{"id":6292,"date":"2016-07-19T20:02:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T01:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=6292"},"modified":"2016-07-19T20:16:16","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T01:16:16","slug":"zen-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=6292","title":{"rendered":"Zen Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t had much blogging inspiration of late. But I just wrote a note to a “Zen buddy” of mine who is spending the summer in France. Given that he is a 72 year old idealist who still carries the torch for Bernie Sanders, I congratulated him for not giving in to “comfortable numbness” (yes, I’m thinking of the Pink Floyd song<\/a>). Since we are both Zen students and loyal participants at the local zendo, and yet we both retain something of a healthy skepticism regarding all “bodies of received wisdom” including Buddhism and Zen, I made the point to my friend that Zen practice is not necessarily an antidote to the eviscerating comfort of modern suburban life that Roger Waters sang of. Then I followed up with something of a Zen thought, or maybe more appropriately, an anti-Zen thought. I.e., that Zen is often just another form of “existential novocaine”<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And yes, this thought was also inspired by Pink Floyd — recall the line that goes “just a little pin-prick, they’ll no more AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH . . . but you may feel a little sick.”<\/p>\n

So I did a Google on the phrase “existential novocaine”, and I only found two other<\/a> places<\/a> where the phrase was used. SO, it’s an “almost original”. And no one has yet tied it to Zen or Buddhism. So, I stake my claim !!<\/p>\n

Well, I usually like to write long essays, but for tonight, I’ll go the Zen route and keep it short. Zen and Buddhism as existential novocaine — take it or leave it. An Anti-Zen Thought . . . but then again, Zen is sort of like the elementary particle known as the neutrino. One of the interesting characteristics of the ghost-like (almost Zen-like) neutrino is that it probably serves as its own “anti-particle”<\/a> (as with gluons and Higgs bosons). Perhaps so too with Zen . . . when you criticize Zen, you are actually doing Zen. Perhaps all the more so!!<\/p>\n

PS, here’s an interesting post I found regarding “Cultural Novocaine”<\/a>. I’m not sure exactly what the author (a Mr. Steppling) is trying to sell, but I love his line about “the strip mining of consciousness”<\/strong>. YES!!! That’s another good way to describe Zen. Anti-Zen as Zen!! Love it! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t had much blogging inspiration of late. But I just wrote a note to a “Zen buddy” of mine who is spending the summer in France. Given that he is a 72 year old idealist who still carries the torch for Bernie Sanders, I congratulated him for not giving in to “comfortable numbness” (yes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6292"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6294,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6292\/revisions\/6294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}