Buddhism and Zen Buddhism

Buddhism is India’s main thought and teaching. Buddhist thought dates back beyond one thousand years around the time of the Aryan tribal culture which inherits from the R.G. Vedas and Brahmanas to the Upanisads.
Originally, Buddha accepted the fundamental teachings of the Upanisadic tradition, but denied heavenly god(Brahman) and god of our self(atman).
Since the Buddha realized the way of truth of the great thought, Brahman and Atman, he emphasized that Brahman and Atman is not separated but equal. He taught that the conceptualized Brahaman became too suspicious, and it prevents people from enlightenment.

This viewpoint became the main teaching of primitive Buddhism. Primitive Buddhism doesn’t focus on “self(ego)”. Rather, it teaches the idea of annata(no-self, this concept have been developed as orginal nature later) and no-god.

Then what is annata? And what is our original nature?
It is the only thing that does not change and goes forever. Even though our body and external worlds are in the process of birth, aging, illness, and death, our original nature itself never changes and never ceases. So although we die, our original nature is never die.
Buddha and all the saints realized that, and they could attain Nirvana and escape from the sea of suffering. Since Buddha’s enlightenment was based on that eternal nature, it lives on for eternity.

Buddha and his disciples created all kinds of teachings based on that enlightenment. However, several hundreds years later, some people fell into dogmas their doctrines were mainly criticized by the leaders of the Zen School of Buddhism.
In the Zen tradition, they went a step further by declaring that even scriptures were nothing. Originally, our mind itself is the way of Buddha’s teaching.
So many Buddhist patriarchs did not believe the limited traditional Buddhist doctrine. Especially, it could be found in Zen Buddhist tradition. For an example, while a group of monks were worshipping a Buddha statue during a cold winter season, one of the Masters decided to use the wooden Buddha statue as firewood in order to heat up the room.

The other monks were shocked and argued that the statue was sacred and thus should not be used as firewood. The Master refuted by saying that when the Buddha passed away and cremated, there were sarira, the remained body(relics) of the Buddha which does not burn.

The monks argued that the wooden statue didn’t even consist of bones so there wouldn’t be anything left over if burned. The Master agreed and said that he had made his point. For that reason, the Master burned the statue and used it for firewood.

http://www.wonbuddhism.org/