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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4924349" data-attributes="member: 15538">What if I want to posit that all the Lawful behavior, the disciplines and joining sects and rules and so forth, are aimed at a Chaotic end? I want to turn your argument backwards; Zen is basically neutral, and many aspects have a strong Chaotic streak. Zen monks would not be practicing their disciplines if they did not believe it was leading to liberation, unboundedness, and detachment from the order of the world. Simply performing meditations or whatever is not per se indicative of alignment; many real-world monks do it because they have always done it. It's just their job. While Lawful alignments might encourage discipline, that does not make discipline itself indicative of a lawful alignment. Just because Good values life and discourages killing does not mean that someone who is not Good does not kill. Going back to the question you pose, "To what end?," what I understand of Zen suggests an iconoclastic, intuitive, paradoxical path aimed at individual liberation that leads its practitioners to avoid thinking they can control others. Rituals and practices are understood as tools for enlightenment, and in themselves are valueless. The adage, "If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha," summarizes simply the view that even the path of Buddhism can be an obstacle. This is a marked contrast to the Platonic philosophers, who argued for logic, consistency, general principles that could be understood in a way that led to specific conclusions, laws and rules that themselves embody ideals of the Good, and so forth. In a class on pre-Socratic philosophers I took in college, we spent some time comparing and contrasting the "Eastern" and "Western" philosophies, especially where they mingled in Turkey. Although Plato struggled with the concept of apprehending universal truth, he did not conclude that if you meet Socrates, you should kill Socrates. One Lawful religion I can think of is Confucianism. It tells you what to do, when to do it, and why you are doing it. And it says, you do it. The reason you do it is because it is what you do. That's Lawful. I have met Buddhists whose outlook seems more Lawful... or at least, more Neutral. I would, however, characterize most of them as culturally (natively) Buddhist, with some exceptions. There is a reason Buddhism is called the Middle Way. In D&D terms, you could say it adds more Chaos to liberate the soul and more Law to ensure you are reaching enlightenment and not simply confusion. So, while drawing the usual conclusion that real-world ethics are rarely simple to define in D&D terms, I will still say that most Zen translations I've read tend to shade from True Neutral to Chaotic Good. In any case, there are plenty of other precedents for Chaotic monks, such as Jackie Chan's "young student" type character, the Monkey King, and various monastaries in open rebellion for much of Chinese history.</blockquote>

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