David Foster Wallace vs. Buddha LET'S GO
I sat down with a copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. The book is heavy. As it lay in my lap I thought it might be affecting my sperm count! Meanwhile, the book Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher is nice and slim. And Guy Debord's The Society of Spectacle is even slimmer! It's practically the thickness of Kleenex!! But it's reaaaaaaaally complicated. Why am I telling you this? Because I was going to shoot the greatest video ever on the Zen Buddhist teaching around Ignorance using Wallace's and Fisher's and Debord's texts. And . . . ? To HECK with that!! Too much stinking thinking! Instead I picked one sentence from a tiny little masterpiece, The Zen Teachings of Huang Po, along with two pages in a collection of teachings by Shodo Harada Roshi, and came up with a much better video! Huang Po has a wonderful line: "Those who seek the goal through cognition are like the fur (many), while those who obtain intuitive knowledge of the way are like the horns (few)." In today's video we track Huang Po's teaching through part of a Teisho by Shodo Harada Roshi wherein he tells us the story of Zen Master Joshu and his famous koan, "Have you eaten your gruel?" This in answer to Joshu's student's question, "What is the meaning of life and how the heck should I live??" Harada Roshi has several wonderful insights into Joshu's teaching, which I try to unpack today. In sum, when we practice Zen without getting all caught up in cognition or overthinking, our "true creativity" comes alive and we manifest intutive knowledge of the Way. The horns, not the fur! I offer these videos for free, but you can support my work here: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?busine... You can find essays, blogs, and videos here: patreon.com/ShozanJackHaubner And buy my books here: https://www.amazon.com/Shozan-Jack-Ha...

the best ZEN teaching ever is only 11 words long

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