I made this thread a few weeks ago, but had it removed as I figured it wouldn't get much traction or interest. But I'm going to give it another go, mainly to work through and write about these ideas (and hopefully they're helpful to some).
A few years ago I studied Zen Buddhism over the course of a couple months, mainly via D.T. Suzuki. At the time I became quite absorbed in, and took a lot away from it. Then about a year later I discovered Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, which seems to have some similar elements as Zen, but a slightly different approach. After studying Advaita I found myself even more influenced by it than I was Zen.
To me one of the takeaways from both of these philosophies (I'm going to call them philosophy rather than religion), is that they attempt to see the world and reality as it really is, in order to quell the human tendency to obsess over the minutiae of life. In other words, they aim to cut through the noise of the mind, and in some respects let that noise go.
But to me there are a few key differences which I'll outline here:
Zen Buddhism
Advaita Vedanta
Obviously Advaita is a bit more complicated than what I'm suggesting here, if anyone's interested I'd recommend this free version of I Am That. But this basic realization via Advaita has been revelatory for me, and pretty much the ultimate mindfulness technique. To just let the mind do it's work.
In a lot of ways I believe the two, Zen and Advaita, are very similar, but Advaita came chronologically later and is a bit more sophisticated, it dives a little more deeply into what Zen hints at.
A few years ago I studied Zen Buddhism over the course of a couple months, mainly via D.T. Suzuki. At the time I became quite absorbed in, and took a lot away from it. Then about a year later I discovered Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, which seems to have some similar elements as Zen, but a slightly different approach. After studying Advaita I found myself even more influenced by it than I was Zen.
To me one of the takeaways from both of these philosophies (I'm going to call them philosophy rather than religion), is that they attempt to see the world and reality as it really is, in order to quell the human tendency to obsess over the minutiae of life. In other words, they aim to cut through the noise of the mind, and in some respects let that noise go.
But to me there are a few key differences which I'll outline here:
Zen Buddhism
In Zen we're making an attempt to quiet the mind by looking underneath conceptual thought. In Zen there is a kind of focus on nothing, the lack of human frameworks, which frees us from the bondage of our day to day stress.
Advaita Vedanta
Whereas in Advaita we're still trying to remove ourselves from day to day stress, but instead of looking interior to conceptual thought, we're recognizing the wholeness of the universe. This sounds a bit cheesy and stale at first, but when you apply scientific concepts to it, it makes more sense. In the Advaita view the mind shouldn't be quiet, the mind perceiving problems is what it's supposed to be doing, and what it's always going to do, and isn't something we need to hide from.
So while it's useful to not ruminate on problems, in this view you recognize negative thinking as something that's helpful for us, not wrong so to speak. Just another part of what we are.
Obviously Advaita is a bit more complicated than what I'm suggesting here, if anyone's interested I'd recommend this free version of I Am That. But this basic realization via Advaita has been revelatory for me, and pretty much the ultimate mindfulness technique. To just let the mind do it's work.
In a lot of ways I believe the two, Zen and Advaita, are very similar, but Advaita came chronologically later and is a bit more sophisticated, it dives a little more deeply into what Zen hints at.