Comment by carljungslabtek
6 hours ago
They’re both wrong though in reality. Zen comes from the chinese word chan, which comes from the pali word jhana, meaning meditative absorption (and it doesn’t just mean “meditation” in a general sense, it’s really referring to the rupajhanas). Real Buddhadharma has nothing to do with going along with nature or nonduality. What you’re describing sounds like taoism.
To summarize your argument a bit, you are essentially saying, 'Christianity was originally a Jewish sect, so the current Trinity doctrine is wrong.' Generally speaking, Zen (Seon) moved from India to China, and after Bodhidharma, it began to emphasize self‑nature while incorporating Taoist concepts. Perhaps your argument might come from a perspective that is not East Asian but rather based on the original texts, possibly from the Indian tradition. In Mahayana Buddhism, Sunyata (emptiness) is the core of non‑duality, and it is actually somewhat different from your Theravada interpretation.
The problem is that the way Zen is used resembles the Seon traditions of East Asia, specifically Korea, China, and Japan, and those traditions are built on Mahayana emptiness with Taoist elements mixed in. Therefore, from the perspective of primitive Buddhism, what you say is correct, and from the Pali perspective, it can be called Jhana, but strictly speaking, that is difficult to call Zen[1][2]
[1]https://kabc.dongguk.edu/content/view?dataId=ABC_BJ_H0184_T_...
[2] https://www.ibulgyo.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=28814&ut...
Actually, this is a matter of Buddhist sects. It's not that you're wrong—the etymology is correct—but I think you're taking the historical changes too lightly. Because generally speaking, there is Mahayana Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism, and they usually follow the Pali tradition. In fact, the concept of 'emptiness' (Sunyata) in Mahayana Buddhism is itself based on non-duality. So what you're asserting is not wrong as a source or an original form of Buddhism, but regarding the description of Zen in the article, the actual Seon tradition is generally closer to what I'm claiming. In fact, you can't really talk about Seon Buddhism without bringing up Taoism, because during the process of its transmission through China, it merged with Chinese folk beliefs and then spread throughout East Asia. (For reference, I'm Korean, and the Buddhist traditions in Korea were also heavily influenced by China.)
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There's no such thing as "wrong" in this sense. Eastern religious traditions are manifold across space and time, they influence each other, change, and split quite significantly.