The odd thing about Zen Buddhism is that we have to be enlightened to know what Zen is all about, that is, what it actually means otherwise we will be approaching it, almost always, by means of our personal opinions even ignoring much of what the literature says in the example of Bodhidharma's definition of Zen 禪 which is about seeing our true nature.
Even if we imagine scholars arguing back and forth over what Zen means, they would get no closer to Zen. But the history of Zen before it became a Zen tradition 禪宗, during the time of the Song dynasty, was nothing more than an introspective praxis consisting of various techniques by which one, hopefully, gained nirvana (direct entry into the unconditioned).
This praxis we see in the Dharmatrāta Chan Sutra (411 C.E.). If there was a tradition/tenet position 宗 (S., Siddhānta) to emerge later during Song dynasty, it was based on meditational experience itself culminating in nirvana. And this seems evident when we look at all the Zen literature including koans and the houtou (lit. ante-word).
In light of this, the beginner needs to beware of claims about Zen, for example, that it is about living in the now or Zen is the everyday mind. Zen’s real aim has always been the attainment of nirvana which is just one way of describing the unconditioned, the stuff the universe is composed from but certainly not a dead stuff or material stuff. It is Mind or the same, absolute spirit.
Looking and the big picture from the highest perspective of Zen everything is a derivation of absolute spirit’s originative nature. Because of this, creation and the increate interpenetrate but the increate does not depend upon the created. The eternal and the temporal interfuse but the eternal is never temporalized. And samsara and nirvana uniformly pervade one another but nirvana is forever free of samsara.
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