nothing to solve or cure a single problem really. I am sorry to say that many problems in life will remain no matter how much Zazen we sit or how long we chant. I wish that I could cure my friend's illness, heal his business, help him with his kids, end homelessness and hate. Sadly, I feel so helpless to help sometimes.
I must report to the same folks that, despite all their practice, they may still grieve their lost loved one, continue to be very ill and filled with worries and concerns. Their cancer may be just the same, the marriage my be unfixable, the business just as insolvent, the kids still in trouble. The addiction may keep pulling at one's resolve. The wars continue to rage, injustices continue, fires burn. I am afraid that, if they are looking for a life totally without problems, they will never find it.
Oh, Zen practice can and will help people accept their state more, be more allowing, more patient. Certainly, the quiet of this Practice and sitting will aid one's coming to terms with some of it. Buddhist practice can certainly help us become less angry, less fearful, less clutching and addicted. However, the fact of the matter is that you had best see a doctor for your bad heart or cancer, a counselor for your bad marriage or troubled kids or addictions, help organizations and police to stop domestic violence (GET AWAY from the situation and get yourself safe!), a diplomat for the wars and a fireman for the fires, not a Zen teacher. I have little to offer.
May my friends know this life both ways at once, like two sides of a no sided coin!
Buddhist Wisdom *can* cure and solve ALL our problems thoroughly, even if it cannot cure or solve even one. This path can totally free us of all problems, even though life will not.
We realize that, while problems remain, together with the frustrated desires, aging, sickness, death and the rest that is always part of life ... there was also never a problem from the start, nothing lacking, no aging or passing time, no illness and no death, and all is Whole. All is true at once.
Realizing so, one can be free ... even while up to one's neck in the chaos. One can take one's medicine, cry one's tears of grief, be concerned for one's family and kids, battle one's addictions, work to stop the wars, feed the hungry, make this a little bit cleaner and more peaceful planet, put out the fires ... *even as* ... there is nothing in need of cure, nothing lost, nothing to fear or battle, no fires raging, not now and there never was.
Some of life's problems will resolve with time, some will not, some will go as you wish them to go, some will not. Short-sighted human eyes will always see a world sometimes beautiful and sometimes ugly, sometimes win and sometimes lose, sometimes peaceful and sometimes filled with conflict.
Even so, to a Buddha's Eye, there was never a single problem to come or go, nor a separate you to solve it. There is a Buddha Beauty which encompasses all small worldly beauty and ugliness, a Buddha Peace which sweeps in all humankind's peace and war, a Buddha Life which is all birth and death, Timeless Buddha which is the ticking clock and turning calendar. All within a Buddha's Eye.
.
Thus, human eye, Buddha Eye ...
... Please Open All Eyes At Once!
Comment by ryagodin at 17/01/2025 at 14:25 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
While I agree to that, I still couldn't agree. Some time ago I thought about Zen as a resolve for all problems, a sweet spot of peace and beauty... But it is just about accepting reality in all its complexity, including yourself trying to do something in pretty harsh situations. Zen is just insanely hard, but honest.
Comment by Agnostic_optomist at 17/01/2025 at 12:56 UTC
15 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Another in a long line of click bait and switch missives.
1. Overtly shocking/offensive/outrageous claim
2. More pot stirring
3. Some U-turn towards normalcy
Comment by tkp67 at 17/01/2025 at 13:29 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
One impression that the historical Buddha's behavior as a human being has left on me is that he taught according to the causes, capacities and conditions of others and not his own.
Comment by SteadfastDharma at 17/01/2025 at 12:57 UTC
8 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Why would you talk so much. Your friends need a shoulder to cry on, an arm around them, someone helping them doing their shopping, cooking for them, change their bed and clean their toilet. You wouldn't be much of a friend by the looks of it .
Comment by edgepixel at 17/01/2025 at 13:31 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
One day, I realized: *There can never be anything wrong in the entire universe*
That can lift some of the burden the soul carries. But it doesn't make the hardships of life any easier...
