[colechristensen]

Do non-westerners do this? Go through lengthy "it's not this it's that" explanations trying to display superior knowledge of what the real genuine thing from somebody else's culture is?

Any time some topic of some asian culture that has been shared into america comes up this sort of thing dominates the discussion.

[handedness]

There is plenty of it in ancient literature, both Western and Eastern. Humans' fundamental attachments remain more or less remain recognizable over time and place.

There is, though, something especially cheap about how it is mostly done today. At least we got treasures like the Cantongqi/Sandōkai out of it in the past. (Or maybe I just committed exactly the same error by invoking the Sandōkai.) I'm sure it was done similarly back then, but likely mostly in actual conversation.

Maybe enough of today's commented noise will filter down to a small number of some particularly astute internet comments which will be studied in the year 3226, but I doubt it. Today's best thinking is still found in books and articles. Which has always probably been true, but it used to require some additional amount of work to hear foolishness.

[colechristensen]

There exists a long history of shallow practice of religious / philosophical schools for as long as we have recorded history of anything? This isn't surprising or particularly profound news.

[handedness]

There's probably that, too, but there exists a long history of "lengthy 'it's not this it's that' explanations trying to display superior knowledge of what the real genuine thing from somebody else's culture is."

It's just human nature and it happens at every level. I've seen, firsthand, primitive villagers in Asia do it about the culture of another village five miles away, I've seen people all over do it about something on the other side of the planet. I don't think it's particularly exclusive to a particular hemisphere.

[galaxyLogic]

Good point, it's about "Intellectual Capital". If you can convince people that you know something better than someone else then you can start charging for it.

In Software Development we always had "Gurus".

[kilpikaarna]

Sounds a bit like a holdover from a long history of monotheism, so I think westerners might be predisposed to this, yes.

[jdw64]

I think everyone, to some extent, does that when they encounter something they already know. The truth is, we don't all share a unified way of thinking, and HN, being one of the most prominent Western platforms where information spreads quickly, is viewed by people from many countries. In fact, Japan, China, and Korea all have sites that curate content from here. And when you spend time here, you see a lot of differing perspectives. It's like the difference between an outsider's view and an insider's view.

Western Zen has also adapted to fit certain needs, and I don't think that's a bad thing. It's just that, as an East Asian, when I clicked on a post about Zen, what I expected and what I actually saw were different.

In fact, from what I've seen on Korean YouTube and elsewhere, when something tied to one's cultural identity gets modified, it's a fairly universal human reaction for someone who knows the original to say, 'This seems different, doesn't it?' What you're talking about often tends to become a kind of power struggle over 'who gets to define this culture.' When the insider's definition differs from the outsider's, that dynamic frequently plays out. It's a common trait of online communities.

However, this is usually influenced by the dominant demographic of the community, so generally speaking, the community's majority tends to shape the norms. In that sense, it's usually the outsiders who need to adapt. I'm trying my best to do that too. HN is fundamentally Western-oriented, and I try to adjust to native speakers like you, even if it means slightly altering my approach. The problem is that our ways of thinking differ in so many ways that for me, what feels like a low-cost critique can read to this community as a high-cost one. That gap is something I find quite difficult.

In any case, it's just a fresh perspective for me. I don't think Western Zen is bad (and that's an important point).

It's like this: if an actual Chinese person goes to the US and eats Panda Express orange chicken, they'll say, 'This isn't Chinese food.' But is that really the Chinese person's fault? Localization is only natural. When you think about it, it's simple. Most people don't stay on this site for long (I stay about two hours a day, so I guess I'm a longer-term user). Many people don't even leave comments. But when they click on a title that interests them and find it different from what they expected, they might leave a comment.

And isn't that part of what makes life interesting? The fact that you and I think differently, that our predictions don't always match. Rather than framing it as a 'non-Western way of thinking,' I'd ask you to understand it as a gap that arises because you're a native of a site watched by people all over the world.

In any case, I don't think the Western adaptation of Zen is wrong. Cultures naturally get localized. Just like how I feel a sense of unfamiliarity when I see K-pop Demon Hunters, but that's a natural reaction. I just hope you'll see it as a third-party observation that certain things feel different. Isn't it better to have a diversity of perspectives?

[colechristensen]

In the Author's Note at the beginning of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Persig writes

>[the book] should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either.

This article's title is another in a long series of meme titles of the form "Zen and the Art of...", Persig was doing it as a riff on Zen and the Art of Archery

>I feel that the Zen used in the West and the Zen in East Asia are quite different.

All of the schools of Zen/Chan/Seon or whatever you'd like to call it are quite different and in the east there are some pretty dramatic differences between schools.

My point being that the discussion being dominated by the authenticity of various kinds of zen on an article about machine learning aggressively misses the point. The frequent digression into mostly irrelevant distinctions is a problem around here. I don't know anything more about Zen or machine learning from all of this discussion and we should all be more careful for our comments to add to the discussion instead of taking away from it.

[jdw64]

It's not that I'm saying you're wrong. So I'm not pointing out that the teacher of the author of 'Zen and the Art of Archery' founded a new religious movement and that influenced what the West calls 'Zen,' or that a particular archer's personal beliefs got mixed into what is now presented as Zen.

What I'm actually getting at is OP's Post itself is about the attitude of a researcher, and I think that attitude feels different when viewed by a Westerner versus an East Asian.

So here's the point. In your region, there is a localized culture that comes to mind when you hear the word 'Zen.' It's what people often call a pop culture phenomenon. But I don't live in your region. So when I hear 'Zen,' I have a different cultural association, and I'm simply noting that difference.

The article's topic is really about thinking within a Westernized Zen framework, and what I'm saying is, 'How would it look if we viewed it through an East Asian Zen lens?' I don't think these two are unrelated.

The problem is that from your perspective, my comments may have looked like I was insisting, 'The original is not like that! This is absolutely wrong!' And this part... well, I might have expressed it that way because I'm not fluent in English, but that was never my intention. I was just pointing out that a metaphor for research ethics in a researcher's attitude can look quite different depending on your cultural lens