Truth and Zen Buddhism

2015-04-12

A thought on knowing truth.

I was reading something recently that was allegedly about problems with Mysticism. Allegedly, because it was really about Zen Buddhism, and while Zen is mystical, generalizing is probably unfair (I don't know a lot about mysticism).

A quick summery would be as follows: Zen Buddhism claims that the truth about the world can only be known mystically, not through reason. However, there are any number of logical problems with this. Therefore Zen Buddhism is stupid.

This seems unfair to me because the Zen Buddhists said at the beginning that they did not accept logic as a standard of truth. Instead, they claimed to know when they had found truth by intuition. You can argue that reason is better, but for that to work, you have to start with the assumption that arguments (a form of reason) is the best way to address the question, which is circular.

There are actually many ways people have claimed to arrive at truth. Here is a list of the ones I can think of, each phrased in way a supporter would find conclusive.

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