I think it is true to a certain extent that when faced with a subject we know very little about we many times try to dumb it down, hopefully, to make it chime with our own ideas and understandings.
Many years ago, the American journalist and scholar H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) noted in one of his articles, published in The Baltimore Evening Sun, that “every man prefers what he can understand to what puzzles and dismays him.” I think this holds true, especially, for Zen Buddhism.
Given that Zen Buddhism is quite puzzling (just look at koans) the general tendency of the many (which includes the curious) is to put Zen into their own ideas and understandings. In doing this, the risk of pulling Zen out of its own unique context and putting it into an alien one is quite high.
Historically, Zen’s way of dealing with this problem was rather straightforward: Zen is not interested in your ideas or your understandings. The tough part of Zen is dropping all of our presuppositions about Zen and its goal which is to behold our true nature, directly.
Where it seems that the full force of our errant ideas and understandings come into play is with koans. They sort of have an emetic quality to them! They cause us to vomit up our ideas and understandings about what we imagine Zen Buddhism is all about. But none of our slop fits no matter how much we hurl! And if crazy means doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results we sooner or later see just how crazy we are when it comes to koans. Hopefully, we stop doing the same thing over and over again. I remember when I did exactly that. I had come to my wits' end and knew it. Only at that point, for the first time, did I allow the Way to teach me on its own terms.
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