Zenbook

Minimum Viable Product Zen

Magenta's Extremely Short Zen Booklet,

CONTENTS

    1.  ZEN BOOKS ALL SAY THE SAME THING
    2.  IF YOU MEET BUDDHA, BUDDHA SHOULD BE CUT
    3.  FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND
    4.  SIMPLIFY
    5.  WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE ? (WHO CARES)
    6.  YOU CAN'T MESS UP
    7,  (RELAX) NO ONE CARES
    8.  NO SUCH THING AS GOOD KARMA
    9.  "MEDITATION" IS NO GOOD

OR IN OTHER WORDS :

    1 FIND A MASTER, READ ONE
    2 DISREGARD TRADITION, DISCARD USELESS THINGS
    3 FOCUS DONT MULTITASK
    4 SIMPLIFY
    5 ZEN DOESNT CARE ABOUT POINTLESS BULLSHIT
    6 EVERYTHING IS ALREADY PERFECT
    7 YOU AREN'T THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE
    8 EVERY BAD ACTION COUNTS, ALWAYS
    9 JUST SIT AND DO NOTHING

INTRODUCTION

what is zen?
zen is a type of buddhism that focuses less on buddha and more on the self. there are many types of buddhism, each with their own focuses and traditions. zen a kind of buddhism that is not concerned with excess. it is both for the cutting thru of ideas, and for the refinement of physical actions.

The “Importance” of Zen
the most important thing to keep in mind is zen is not special. zen is not important. it is just a thing. it’s not magical bullshit. its not mystical bullshit, its not a religion. its just a thing. its a good thing, to know, because it’s a USEFUL thing. you can USE zen.

not because it’s a SPECIAL thing.
you should practice “nothing-special” zen. “everyday zen”.

Zen can help you calm your mind, and keep focused on your priorities. it's not magic it's just classic human stuff that we've forgotten about, or that we've been programmed out of doing by growing up in the world we live in.

☸ ZEN BOOKS ALL SAY THE SAME THING

1. ZEN BOOKS ALL SAY THE SAME THING

so find a teacher that speaks to you. don’t bang your head against an author you find murky and impenetrable. just try a new one-- eventually you’ll find one that just is exactly on your wavelength. There are tons of zen authors over the centuries and they have written many texts.
some teachers teach with detailed stories of past zen struggles, some teachers with poetry or clever metaphor. you can find humorous masters, and dreadfully serious masters! they all lived different lives and had different ways of explaining what they knew!

All zen books teach the same subject-- just differently. Keep trying! You eventually find someone, and they might have published in 1955 or it might have been in 655. It doesn’t matter how old the writing is, it just CLICKS with you. Keep trying new authors until you feel the CLICK.

Having someone you can learn from more directly is invaluable. it's way more important to find someone that speaks to you instead of wading thru "classic" texts you don't sync with. you can always read that stuff later

note: if you are able, try to connect with other people in person about zen! it can be much easier to learn from a live person than an old book, and they don't even have to be a wise master. you can talk with other learners about what books speak to THEM! online interactions can work fine too, the important thing is to get a chance to hear what others have learned!

☸ IF YOU MEET BUDDHA, BUDDHA SHOULD BE CUT

2. IF YOU MEET BUDDHA, BUDDHA SHOULD BE CUT

in zen we eliminate what doesn’t work. This means we can discard all tradition that doesn’t serve us. If you don’t want to do any type of complicated meditation you don’t have to. If you want to lay down and meditate, go to it. the ideas of the past exist to service us in the present, and they exist to help us accomplish our zen goals, not hinder us. If your buddhism or zen or any idea system isn’t serving you, absorb what is true and right, and toss the rest.

The further along you get, the easier time you will have of being able to tell bullshit from truth. The saying MEET BUDDHA, SLAY BUDDHA means that buddha exists to get us to where we want to go-- and should anyone stand in our way when we are questing intently towards the spirit of zen, even buddha himself, they should be cut down. this doesn't mean that it's ok to harm others in our spiritual quest, only that zen has no time to waste on rituals and ceremony

zen doesn’t hold anything “sacred”. It isn’t a refuge for worshiping ancient ideas and customs. zen is for living people. people with real world concerns.

☸ FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND

3. FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND

FOCUS.
simply pay attention to what you are doing THIS MOMENT. not what you are going to do after you are finished. not what you did earlier. just stay focused on the things that you do when you do them. while you are stepping, only step. do not plan your next half hour. focus only on what you are doing.

sounds easy right? in reality the untrained mind wanders to a million different tasks deemed more interesting than the action you're stuck during currently. whoops! now you've tripped because your focus was elsewhere. zen practice helps us stay in sync with reality.

this action is called "being present", "mindfulness" or "being in the moment". the past and the future melt away and you are only DOING. you are not THINKING. when you can stay like this for a while, it's called being "in the zone" or "flow state".

focus directly on the task you are engaged in physically
this is the single most powerful tactic, more words will just water it down.
FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND. remember it. f o c u s

☸ SIMPLIFY

4. SIMPLIFY

the less you do the better. both on a large scale and small scale. our brain is not meant to multitask, that’s a weird secret. it’s ABLE to .. kinda multitask, but not really. we can functionally do many things at one time, but not well. SIMPLIFY!
in all domains, attempt to simplify the things that you do.

