From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!sdcsvax!sdchema!jwp
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.philosophy
Title: Zen
Article-I.D.: sdchema.511
Posted: Sat Apr 23 16:29:17 1983
Received: Mon Apr 25 20:13:57 1983

There has been some discussion of Zen in net.religion lately.  It has
always seemed to me that classifying Zen as a religion rather than a
philosophy is somewhat incorrect.  It is probably incorrect to try to
classify it at all.  In any case, since I have available a rather large
collection of Zen storie, and since I've always thought Zen is best
described by attempting to show what it *is*, I will post one occasionally
for the enlightenment of us all.

Before I do that, however, I ran across an item that I feel illustrates
a "Zen" response, though it was not originally intended to be:

Most of us are, I'm sure, familiar with the paradox involving a card with
"The statement on the other side of this card is true" on one side, and
"The statement on the other side of this card is false" on the other.
Take a strip of paper and write "The statement on the other side of this
paper is true" on one side; write "The statement on the other side of this
paper is false" on the other side.  We have duplicated the paradox.  Now,
take the paper, give it a half-twist, and join the ends.

			John Pierce, Chemistry, UC San Diego
			{ucbvax, philabs}!sdcsvax!sdchema!jwp