Long or short, I recognize the truth. And that doesn't mean I can't be an ass sometimes.
Comment by RareStable0 at 17/01/2025 at 14:56 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
You clearly love to hear yourself talk, and I am so glad that we could provide you a place to do that.
Comment by jan_kasimi at 17/01/2025 at 16:19 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Okay. What's your point?
Comment by JundoCohen at 17/01/2025 at 14:30 UTC
3 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I am curious to ask all the so-called Zen folks here. Is the following not as true as true can be? If not, what the hell are you practicing all these years??? I would love to hear the fault one finds there.
~~~
This Path opens us to a Face of reality Clear and Whole, in which there is no death, no loss, no being apart. There is no separate self amid Wholeness, nor is one ever bound by this body and its burdens of aging and illness. There is nothing to resist, no losses nor anything needed to add or regain. In this Completeness, there is not a thing to crave or desire in any way, not a drop lacking. There are no victims of violence or oppression, no threats, no place for winds and rains to blow or fall, no fires to burn. There are no wars, no opponents, no conflict or tension for no two. Zazen opens this Doorless Doorway never apart from here, even when obscured from view by our divided thinking, clouded by our little self's fears and demands that cut up the world into broken pieces.
Comment by Less_Bed_535 at 20/01/2025 at 05:31 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I find it funny that you are so bitterly voted down even though you describe the path of zen whole heartedly and honestly. The whole thing is a contradiction. I wonder if most the people here would scoff at my sangha if they saw us practice together. It’s a matter of the heart. I don’t know why you are being boo’d so loudly.
Your posts are thought provoking and clearly come from your heart.
Comment by JundoCohen at 17/01/2025 at 23:03 UTC*
1 upvotes, 2 direct replies
There are a handful of folks who do not seem to wish to engage in good spiritual and civil conversation, but are just knee-jerk angry often. So, I have decided to disengage from such particular folks, and just wish them well in their practice and life.
Most of the essays that I post here are to test drafts before Tricycle runs the final draft (https://tricycle.org/author/jundocohen/[1]). They seem to be received with more open heart and mind there and some other places, so I am not sure the problem with some vexed voices. In any case, be well. Keep good humor and an open mind. Keep sitting.
1: https://tricycle.org/author/jundocohen/
Comment by JundoCohen at 19/01/2025 at 08:38 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Somebody asked if I am talking realistically, from real personal experience. Oh yes. Three stories I tell was when my mother died, my daughter was not expected to make it through the night in the ER (50-50 chance, fortunately she made it), and with my own esophageal cancer.
I grieved as my mother died, I cried, I worried for my daughter and for myself ... and yet there was a profound sense of no death, no coming or going, nothing to fear.
If the person wants "comfort," I will hug them, and offer a kind word of love and consoling.
If they want Zen Wisdom, I will give them to experience no death.
Comment by [deleted] at 17/01/2025 at 16:55 UTC
1 upvotes, 2 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by JundoCohen at 19/01/2025 at 00:51 UTC*
-1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I am left to feel that some folks may miss the point of the essay (and it is probably my poor writing as the cause) because they truly miss the lesson of the Relative and Absolute, that Samsara is Nirvana, that the cold and heat never vanish yet we "Go to the place free of cold and heat," that we can never be fully free in this life, yet have been always free from the startless start.
In Master Dogen's vision, Samsara and Nirvana dance together right in this moment, twirling in a single thread.
I wonder why that eludes some practitioners? Problems fully vanish for there never were any problems, no one to feel a problem, no one to cause a problem ... and yet, in this life, there will always be problems, endless problems. Problems, no problems, not one not two. (A Koan)
Comment by JundoCohen at 19/01/2025 at 00:34 UTC
-1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
A little bit added to the opening paragraph, as it was not clear enough to some readers: "I offer an ear for deep listening, what words of comfort that I can, a shoulder to lean on, words of love and friendship, and sometimes I cry with them. But if they ask me how Zen and Buddhist Wisdom can help them deal with all those troubles, I may offer something more that they may not expect ... "
