ZEN EVENT

[Nagual LoneWolf]

What led you to the study of Zen? I discovered Zen while researching Eastern Beliefs and Practices. Did an event happen in your life which reminds you of Zen (like me and my elephant)? Does Zen give you peace?

[Gonzo]

I spent lots of time and money with various therapists trying to find "what was wrong". Someone suggested a psychiatrist they knew so I made an appointment with him. After 45 minutes of spewing, he sat back, looked at me and asked if I'd ever heard of Zen. He suggested I check out Alan Watts, and the rest, as they say, is history...best $100 I ever spent, not to mention all the books that followed.



Does Zen give me peace? It anchors me.

[Lunoor]

Nice therapist gonzo.



My introduction to zen was in college back in the 90's reading the haiku of Issa and other such mosquito priests. Right now I hear a cricket chirp and bubbling water from the cichlid's tank. All the while a pain in my heart from the recap I woke up with, Mashallah.



Heard distant coyotes while watching the Pleiades's shower: satellites, stars, agazement...then, vigil of a thousand mosquitoes, dawn at last!

[Demasiado Demente]

I trampled into zen years after taking on spiritual affairs. Love it. It has become a part of me.

[Blue totem]

I found zen in a book called; The Spirit of Judo
I wasnt looking to find spirituality, I was looking to read about judo, I was only 19...
But the book was a story about a french judoka and his encounters with a high rank judo master who was also a zen master. So I found zen by ''chance''. Reading the book, I wanted to know more about what that judo master was practicing in zen, so I looked up a book about zen, and I got hooked.
So I started to meditate at 19, and read as many books on zen as I could find. From Deshimaru to Dogen to Tomas Merton to Hakuin.. From Miyamoto musashi to Takuan Soho. And so on.
It was daring and revolutionnary for me. I loved the enigma behind meditation... Also, The way zen monks turned their back on the world, and were minimalists in every aspect of their lifes.
So thats my story.

[Wei Shan Yang]

My first event(s) (with Buddhism)? Holding a bell in a shop when I was very young and having a strange feeling of familiarity with men of the east of whom I did not know personally, but seemed to anyway. Also, hearing my mom's maiden name and visualizing light (luminosity). Telling my great grandma about reincarnation when I was 4 when I didn't know what it was but I did and proceeded to explain it to her (she was devout catholic).

[Mornings Son]

For me?

In my study and practice of magick way back I found that I needed to have a sharper focus of my mind. I needed to do some meditation. That day my love return from the library with a book on Zen. I liked it found out the author lived 10 minutes from my place - visit him - was accepted into his zen group. Half a year later the sangha arranged for the zen master to come to Europa for the first time. I was on that first sesshin/retreat and the rest is history.

Its only the last 4 years that I have started to study zen text. Before that I thought that only zazen practice mattered.

[lex icon]

Years ago a Cistercian monk named Thomas Merton was looking into Zen and writing of it and I happened to read one of his books at the time.

[another spirit]

found zen in the foreign mind. and sex. but especially weed. weed and music

[Guest]