Of Morning Glories and Pine Trees

There’s a saying among Buddhist circles that captures the differences between three of the most popular Buddhist traditions: “Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists.” The saying is imperfect, as generalizations tend to be, but there’s some truth to it. Vipassana stresses the importance of mindfulness, of studying one’s patterns of thought and emotion and the relationships between them. Tibetan (or Vajrayana Buddhism) is famed for its colorful paintings of mandalas and thangkas, which are richly detailed and symbolic of various Buddhist teachings and ideas. And Zen places an emphasis on koans — stories, dialogues, questions, and statements that are meant to provoke what is known as “the great doubt” in Zen. <a href="https://medium.com/@quentinsepter/of-morning-glories-and-pine-trees-41b5f78e1b26">Website</a>