Zen as Philosophy: Exploring the Paradox

Kevin Rogers is a musician, one of my old friends from the Zen forum & one of the co-hosts of the Knot Zen Podcast.   In  this episode, we talk about Zen found in the corpus of literature  produced during the middle ages in China, and the dialectical shift that  happened when this Chinese movement was brought into Japan by Dogen.  Kevin gives an explanation of Zen, which dovetails into discussions on  the idea of lingering moments, the direct experience of reality, and the  epistemic implications of reality as shaped by our own minds. We  touched upon what the Zen realization is, and whether there are  metaphysical implications to this, as well as to the practice of  meditation, as well the Daoist influence on Zen. The conversation  concludes with some of my own misgivings within the Zen tradition and  why I no longer consider it a defining feature of my intellectual  identity. Kevin and I are both musicians, and we plan to do a  second episode talking about music, or possibly even another episode on  this same topic, depending on the audience reaction. The Knot Zen Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5GzOskDnm3IZIpHBHmUKIZ Kevin's musical group, The Friction String Quartet: https://www.frictionquartet.com/