Why You Need Both Zen and Science to Understand Reality

What if Zen and Neoplatonism are not competing traditions, but two ways of healing our relationship to reality? In this excerpt, John Vervaeke and Ethan Hsieh explore Zen Neoplatonism as a way of bringing together intimacy and intelligibility, finitude and transcendence, religious belonging and personal transformation. John argues that Zen helps us become honest about our limits, while Neoplatonism helps us remain open to transcendence, science, and the inexhaustibility of reality. The conversation moves from the danger of spiritual consumerism to the deeper question of secure attachment to one’s religious home. Rather than founding a new religion or asking people to leave their traditions, John frames Zen Neoplatonism as a process that can help Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Sufis, and others recover a deeper, more secure relationship to their own paths. Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qVLqLg49Pg Join the full course Between East and West https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/courses/between-east-and-west If you would like to donate purely out of goodwill to support John’s work, please consider joining our Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke John Vervaeke: https://johnvervaeke.com/ https://twitter.com/drjohnvervaeke https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke