The three pillars of Zen

What Hacker News says

1. gala8yJun 2023
   Three Pillars of Zen, read when I was 16, it felt like "This is it. This is how I see it."

   Few books by Ken Wilber, gave me a framework, a meta-frame of sorts when I was young.

   Introduction to NLP (esp. chapter V on Meta Model, took me two years to process it)

   Structure of Magic, vol. II - communication, incongruity

   Mind and Nature by Gregory Bateson

   And I could go on and on... but the winner is...

   "Embracing Our Selves" by Sidra & Hal Stone.

   This book and perspective changed my life completely. It was like a grenade bursting inside my mind and I've seen many people reacting to it this way (incl. people closest to my heart). It's a perspective shift, an insight. You've been warned. :)

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2. pmoriartyNov 2022
   Speaking of Zen-themed books, I can recommend The Three Pillars of Zen by Kapleau.
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3. dkarlJan 2022
   That's a really difficult question. Every aspect of Thich Nhat Hanh I think of, I think of people who are as old as him, or who predeceased him. Hopefully that is my own generational bias.

   For example, he was a Zen master whose writings reached a broad audience and provided a modern voice for a tradition where some of the foundational works such as the Platform Sutra are roughly a thousand years old. For other modern Zen voices, there are books such as Three Pillars of Zen, Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, Opening the Hand of Thought, and probably many others. (Albert Low is on my to-read list.) All of those are by authors who died before Thich Nhat Than, though.

   He also was an activist and an original proponent of "engaged Buddhism," in which compassion is seen to mandate action for social change. I'm sadly ignorant of the current landscape here; the Dalai Lama and Gary Snyder certainly count, but they are both getting on in years.

   He also wrote a lot of books that are light on doctrine but very direct, grounded, and gentle, that people have found comforting and supportive in a crisis. For that, many people look to the books of Pema Chödrön, Tara Brach, and Sharon Salzberg, who are at least a little bit younger, but all in their sixties or older.

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4. emptysongglassAug 2019
   What?

   The Buddha is speaking very specifically in the quote you've mentioned of a class of religious priest, the brahman, and the contemplative engaging in jhanic meditations that do not lead to the ending of suffering.

   You're right, the words of the Buddha weren't written down for hundreds of years after but across those earliest texts flung across space and time, we find an astonishing harmony.

   Look, I'm seeing calls to end my supposed promotion of sectarian strife: I love Three Pillars of Zen, have obsessively studied the Mahayana epic the Surangama Sutra, and washed myself in the pure poetry of the Complete Reality school. But I cannot stress enough, and neither did the Buddha, in the importance of incisive, unequivocal language when it comes to identifying right view.

   Vajrayana, the deeply mystical arm of Buddhism, stresses the importance of a guru relationship to the disciple, fraught with a history of sexual manipulation. Unquestioned power structures do this. We have thousands of years of history to support this.

   Mahayana Buddhism gave birth to Zen, perhaps the cleanest strain to emerge but which sacrificed an essential tenet: that a monk should not grow their own food; should rely on the continuing generosity of the people to survive. It is further compromised by the trappings of rites and rituals, which the Buddha of the early texts rejected.

   And what of Nichiren who famously declared that enlightenment was impossible in such a fallen world? The same enlightenment the pre-Mahayana Buddha stressed was for everyone?

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5. grabarzOct 2018
   "Three pillars of Zen" by Phillip Kapleau. Contains chapters on practice and main concepts of Zen.
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6. krueger71May 2018
   The Three Pillars of Zen by Roshi Philip Kapleau
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