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ZEN AND SUFI YOGA
Zen Yoga :
Zen is Japanese word from word "Dhyan". The special name for Zen in Japanese is “Konemama" or "Sommama" which mans "Thisness of Life". There is considerable influence of Budhism in Japan. Zen may be off shoot of Buddhist yoga but in a modified form. Zen Philosophy is man-centric and not god-centric. It subscribes that man is carrying god in himself as a potentiality. This concept also is similarly to Jain concept that each soul has a potential to attain the ultimate purest and highest stage of enlightened called godhood. Zen looks humanity with undivided vision. Then is no 'there' and it is all here. 'Moment' is all and there is no other time and space. Zen yoga is centred on the moment and not past or future and on here and not anything there or elsewhere. This implies concentration by every individual on every act, every moment which is same as awareness or midnfulness, prescribed and empahsised in vedic, Jain and Buddhist yoga also.
According to Zen, there s no god, sitting somewhere in heaven, creating and controlling life, existence and all. It believes that there is no controlled life and that life is moving of its own accord in harmony. If there is god, an outside authority, then one loses dignity and it will be slavery. A person believing in god cannot be religious because god will dominate and destroy freedom. God in "Old Testament" says, “I am a very jealous god, cannot tolerate any other god. For those not with me, I am a very violent and cruel god and punish them by throwing into eternal fire of hell".
In Zen there is no god, no book and no prophet. It is non-conceptual and practices immediacy, moment to moment. It instructs to drop all ideologies which actually divide people. In Zen yoga practice one should be empty and look into nature of things as such without ingrained biases of various forms, religious and cultural. It considers the world as one, nothing is separate, everything is joined, interlinked and pulsates together, whole life is as if a net. Even a small here, say a leaf is joined with farthest star and if something happens to leaf, same is going to happen with star also. Existence is one family. This resembles the quantum theory. According to scientist Wheeler there is “Quantum Foam" in which every particle is connected with every other particle with a quantum interconnectedness. Neither an electron nor any other object has any intrinsic properties independent of environment. Atoms and subatomic particles,
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