Mission Statement: Why I Blog

Titles by Zen Master Seung Sahn, published in German

In the Western world of the 21^st century, Zen is a lot like television in the 1950s, or the internet in the 1990s: we don’t yet know what we have, how to use it, or what it’s going to look like as it grows in this unique environment. Nor do we appreciate the full effect of backwards pressure as American Zen influences Zen in the East.

But we do know that Western-style Zen will be distinct from its Asian predecessors. In China, Korea, and Japan, Zen developed unique expressions of practice, influenced by the cultural, artistic and social realities—as well as technological capabilities—of each of those places. In this blog I hope to examine how Zen expresses itself in a western environment, and how that environment in turn is influenced by Zen.