> Zen is a Japanese variant of Mahayanan Buddhism, BTW.
> Kathryn
I think that's more of a cultural accident than a good fit though; Zen is really orthogonal to any religion. Zen happened to develop at a place and time where Bhuddism and Hinduism were prominent, and so it took on some of those cultural traditions, but it really has little to do with the core beliefs of either. Indeed, "belief" is not really relevant to Zen at all. If it had developed in Europe instead of Asia it probably would have become Zen Christianity rather than Zen Bhuddism (Thomas Merton comes to mind as a good example of what that might be like).
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