, many different answers can be given. For example, we can look at the origin of the term: the word Zen is Japanese, but it is derived from the Indian words dhyana (Sanskrit) and jhana (Pali), both of which mean seated meditation. But this only tells us about the word. Like Buddhism generally, in Zen there is no mention of God, sin, or how the world was created; unlike the rest of Buddhism, Zen also says very little about rebirth or holiness or even karma. When the Japanese Zen master Hakuin was asked, What happens to a Zen master after he dies? he responded Why ask me? But you are a Zen master! Yes, he said, but not a dead one. In Zen there is little emphasis on rites and rituals, and even more confusing is that Zen sometimes seems actually anti-religious. A common Zen phrase is, If you meet the Buddha, kill him!, so Zen does not seem like a religion in the usual sense of the word. Zen does have many profound, if often paradoxical, things to say about the nature of reality, but perhaps the most radical claim in Zen is that philosophy is not the way to experience the truth; that philosophizing is part of the problem of life, not the solution, ('you have the philosophers disease!') because our usual ways of thinking obstruct our experience of reality. In this sense Zen might be called an anti-philosophy. The claim of Zen is quite extraordinary: that Zen practice can lead one to discover ones true nature - something philosophers have been trying to determine for over 2500 year, but this realization is a non-philosophical experience, which can only occur when we stop clinging to things - especially to concepts and theories about reality. So it cannot be said that Zen is a philosophy, although Zen teachings do have philosophical implications. Zen wants to provoke us into an experience that is exceedingly rare and precious: Enlightenment. Zen practice is not an attempt to solve the problems of the ego. Its goal i...
