The Zen of Quakerism (2016)

Posted by surprisetalk 6 days ago

The Zen of Quakerism (2016)(www.friendsjournal.org)

124 points | 100 commentspage 2

antithesizer 3 days ago|

Buddhism is a lot less "zen" than Quakerism.

gsf_emergency_2 3 days ago|

Less obviously... It's also a lot less antisocial,

which translates in many if not most cases to less anti-intellectual

Because experts are some of the most resented earthly authority in America, and individual meditation is great for alternate facts. Going viral would be prayers answered

gandalfian 3 days ago||

If you are young and give the silence a decent go it's OK to fall back on a book after a bit, or if you are too young to read yet, quietly working on some lego under your seat will not bother anyone. Adults are a little trickier but comtemplating a bible or Faith and Practice works. And, you know, it is meant to be voluntary.

yapyap 3 days ago||

Would be nice if they explain what the heck a Quaker is, I thought this was gonna be an article on the peace of playing Quake and when I released it wasn’t that I thought of the Quaker oats but not much more than that

wolfgang42 3 days ago|

Expecting Friends Journal to explain quakers is like wanting the IETF to tell you what a computer is; the target audience for this article are people who are way beyond needing an introduction to the topic, though of course on the Internet articles can end up in unexpected places.

A brief and reductive explanation: The Religious Society of Friends (colloquially “Quakers”) are a religious movement (nominally Christian, in practice often agnostic) which originated in England circa 1650. A core part of the theology is that God might speak to anyone, so worship generally consists of sitting around in silence until someone hears from Him and stands up to repeat the message, hence why the article is drawing parallels between that practice and Zen Buddhism.

123sereusername 3 days ago||

[dead]

wiseowise 3 days ago||

I always more of a Quake guy than Doom. Probably because I started with it first.

Fishkins 2 days ago||

Early on at my first full-time job I requested a week off to attend a Quaker conference. My manager approved the request without comment. After I returned from vacation he asked how the competition went. He'd never heard of Quakers and had genuinely assumed I was attending some Quake tournament.

bravesoul2 2 days ago||

So you are a Quaker not a Doomer

sorokod 3 days ago|

There is considerable cherry picking along with cultural appropriation going on here. Buddhism has flavors that are worlds apart from what is described in the post.

A spicy example is discussed in the book "Zen at War"[1]. Myanamar and Sri Lanka[2] have their own ultra nationalistic Buddhists movements.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_Buddhist_nationalism

sctb 3 days ago||

Obviously there are many flavours of Buddhism and many flavours of Christianity, but the author is simply relating his own experience. I really don't see how cherry picking or cultural appropriation could possibly apply here.

sorokod 3 days ago||

The author picks and chooses aspects of a tradition/religion/philosophy and names the result as the original tradition/religion/philosophy.

Does that help?

jibcage 3 days ago||

I think the author is speaking about a specific tradition of Buddhism, Zen, and is drawing parallels between that tradition and Quakerism. The “picking and choosing” point doesn’t make sense to me from that angle. Are you picking and choosing from Christianity when you talk about Protestantism, for example? His thoughts on Zen are pretty on point.

sorokod 3 days ago||

The author is ultimately speaking of a specific practice, meditation. A practice that predates Buddhism by probably more then a millennium. Zen is not relevant here as it is a latter development.

corry 3 days ago|||

IMO it's wild to have the expectation that a Quaker author writing in a Quaker publication about his direct experiences with Zen Buddhism (as practiced in a specific New Jersey group) and how it helped him meditate is deficient because it doesn't provide caveats or overviews of the in's and out's of the various forms of Buddhism.

You REALLY think anyone would benefit from him adding:

BIG CAVEAT: BUDDHISM IS A RELIGION OF BILLIONS AND SOME PARTICULAR GROUPS MIGHT NOT FIT WITH THE DESCRIPTIONS OF MY EXPERIENCE!!!!

ALSO, IT IS ABSOLUTELY *IMPERATIVE* THAT YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE SOME MILITANT BUDDHIST GROUPS IN MYANAMAR!!!! WARNING WARNING WARNING!!

???

enugu 3 days ago|||

Quoting examples without an effort to show that it is representative of Buddhist teachings is basically a smear. Like starting a discussion on liberalism, not with principles of individual freedom, but instead saying that the attempt to bring democracy to Iraq is the representative example of liberalism.

(Some on the left who oppose liberalism actually do some versions of this, quoting Mills on colonialism - but that is a genetic fallacy.)

It makes much more sense to say that anytime some teaching/philosophy becomes popular at a continental scale, the people who are involved in conflicts will try to appropriate it to justify their position.

If you want to evaluate the role of the teaching itself, one would have to compare it to alternatives and whether they would be more easily appropriated.

keybored 3 days ago||

> Like starting a discussion on liberalism, not with principles of individual freedom, but instead saying that the attempt to bring democracy to Iraq is the representative example of liberalism.

Some prefer to discuss what a purported ideology or its adherents does out in the real world.

enugu 2 days ago||

Sure, as long as your real world examination is careful about getting the causation right as practically any idea can be appropriated. For instance, someone makes false charge to lock up someone innocent in the name of 'reducing crime', is the issue the goal of justice and low crime or is it the problem with the standards of evidence used to lock up the criminal?

keybored 2 days ago||

> For instance, someone makes false charge to lock up someone innocent in the name of 'reducing crime', is the issue the goal of justice and low crime or is it the problem with the standards of evidence used to lock up the criminal?

The immediate problem is the troll that is lying and hiding behind a purported agenda. Exposing their real agenda is the immediate fix.

You don’t rhetorically concede to the troll that “reducing crime” is good because they’re a troll. Conceding anything to them is a strategic blunder. They are trolling. It’s irrelevant to the case.

keybored 3 days ago|||

That’s what comes to my mind when I read things about American-style Buddhist meditation. Why don’t they mention Myanmar-style racism?

dctoedt 3 days ago||

> cultural appropriation going on here

Can you tell us more about what you mean by "cultural appropriation," and how you see it as differing from "imitating others' useful practices"?