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Eight Simple Zenish Habits
Shoshin1
Sentient BeingOceania Veteran
- Kaizen: Continuous Improvement
- Ikigai: Your reason for being
- Hara Hachi Bu: Eat until your 80% full
- Shinrin Yoku: Being in Nature
- Wabi-Sabi: The acceptance of imperfection
- Gaman: The ability to go thru difficulty without complaining
- Omoiyari: Sensing what someone needs before they ask
- Kintsugi: Your failures are part of your story so be proud of them
🙏🙏🙏
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Comments
I am skeptical about such, since some things are ingrained in one's own culture and cannot be simply "copied, replicated", yet so many self-help courses and books pop up, usually by westerners, about Ikigai or Wabi-Sabi (these two I've heard of before). Don't get me wrong, I don't mind people fetishizing such customs, because usually none of these are quite the solution to their problems, but they can ease people more into a direction, little-by-little, as sort of gateway experiences (once they overcome the disappointment that it didn't solve all their problems nor did they get enlightened through them). Zen Buddhism however is almost always conveyed through the same images, no matter where you are: everything strictly looks about the same, you could go to Africa and a Zen Buddhist's home would reflect a Japanese look. It's a bit like a master pointing to a flower and interpreting it in a way that the flower pointed at was somehow special compared to all those he didn't. Am I completely off about it?
Buddhism is a way of life, one that arises from a culture often foreign to the Western mind. Yet many of us in the West practise it and benefit deeply from it, some experience kenshō and take to it like ducks to water, while for others it can be difficult to grasp and may take a lifetime of practice to gain even a glimpse.
A healthy level of scepticism, from what I gather, is beneficial. But if doubtfulness is allowed to hold one back, reinforcing the sense of self, it can trap a person in a perpetual cycle of pessimism, which is not a healthy and balanced way to live one’s life.
I suppose what I am getting at is that genuine practice is not about copying cultural forms, but about cultivating understanding through experience. Practice shapes understanding, and understanding deepens practice.
From what I gather, one must cultivate a scepticism that sits between blind imitation and outright rejection. In other words, the Middle Way, with perhaps a touch of “fake it until you make it” thrown in for good measure.
These sorts of things are much more of a training, a slow developing of new habits and ways of being, than they are customs to be adopted. You can start doing them, but the doing of them is in service of a deep integration and change of being.
And its not like you either have it or you don't. Some changes and benefits come easily while others are like trying to squeeze water out of a rock.
I would also argue that the west does some things right that the east isn't as good at. Like self expression, being true to yourself, following your dreams, or things like social change.
I'm not here to argue, but I find the thumbnail somewhat provocative, as if I'm supposed to believe that most Japanese people, on a cultural level are well aware of all these terms and their meanings and are consciously practicing such habits. I'd be surprised if they'd consider most of these a part of their national identity or heritage, even if to many they are, or for us outsiders it's what Japan is like. It's a bit like when Native Americans appear to be an endless source of wisdom, but the image is not necessarily accurate, even according to actual Native Americans. And that is all I meant, not that these practices are dumb or useless, but that they seem to be romanticized in relation to their origins.