economy of motion
at the very most primal sense, our entire meat robot functions better when its assigned less simultaneous tasks. carrying some extra bullshit you don’t need? Stow that shit. stop and put it down. put it in your pocket. stop and simplify the shit that you are carrying around with you, yes metaphorically, but PHYSICALLY- SIMPLIFY YOUR ACTIONS!

attempt to never multitask. but instead, focus on ORDER OF OPERATIONS

☸ WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE ? (WHO CARES)

5. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE ? (WHO CARES)

what happens when you die?
you’ll find out when it happens.
quit wasting life on conjecture

☸ YOU CANT MESS UP

6. YOU CAN'T MESS UP

everything is perfect just as-is.
not “Perfect” perfect, capital P perfect--
where everything that exists exists without one molecule of imperfection, but REALITY perfect. everything is just perfect AS-IS.
perfect as just like if you have a plate, and it drops on the floor, and it shatters into 20 pieces-- each piece is a perfect piece, it is not one imperfect plate, it is 20 perfect shards.

everything is perfect
in taoism the belief is that the universe has a natural order to how it orders itself. one of least effort, in place as all things in natural harmony exert the shared minimum amount of effort required to sustain everything, and that animals are in harmony because they can only do the things they are here to do. a bear, for instance, will never suddenly fly into the air and spin off into the night-- a bear will never do something a bear is not “supposed to” do. it’s not possible.
the belief is that we are also animals and have to follow the natural order, and that it is our struggling against the natural change and suffering of life is what causes most of the suffering we experience in life.
so i put forth to you, as animals, you are never here doing something you were not “intended” to do.you will never do something so bad that they take your birthday away. unless you are harming others intensely, in which case, the less birthdays you have the better imo. you can’t mess up

☸ NO ONE CARES (RELAX)

7. (RELAX) NO ONE CARES

no one cares -- but i mean that in a good way.
it's natural to be self-conscious in life at times. but when it becomes unhealthy is when we become fixated on this feeling and cannot let it go.

there is not much need to be self-conscious in life.
considerate of your actions? sure. your appearance? nah.
stay fresh and healthy, clean? good. yes.
staying tidy can be a good thing to be conscious about, taking care of the way in which you present yourself to the world. that is fine and good, but as long as you are staying healthy and reasonably clean you are doing fine.

but don’t worry that when you walk into a room, 'everybody is looking at you, thinking things about you.' mostly what is happening is when you walk in a room, everyone is looking at you, but they are instead thinking “I wonder what they are thinking about ME” people are largely self-focused. they don’t really have enough time to think lots of negative thoughts about you, because honestly, they are too caught up thinking about themselves.

so do your best to de-prioritize the thought.
relax. no one cares

☸ NO GOOD KARMA

8. NO SUCH THING AS GOOD KARMA

there is no such thing as “good” or “bad” karma. try to rid yourself of this concept. karma is just a word to describe cause and effect. karma is stored outcome.
karma is a rock dropped into a pond. karma is the ripples spreading outward from the impact. karma is neither good or bad, it just is. you can drop more rocks in the pond, but you can never erase the first splash with a second. karma is simply cause and effect. you cannot outweigh bad actions with good. you must throw out the idea that you can make up for bad things by doing good things. you will never make up for the bad things you do in life with good things, that’s just not how physics works.
so ,
every bad action you ever take is final, so you had better understand the consequences of the outcomes you effect on the world. lacking understanding of how your actions impact the world doesn't prevent those inadvertent harms to others, and many times in life it is impossible to reverse those harms with any future actions. please be considerate

☸ "MEDITATION IS NO GOOD"

9. "MEDITATION" IS NO GOOD

meditation implies guided thinking towards a topic. we are trying to quiet the mind. how do you use mind to bring about the decreased use of mind? impossible --that kind of runaround thinking sounds like exactly the sort of fiendish plot mind would employ. NO.

we want to do something better. something more functional, more useful, and ultimately a lot easier to fit into our lives. we are going to do nothing. absolutely nothing.
zazen. it means “only sit”. as in, when sitting, ONLY SIT. don’t ponder the mysteries of life. don’t contemplate. don’t do anything at all. just sit. that’s it.
also, don’t think. at all.
mastered that? good. alright. so--
how many years later is it? yeah hi
it’s tough to let thoughts pass us, but eventually the nonstop bubbling ooze of new thought ceases. you just sit. it’s good. ahhhh -- who doesn’t want a break? you want to just chill and do nothing. why? because your brain needs it! you need time to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to function properly! that’s why you are always doing things in the wrong order and forgetting what big task you needed to do in life to succeed.

or it might be ADHD . IDK
you should make that call about medication you’ve been putting off

WRITTEN IN 2021 and 2022 by Magenta Skull

☸ BONUS CHAPTER

10. 10 OXHERDING PICTURES
analysis and commentary on the 'ten oxherding pictures'

  1 . the search for the bull 
  2 . discovering the footprints 
  3 . perceiving the bull 
  4 . catching the bull 
  5 . taming the bull  

  6 . riding the bull home 
  7 . the bull transcended 
  8 . both bull and self transcended 
  9 . reaching the source 
  10 . in the world