Both could be called a study of reality. But via very different methods.
Er, wut?
This hurt my brain 😅 will investigate zen meditation and follow up lol
I’m back and have decided it’s apples to oranges
I appreciate the point that having the mental acuity to observe one’s self in a moment as they are without judgement is akin to observing “reality”
Where the comparison falls down for me lies in how I define reality and science though
Reality - shared truth
Science - peer reviewed facts
Individuals observations during meditation cannot be verified full stop an argument could be made that without abstraction and outside observation the could be studied and quantified.
Thank you for your thoughts I mean no offence and look forward to any perspective that compels you to believe otherwise:)
Op’s analogy isn’t about verifying meditation experiences as scientific facts, but about how both Zen and science are rigorous, disciplined studies of reality, just through different lenses. Zen isn’t about abstraction or quantification; it’s about direct, unmediated experience (and “peer review” happens with sangha and the teacher). The comparison is poetic, not literal. It’s kinda highlighting that both paths require clarity, humility, and a willingness to see things as they are, not as we wish them to be.
Thank you for your response 🙏 it was enlightening my next quandary into zen meditation will take longer than 3 minutes 😅 sometimes in my observation of how things are I lack the perspective to grasp the poetry presented but it’s always a pleasant feeling having your eyes opened to it!
Welcome ☺️ if you’re really interested, I frankly recommend trying meditation rather than try to understand the theory. The Way App from Henry Shukman is pretty good.
I think for an individual, the closest equivalent to what science is for society is science…
The individual doesn’t need language tho. He can use subtler stuff. A society needs language to do science. That’s a huge difference.
The individual will need some way to record their observations to do science, some sort of a database. This probably involves something with characteristics of a language even if it’s just to communicate their observations accurately to themself in the future, or just organise their observations so that they’re amenable to analysis and testing new hypotheses.
I guess you could do some rudimentary science with non-language/non-abstract recording, like marking a single subjects height height on a wall, or putting sticks in the ground to mark sunrise and sunsets across the year or collecting stuffed animals. But eventually you’ll want to record more complex data and do more complex analysis, or get so many specimens that you’d need an abstraction like labels and a card index or something.
Society uses maths to do science wherever possible; “the language with which god has written the universe”.
been saying this too
Zen is basically the scientific method, without the institution around it
That is not how Zen meditation works.
Well then you must tell me how it works, and how what I said contradicts that.
