HN Reader

To the point of the article: A lot of Quakers dont label their worship as meditation. The point of quaker worship is to open your heart to "listen". The point of meditation is often mindfulness. there is some overlap but i think it is a different ends from similar means.

Another contrast is quaker worship is done in a community looking inward towards the center of the room, Zen meditation when done in a temple is done looking at the wall. for me this is a contrast between the quaker "society of friends" and zen can be done in isolation

Quakers for me have a special place in my heart.

I'm a bit sad that in California there are very few Quaker communities when compared to Buddhist or Zen communities. The quaker communities that do exist seem to be hanging on from the counterculture movement several decades ago.

I've attended a Quaker community for the past couple of years and sadly it is dying out. Almost all of the members are past 60 y/o and almost zero young adult members or younger members attend.

I think the Quaker philosophy is powerful and unfortunately i believe it has lead to its downfall. The lack of creed and resistance to structure makes it hard for new members to feel comfortable and make it easy to be more casual about your membership. this leads to people just dropping out.

also the structure of quaker practices can seem offputting for people from more conventional religious backgrounds. For example christmas "celebrations" are done entirely in silence from the moment you enter to when you leave. this is a staggering contrast to almost every other celebration. (also in contrast to most of christianity a lot of quakers dont believe jesus was "holy" but rather an ordinary man who was more in touch with the "light", underscoring the intensity of their egalitarian beliefs)

I think Quaker has a branding problem. People think of quaker oats or amish. (amish have nothing to do with quakers). Zen is more trendy and "mystical". If quakerism was "rebranded" a lot more people would be attracted to it.

My heart yearns for more Quaker communities. Its so sad to see them die out.

It's always weird to see Quakerism be mentioned somewhere else. I grew up Quaker and still sometimes attend Quaker meeting, and I related to his ceiling-tile counting; I used to count the wooden boards that formed the ceiling of our meetinghouse.

The best part about Quakerism, in my opinion, is that it teaches a very hearty disrespect of un-earned authority without teaching disrespect for the concept of authority itself. One of my favorite anecdotes is a group of Quakers who refused to doff their hats for the King, as they only doff their hats for God.

There's another old practice of refusing to swear on the Bible before telling the truth, as that would imply that they weren't telling the truth before they were sworn in.

I find the inclusion of Zen in this article is interesting, as you won't find the word "Holy" or "God", used, and "Spirit" is only used twice, once to comment on how he felt pressured to receive a message from it. The original purpose of Quaker silent worship was to remove the church-imposed barrier between man and God (the "Holy Spirit") so that anyone could be a mouthpiece for the wishes and desires of the Spirit. Modern American Quakers, especially the ones who write in Friends Journal, tend to be pretty secular.

> In meditation, I was relieved of the burden of being moved by the Spirit to speak and say something spiritually profound.

I find it interesting that the author felt pressure to be moved to speak. In the eight years I attended a Quaker school and attended thousands of meetings for worship, I never felt that vibe. Whenever there was any discussion about the expectations of behavior in a meeting (such discussion usually being done offline, i.e. not during the actual meeting), it was always quite clear that not only was speaking completely voluntary, but also you were free to say whatever moved you, as long as it was suitable for the entire group; there was no need to be "spiritually profound," whatever that means.

Granted, the daily meetings I attended were for the student and faculty (the vast majority of whom were not Quaker). But on the few occasions we got to attend the "real" meeting for worship on Sunday (held in the school's meeting house), I found it to have exactly the same tenor, only with fewer kids (and about 40 minutes longer).

It's surprising it doesn't mention the parallels of how both quaker and buddhists greatly revere and respect nature.

Having only recently been made aware of Quakerism myself, I also came to the conclusion that it should have a more prevalent mention as a sub-current of Christian Mysticism. That association may potentially create a bridge to other similar mystical contemplative traditions, nowadays sometimes labeled under the umbrella term "nonduality", which includes Zen, Advaita, Daoism, Sufism, among others. As Meister Eckhart said, "Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language".

That's an interesting parallel. I'll admit, I know almost nothing about Quakers and Quakerism.

Some influential people in my life were quakers, which has given me a lifelong interest in quakerism, but in my one interaction with a quaker meeting, I was surprised that it seemed much closer to bible based church than I had expected. I think I had expected a skepticism about holy texts as literary/cultural creation rather than the direct word of god, a philosophical attitude of god as an abstract anthropomorphism because 'god may be addressed but never comprehended', but apart from the chairs and egalitarianism, it could have been any other bible group.

Did I misunderstand something, what's your better informed take?

I'm an Atheist, but I greatly respect Quakers for starting many important movements and organizations including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Greenpeace.

I clicked on this fully expecting it to be about the video game...

Surprisingly this is a very level headed post. I’m not a Buddhist or a Zenist or a Quakerist but I’m glad the author not once beat me over the head with how enlightened they are, or worse, throw pithy quotes my way.

If you are young and give the silence a decent go it's OK to fall back on a book after a bit, or if you are too young to read yet, quietly working on some lego under your seat will not bother anyone. Adults are a little trickier but comtemplating a bible or Faith and Practice works. And, you know, it is meant to be voluntary.

I always more of a Quake guy than Doom. Probably because I started with it first.

Buddhism is a lot less "zen" than Quakerism.

Would be nice if they explain what the heck a Quaker is, I thought this was gonna be an article on the peace of playing Quake and when I released it wasn’t that I thought of the Quaker oats but not much more than that

There is considerable cherry picking along with cultural appropriation going on here. Buddhism has flavors that are worlds apart from what is described in the post.

A spicy example is discussed in the book "Zen at War"[1]. Myanamar and Sri Lanka[2] have their own ultra nationalistic Buddhists movements.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_Buddhist_nationalism