What is Zen Optimism?
Before we talk about Zen Optimism, we might first consider the goal of Zen. And to that end, we might say that it is:
The direct transmission of the fundamental teaching of Buddhism (nonduality) from teacher to student.
Traditionally, a teacher accomplishes this transmission by shaping each student’s experiences to produce a progression of insights.
Historically, it seems that Zen came about as a remedy to the deficiencies inherent in a purely intellectual approach to Buddhism that often ran open-loop - meaning no feedback to correct for misconceptions. And just as a scholarly approach to Buddhism perhaps errs sans feedback, it seems that modern Zen1 perhaps errs with an over-emphasis on direct experience and scant intellectual footing.
Enter Zen Optimism
I’ve borrowed the term ‘optimism’ from the physicist David Deutsch2 who argues that experience is not a trustworthy basis of knowledge - that, in reality, we constantly conjecture the nature of things and only use our experience to evaluate these notions.3
As Zen students, we might ask - “So why is knowledge or understanding so necessary?” We are talking about Zen, after all. To that, Deutsch provides this nugget:
The Principle of Optimism: All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge.
I like to think that we could replace the word ‘evil’ with ‘suffering’ and get agreement from many that this was a direct quote from the Buddha. And we should recognize the Deutsch quote as truly optimistic as it declares that all evils can be overcome - through understanding.
Just as we could argue that Zen arose when Buddhist scholars failed to use their experiences to evaluate their understandings,4 we can say that modern Zen students need a firmer conceptual basis to explain their experiences better.
And in this blog - Zen Optimism - we attempt to frame the modern Zen tradition (and individual Zen practice) with the latest understandings of how we, as humans, actually acquire knowledge - in this case, the knowledge necessary in the quest for equanimity.
Happy to share this journey, Jim
Photo by Mark König on Unsplash
Students who are unassociated or only loosely associated with a legitimate Zen master
From his book The Beginning of Infinity - Explanations That Transform the World
In his writings, he often uses the phrase ‘theory-laden observation.’
You may want to check out the ‘earth-touching Buddha.’
