I have been around a few Buddhist chat rooms since the advent of Netscape (boy, that was a few years ago!). It took me a long time to connect all the stars and see the constellation of what was happening. Let’s call it the constellation Vicarious. Vicariously, one may experience in their imagination, all the richness of ancient Chinese Zen just by reading books.
Whether we are in a Zen chat room on the Internet or participate in a number of Reddit Zen subs, basically, a vicarious Zen life is being experienced.
When a participant in a chat room posts a paragraph from Blofeld’s translation of Huang Po (Huangbo) this participant is essentially saying this paragraph speaks for me and all that it implies. But this is a fallacy insofar as it misleads others into unconsciously associating the poster with the wise words of Huang Po—a poster who never once went through the Buddhist training that Huang Po went through.
When someone comes home from a hard day’s work and decides to read Huang Po just before going to bed, they are deceiving themselves to a certain degree. The kinship they feel with the words in the book does not mean they are getting enlightened. It is only a sympathetic participation realized through their imagination. It is the same as if someone were to read Einstein or a book on mountaineering. Does reading Einstein make this person a mathematician or does reading a book on mountaineering make one a mountain climber? Hardly.
Going to a Zen chat room or reading my favorite Zen master still falls under the definition of vicarious. I would be inclined to argue that joining a Zen community and sitting in zazen with fellow members is still very much of a vicarious endeavor as if to say, “I hope to be like a Zen master someday,” without going through the actual difficult struggle of being challenged, then having to meet Zen master Dahui's 'great doubt' 大疑 face to face being totally empty and forlorn.
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