[megatrendsZ]

Hello gerrardthor,

Buddhism as i understand it is the middle way. In his book "Introduction to Buddhism and the Practice of Zazen" Gudo Nishijima Roshi said:

The idealistic and materialist viewpoints, and the philosophies that have emerged from those viewpoints are familiar to us all, but a philosophy based on action needs some explanation, as it forms the heart of Buddhist Philosophical teachings.

To construct a theory of the present, to understand how time works, and thus our existance itself, we have to say that we live in a succession of moments, which we can imagine as progressing rather like the frames of a film. Each moment is complete in itself, but we think of existance here and now as being linked to past moments because this is the only way we can think about it. Actually, each moment is bound by the past and yet always free. This sounds like an unsolvable paradox if we think about it. But this is the real situation in which we live, moment by moment. This is something we confirm in our existance, and especially in Zazen.

Action in the moment of the present is utterly free. This is the philosophy of action, the philosophy of present moment. And to act fully in the present moment is to throw away idealistic thinking and materialistic perceptions.

The freedom in the moment presents us with a choice: to do right or to do wrong. The choice is not an intellectual choice - it is a choice in the moment of our action - a choice we make with our act itself. Master Dogen writes in shobogenzo: "Even though the many kinds of right are included in (the concept of) rightness, there has never been any kind of right that is realized beforehand and that then waits for someone to do it".

The Philosophy of action points to the middle path between the over-confident optimism of the idealist and the deterministic pessimism of the materialist. In action we are both bound and free. Regards,
Bundokji