been saying this too
Zen is basically the scientific method, without the institution around it
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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This hurt my brain 😅 will investigate zen meditation and follow up lol
I’m back and have decided it’s apples to oranges
I appreciate the point that having the mental acuity to observe one’s self in a moment as they are without judgement is akin to observing “reality”
Where the comparison falls down for me lies in how I define reality and science though
Reality - shared truth
Science - peer reviewed facts
Individuals observations during meditation cannot be verified full stop an argument could be made that without abstraction and outside observation the could be studied and quantified.
Thank you for your thoughts I mean no offence and look forward to any perspective that compels you to believe otherwise:)
Op's analogy isn’t about verifying meditation experiences as scientific facts, but about how both Zen and science are rigorous, disciplined studies of reality, just through different lenses. Zen isn’t about abstraction or quantification; it’s about direct, unmediated experience (and "peer review" happens with sangha and the teacher). The comparison is poetic, not literal. It's kinda highlighting that both paths require clarity, humility, and a willingness to see things as they are, not as we wish them to be.
Thank you for your response 🙏 it was enlightening my next quandary into zen meditation will take longer than 3 minutes 😅 sometimes in my observation of how things are I lack the perspective to grasp the poetry presented but it’s always a pleasant feeling having your eyes opened to it!
Welcome ☺️ if you're really interested, I frankly recommend trying meditation rather than try to understand the theory. The Way App from Henry Shukman is pretty good.
Are you saying science gaslights society into thinking it's more enlightened?
That is a rather strange interpretation.
Glad to see people are starting to figure it out.
Er, wut?
I think for an individual, the closest equivalent to what science is for society is science...
The individual doesn't need language tho. He can use subtler stuff. A society needs language to do science. That's a huge difference.
Society uses maths to do science wherever possible; "the language with which god has written the universe".
The individual will need some way to record their observations to do science, some sort of a database. This probably involves something with characteristics of a language even if it's just to communicate their observations accurately to themself in the future, or just organise their observations so that they're amenable to analysis and testing new hypotheses.
I guess you could do some rudimentary science with non-language/non-abstract recording, like marking a single subjects height height on a wall, or putting sticks in the ground to mark sunrise and sunsets across the year or collecting stuffed animals. But eventually you'll want to record more complex data and do more complex analysis, or get so many specimens that you'd need an abstraction like labels and a card index or something.
Don't wanna start an argument or otherwise intervene with your convo with the OP but I wanna highlight a possible confusion: note that Presoak gave a definition of what they mean by "science" in this context - a way of studying reality.
You said "The individual will need some way to record their observations to do science, some sort of a database."
In the context of Zen meditation, no. Very much the opposite actually. You are right that to do science, you'd need all that. But for the study of reality, as per Zen thinking, you don't.
I'm just agreeing with mrfinnbean that science is to an individual what science is to society.
My point was individuals can do science without society, but they probably will still need a language/database before too long. Maybe I'm wrong about that in he small scale, but i'd think after several hundred experiments most people would struggle to keep track.
This zen meditation thing sounds very different - presumably there is no recording of the observations or conclusions?
Society will for sure be better at science than any individual, but the individual can still do it if they follow a scientific system of observation, hypothesis and test. Making the results and data accessible to others is a huge bonus, no doubt, shoulders of giants and that, but systematic documentation is intrinsically useful to the isolated scientist too even with no prospect of collaboration.
I don't know about this zen malarkey. but if there's no systematic study of reality, no observation , hypothesis, and testing cycle then i just don't see the corollary with science.
You’re both (rightly) defending the rigor of science, but the OP’s analogy hinges on how we define “study,” not whether science is superior. They’re framing science as a way to approach reality: one that, like Zen, prioritizes direct observation over dogma. When you call Zen “malarkey” (without knowing about the philosophy, which is not very fair) for lacking “systematic study,” it’s a bit like dismissing a telescope because it isn’t a microscope. Both tools reveal truth; they just focus differently. Zen’s “study” isn’t about accumulating data but about refining the observer until no mediation is needed. That’s not anti-science, it’s a different project. Science seeks patterns in reality’s behavior; Zen seeks reality without the pattern-seeker.
If you question Zen's capacity to reveal reality, that's fine and I'll be happy to have that conversation, provided that you're open to some philosophy.