[zedmonkey]

This meme that Zen is a philosophy is incredibly unfair / misguided. It's a religion. It's a branch of Mahayana Buddhism, it's practised as a religion, in some regions it still has the aspects of Guru and Deity worship that have been inherited from the larger schools. The full name of the religion is Zen Buddhism.

As someone who has been involved with the religion and with Japanese friends who are also a part of it, it's incredibly belittling when this idea gets spread around. It's only in the West that all of the cultural and religious background has been stripped out and turned into a marketing device.

I often joke that if Buddhism had more extremist members we'd have a lot more holy wars than anyone else. Dressed up Buddhas, Zen stapled onto every two bit startup and cheap product, blogs about consumerist driven minimalism selling themselves as "Zen". It really is ridiculous. What is being done here is just as offensive to eastern cultures as if an East Asian startup branded itself using Christian or Islamic imagery or terms, citing that it's all just "philosophy".

Anyone stealing these terms and imagery really should read some of the critiques of Western misappropriation of Eastern "Spirituality" like "The Scientific Buddha" or "Selling Spirituality". Or even just take five minutes to consider the countries and contexts they might want to operate in as they grow.

[thearn4]

I feel a similair way about folks who describe software developers as "ninjas", "samurai", etc. As odd, very misplaced appropriations of east asian themes/imagery.

[zedmonkey]

Especially considering how complex some of the history is with these topics, particularly the Samurai's role in Japanese society, both good and bad, throughout history.

The other really basic, self-centred business concern here is do you ever want to expand into China? Apart from the dis-respect, turning up with a heavy Japanese influence all over your product isn't going to win you any hearts in a lot of regions in China. "Zen at War" and a few other books are a good insight into things like the Nanking Massacre and Buddhism's role in training the more extreme Japanese forces (Kamikaze pilots and etc.).

At a fundamental level, it just all feels a bit racist. We've evolved past drawing buck toothed cartoons in Sanpan hats, these days people would be genuinely horrified at that. But we can still pillage the religions of the regions without a second thought?

Apart from all that, calling someone a "Code Ninja" or "Samurai Developer", or doing programming "Kata" is laughable. We write software, some of it is borderline ok in terms of quality. A lot of us dedicate lots and lots of our waking hours to doing this. It doesn't mean we're some kind of elite. It's another hobby, another job, it earns some money. It's not like any of us are making actual, material sacrifice to achieve these lukewarm heights. Most of it boils down to white collar fantasy rather than anything resembling the intent of these kind of names.

[lotsofmangos]

Read this and weep.

"Why did Zendesk choose laughing buddha as their logo?"

---

Jake Holman, Product Manager, Zendesk -

The Buddha (or "Buddhy" as we sometimes refer to him) isn't actually the logo of Zendesk. It's a common misunderstanding though.

The Zendesk logo is actually a heart-shaped, Lotus flower device followed by the company name, "Zendesk". You'll note the lack of capital D there.

Buddhy is actually what's referred to as a brand "Mascot". He's just a happy little fella that sometimes appears with Zendesk branding, but is not ultimately the logo of Zendesk.

---

http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Zendesk-choose-laughing-buddha-...

And here is their branding page for "The Buddha (or "Buddhy" as we sometimes refer to him)", which includes an even more amusingly colossal failure of awareness in their "Golden Nuggets from The Mentor", stating: "A picture is worth a thousand words; but if one misuses the picture, those words will be vile and will haunt your children for generations to come.".

https://www.zendesk.com/company/brand-assets#mentor

I really hope they have issued travel warnings with all their free t-shirts.

[krapp]

>But we can still pillage the religions of the regions without a second thought?

Asia in general is sufficiently alien to the US, both geographically and culturally, that it more or less exists as caricature in many places, and because it's not Christian and European, many don't feel the need to respect it.

There was a tv show called Xena Warrior Princess, that decided to do a story arc where Xena travels to India and fights the Hindu pantheon, because fighting ancient mythological monsters was her shtick. Apparently, the people who made the show were shocked to discover that there were still Hindus in the world, who watched television and weren't happy to find that their religion provided the show's "monsters of the week."

[mkehrt]

Others can disagree, but I find this a lot less bad. Mostly it's because these are essentially fictional tropes at this point, that have been exported as fiction to the west. Zen is clearly different.

[EdwardDiego]

> I often joke that if Buddhism had more extremist members we'd have a lot more holy wars than anyone else.

Burma's got a few.