Steve's Zen

This of a request of Onevoice in the why should we care about politics thread.

I was brought up on Alan Watts and DT Suzuki with a lot of backup the from the Taoists, Jung and Joseph Campbell

I believe that we are entitled to nothing, that we need to earn whatever we receive, and part of that is following truth, which changes some with time a place, and that the better we track truth with our heads and feel truth with our hearts the more in sink we can be with the universe, which is the perfection of live, which will be rewarded with abundance. . Be true to who we are, and synch up with everything and everyone who is around us, this is the only way. As a part of this the I, the steve, is an illusion, I am nothing, I am fantasy, and the only way to live successfully is to be a genuine fake. I live as if I am steve, and I do my best to be the best steve that I can be, but it is all a game. We also believe that all truth must be verified by our lives, this is part of the truth being variable through time and place, if it is not truth for me right now then it is not truth. We also live a great deal of our lives through intuition. We dont believe that not understanding something or not being able to put something into language means that it is not truth. On the other hand the Ego is a tricky little ******, always trying to swindle us if is not trained, and so we always need to verify everything that we think is true. Also, just because something was true 5 years ago does not mean that it is still true, we Zennists are always willing to check to see if something is still true if ever we get the idea that it is not, there are no sacred cows for us, assume nothing. We also believe that life is an onion, I just because I did not understand something 5 years ago does not mean that I will not now, maybe I have reached a higher level of consciousness. Always questioning, always checking beliefs and assumptions with reality, the whole time know this this is a game and that we are an illusion. This is what we do (as contrasted to the Catholics and most Christians who are all about " this is what we believe")

Your question started with wondering why I still do what I think is right even though I dont believe in God. Hopefully I have answered you. This should also illuminate for you why the attempts to bully me here fail, also why the victim culture that the feminists and a lot of others push offends me so. You will find that when people around here claim this or that the first thing I generally do is ask them for the science that backs up their claim, which you should now understand.

I also believe that love and compassion are the pixie dust that makes humanity work, this of course being the part of Zen that most people who know next to nothing about zen think of as zen. But like the Chinese Zen masters who beat the want to be students who showed up at the door before then let them in I am sure that showing people compassion requires being not nice to them sometimes. In the modern West the right to stuff or to control the people around you, as well as the devotion to niceness, are vastly misplaced.

Hopefully this answers your questions, It is impossible to teach zen through words, we can only give a taste in words.