Your take on Zen

'Osso as an immediate experience' pays no attention, except that I notice a lot of people I have been fond of over the years have been interested.

Forgive my old cranium but no attention precisely to what

Again forgive a halfway deranged patriarch, but interested in what

as explained in ZEN by Osho as immediate experience

Interested in what? Zen.

Ah I see. Then to stimulate visitors' conversation you might find Osho's work of interest or value

I could swear that Osho (on the link you gave) is Rashneesh, of the 70s or 80s--a real operator. But the link shows us a man with a broad view of meditation--indeed he provides a smorgasborg of all kinds.
My "take" on zen is presented in part (and for better or worse) in the A2K forum on Buddhism: Dharmic religions. I am very hesitant to discuss "zen" philosophically, and to the extent that I do it is in negative terms. The core of Buddhist or mystical thought has to do with the rejection of thought as a means to "enlightenment". It comes if it does as a by-product of our appreciation of the nature of immediate experience, of the realization that our life (i.e, our nature as our experience) is the heart of Reality. Philosophy speculates, by means of the mediation of language about reality; meditation is the direct and nameless realization of It (the very face of God, if you'll pardon the metaphor).

We develop this sense of ourselves, and of who and how we are, and we often cling to that, even when it brings us misery. What should we hold on to, and what should we let go of when it comes to the emotions and ideas we assemble our identities from? But it isn't really about asking the question. More like living it.

My take is a gimme, no holds barred.

I guess that a positive "sense" of who we are is something we would like to cling to and a negative "sense" is one we would like to shed. But in either case we are clinging, or as Buddhists say "attaching," to them as if they were our positive or negative reality. In zen, as I understand it--and as meditation promotes--we do, as you suggesst, let go of all emotions and ideas about our nature and simply experience it moment to moment as an unmediated or preconceptual process of self-realization. As you say, we live it.

I am not sure if follows our ideas of positive or negative. It seems to me there is a certain continuity we demand of ourselves, and to satisfy this continuity, we take upon ourselves the negative roles as well. A good example is the spurned lover who proceeds to make life miserable for the one who spurned him, because he can't let go of that negative emotion. A person more attuned to the 'zen approach' would perhaps ask himself why he was holding so strongly to the negative, and ask himself if there weren't another way. Something else to identify with.

Well put JL

But the term begs discussion: When I was as kid meditation meant thinking about something but now it means not thinking about anything

Good Q Cyr. We could write a book in response (or maybe you could)

I don't know about that. JL is right to be reserved about this issue, and I think that any attempt to discover anything about that question would only lead us into a pretty useless mire of 'what ifs'. For me, the key is to be mindful of the reality I experience, and to remember that this experience isn't something that happens to me, it is me.

Forgive me Cyr but specifically which issue and what q therein

The q you referred to as "good Q Cyr". And the issue at hand is "your take on zen", is it not?

Cyr thank you for that "clarification" which however falls exactly in to the category of the issue at hand so you'll have to excuse me if I don't address it

Dale,, I like to distinguish between CONTEMPLATION about one's reality and MEDITATION as immersion within one's reality. Thought is the substance of the former and immediate sensation that of the latter. By the way, when thoughts appear, as they inevitably will, while one is meditating, they are "objectified" in the sense that they are seen for the sensations that they are.

Thank you JL, well put

I like Zen because it seems, like Socratic dialectics, non dualist. In Buddhism it is said that we are chained to samsara and karmic debt due to our attachment towards objects and people. That objects inherently don't have any qualities than those we ascribe to them. I thought of an instance of one human being acting on another. When I look at a persons behaviour, the action of the person gives the ideation that the person has an inherent existence. Especially when I am the object of the persons actions.How then can I get rid of the illusion of a person's existence ?
In this mode, I look at an object as weak or as strong, instead I should know that both these attributes are false, and this removes feelings of both love or hatred, I do not act on misperceptions and this unchains me from the wheel of samsara. This is why I find zen as lightening my mind of detrius, as if like a servant the floors of a temple are cleared for worship.

Thanks Qaf. I'd endorse Zen for much the same reasons tho remain pantheistic