Spokey
Member
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2014
- Messages
- 321
There are many reasons. In Zen sometimes they create a environment that's so spartan and harsh for the student that there is a desire to escape. But there's no where to go, the only place to escape to is reality.
Zen is quite straightforward, you just need freedom from intellect to find 'enlightenment', but that is a difficult thing to achieve for the average human. It's especially tricky to convey this idea fully, because it's something that has to be experienced and doesn't yield to verbal description. But this chap does a pretty good job https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APjXpUnHw20
In Daoism most of the hard practises are about transformation of some kind.I'm not so familiar with those beyond things like iron shirt a practice supposed to make one resistant to external damage by thickening facia or other ne gungs. There is a lot of mysticism tied into some of these practices, sometimes it's hard to see where the philosophy ends and the religion starts. I was exposed to philosophical Daoism, which always seemed to me a very pragmatic way of looking at things (and they don't talk about demons quite as much).
Of course, some schools lose the teachers that really know why a practice exists. But the school might keep it up, so you end up with a situation where no one has understanding of what they're doing.
Zen is quite straightforward, you just need freedom from intellect to find 'enlightenment', but that is a difficult thing to achieve for the average human. It's especially tricky to convey this idea fully, because it's something that has to be experienced and doesn't yield to verbal description. But this chap does a pretty good job https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APjXpUnHw20
In Daoism most of the hard practises are about transformation of some kind.I'm not so familiar with those beyond things like iron shirt a practice supposed to make one resistant to external damage by thickening facia or other ne gungs. There is a lot of mysticism tied into some of these practices, sometimes it's hard to see where the philosophy ends and the religion starts. I was exposed to philosophical Daoism, which always seemed to me a very pragmatic way of looking at things (and they don't talk about demons quite as much).
Of course, some schools lose the teachers that really know why a practice exists. But the school might keep it up, so you end up with a situation where no one has understanding of what they're doing.