Inner And Outer Practice

I think that inwardly Zen is the answer whereas outwardly unorthodox Trotskyism is the answer. There are parallels between inner and outer practices. On the one hand, supreme enlightenment has not yet been realized and the working class has not yet taken complete control. On the other hand, there is always something to be done by individuals and groups here and now.

Currently, politically, we are in a race against time. We know that each of us will die some time. Spiritually, I think, the question is: how far can we progress in meditation between now and then? (That is not the right way to put it but there is no right way to put it.) Physically, we need to leave a planet for future generations whether or not those generations are going to include rebirths of our individual karmas, which I do not believe.

Causes And Mechanisms

The Buddha taught that the cause of suffering was mental grasping.

I agree that it is the psychological cause but there are also physical causes.

Darwin found that the mechanism of biological change was natural selection.

Marx found that the mechanism of historical change was class struggle.

Mental grasping and class struggle directly affect us now.

Class society is about to change the environment faster than human beings will be able to adapt to it.

Comrade Chloe

Chloe, if you have found your way to this blog, now go to its earliest post, "Zen Marxism," here.

If you want to get in touch but have any problems using the combox, which might happen, then you can email: paulshackley2017@gmail.com

Eight Syntheses

Terminology
"Yoga is control of thoughts," i.e., meditation.
Karma = action.
Ch'an/Zen = Meditation.
Tao = the Way, based on negation and interaction between opposites.
Shinto = Way of the Gods.
Dialectics = interaction between opposites.
Materialism = "Being determines consciousness."

India
Jain soul pluralist asceticism;
Carvaka materialist hedonism;
Buddhist "no soul" middle way.

Yoga;
caste duty;
karma yoga.

China and Japan
Buddhism;
Taoism;
Ch'an Buddhism;
Shinto nature mysticism;
Zen Buddhism.

Europe
Hegelian dialectics;
Feuerbachian materialism;
Marxist dialectical materialism.

Utopian socialism;
political economy;
scientific socialism.

Dialectical materialism;
scientific socialism;
Marxism.

Eurasia
Zen meditation;
Marxism;
Zen Marxism.

The Eight Syntheses
Buddhism
karma yoga
Ch'an
Zen
dialectical materialism
scientific socialism
Marxism
Zen Marxism

From India: Buddhism and karma yoga.
From China and Japan: a refinement of Buddhism.
From Europe: Marxism, synthesizing two syntheses.

Zen Marxism synthesizes Zen and Marxism and updates the two Indian syntheses.

Interface

Individual consciousness is an interface between dynamic natural and social environments and unconscious biological and psychological processes. At the interface, external events meet incomprehensible motivations. We learn about current affairs from television and about mental processes through meditation. Many groups in different ways address the problems of self and society, respectively. I happen to think that the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives and the Socialist Workers Party get it right for their respective halves of the total picture. What matters is not that others agree with me - they don't - but that everyone makes their own assessment. Let's not sleep walk into oblivion but try to understand and respond to the problems.

Some Buddhists claim not just theory or doctrine but knowledge of postmortem mental states whereas scientific knowledge of brain states entails that they cause mental states. I accept scientific knowledge but am open to learning about meditative experience.

An Apparent Contradiction

Zen monks look within, work on the self and practice acceptance whereas revolutionary socialists look without, act in society and practice resistance. These two ways of life are not only entirely dissimilar but also apparently contradictory. However, I believe that:

reality is one, therefore both "inner" and "outer";
both work on the self and action in society are necessary;
acceptance and resistance have to be two sides of a single coin.

We accept some aspects of reality but change others. Thus:

we accept that we need food but have changed the ways that we produce it;
we accept the law of gravity but have learned how to fly.

Inwardly, accept and let go of a personal past.
Politically, understand and resist current oppression.
We are Arjuna and the class struggle is the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

The Highest Synthesis

Indian Philosophy
Karma is action.

Patanjali
Yoga is meditation.

Krishna
Karma yoga synthesizes action with meditation.

The Buddha
Dhyana/Ch'an/Zen is meditation.
Buddhist "no soul" teaching is a middle way between materialism and soul pluralism.
Buddhist "emptiness" teaching is dialectical.
Buddhist precepts are a middle way between hedonism and asceticism.
Buddhist "working meditation" is karma yoga.
Ch'an Buddhism synthesizes Buddhism with Taoism.
Zen Buddhism synthesizes Ch'an Buddhism with Shinto nature mysticism.

Hegel
Dialectics is interaction between opposites;
                   thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Marx
Scientific socialism synthesizes economics with socialism.
Dialectical materialism synthesizes dialectics with materialism.
Marxism synthesizes scientific socialism with dialectical materialism.
It is neither mechanical materialism nor utopian socialism.

Zen Marxism is:
karma yoga;
a modernized middle way;
a higher philosophical synthesis than Hegelian dialectical idealism.