Zen Nonsense

"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."


I fucking love monk. I haven't played THAT many of them, really, but it's hard to pick which of my favorite classes is my number one: Monk constantly fights with Rogue, so often that the last Monk I played was both of them. I like the gameplay and the statistics of them, but I love that special feel they have too. High flying acrobatics, clever secret tricks, and being equal parts infuriating and insightful in social interaction.

Everyone's seen martial arts movies, even if it's popular stuff like Kung Fu Panda or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We all know the stereotype: the preternaturally calm bald guy giving advice that you don't understand at first...or maybe ever. They speak in a particular kind of metaphor that seems common to them despite being in so many different movies. Fuck, even Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda do it a little. Even though Yoda is, at times, plainly discussing his philosophy, it has a certain sound to it.

Today I'm hoping to give some general advice on achieving that sound for your character. Your character doesn't have to follow Zen Buddhism to have that feel, but that is where it comes from. In super general terms, Zen is a philosophy wherein the individual experience is very important. It's not something that can simply be explained or defined. If you think that's bullshit, try to explain the taste of honey to someone as if they had never had it. You'll succeed to a point, but you'll hardly be able to explain the true experience of eating it. Zen has a strong emphasis on insight into your own true nature, so...well, that's where all that nonsense you hear powerful teachers in martial arts movies and animes comes from. Because it's impossible to directly explain, the next best thing is to evoke thought and cause a personal experience for someone else.

Put aside if you think Zen is bullshit or not, because it's evoking the feeling of Zen that's going to help us arrive at our character sounding like a wise old monk. With that in mind, I've got some advice in no particular order.


Define the order's core philosophy. This is the no-bullshit version you're coming up with, no need to fancy it up. We're doing that later. Discuss or write this down as if you're trying to explain it as plainly as possible to someone. You need a way this particular order or group looks at the world and some defining statements about how it works. This can easily inform the group's alignment like simple philosophies such as "The Weak only exist to justify the Strong" or "We are only as successful as our poorest brother" but plenty of them can be interpreted a great deal of different ways. Usually, this is what you want. You want a core philosophy that will evoke some sort of thought or discussion. Usually, that's how monasteries or monastic orders happen.

You can usually go pretty far or wild with this, but you don't have to. You can even be making a claim about the universe that's not verifiable, such as "There is a finite amount of pain in the world" or "The visual beauty of our surroundings enriches the soul and allows for amazing accomplishments". It's just an outlook that informs how the monks act and subsequently, how they talk to others.


Come up with some core metaphors. It's like we're making zen stew. We added the meat earlier, and this is all the vegetables and spices. We're acting like it devalues our message(the one from above) to directly explain it and coming up with metaphor and analogy to convey its real meaning. Think like your goal is to evoke thought, not explain yourself. Like it isn't something you're even able to explain and the person you're talking to needs to realize it for themselves. Come up with some building blocks and concepts/things to use instead of just saying what you mean. Thought association bubbles help out a lot here, where you can write down something like "flower" and list all the applicable descriptors of the item, then go from there.

Once you have a few of your philosophy's concepts tied to metaphors, it should be really easy to come up with common sayings, phrases or answers using those. Our previous example, the monks enamored with beauty, could relate everything to flowers: How some of them grow in spite of harsh circumstances, how cutting them causes their beauty to become finite, or how flowers create more flowers if tended properly. A good-aligned monk could claim real beauty is who you are inside, or an evil monk could say nothing that's inside you matters...it's all in how you're built. They'd both belong to the same monastery and follow the same lessons. They'd even use the same metaphors a lot.


Never say you don't know. This one seems minor but it's super important. You don't have to be constantly talking, but don't say "I don't know" or similar phrases. Prepare a comment, even if it doesn't seem like it's related or answers the question. This can be infuriating to some people, so you might need to watch it, but a comment parallel to a situation can signal that you don't know something without looking like you're a know-it-all. In fact, there's two different ways to do this. A "good" character is trying to evoke thought that will solve the encounter or question despite his lack of knowledge. An evil character is trying to look like he's got all the answers and is smarter or wiser than anyone else. A neutral character would probably be leaning toward the first method, but it would depend a lot on how his philosophy is structured. If you don't have anything useful to say, your character should be thinking the next best thing is to evoke thought in another person to get their mind 'flowing'. He wouldn't shrug and give up. It's important to note that he thinks this is helpful.


The logic of the statement is not the point. Let's analyze a common "Zen" statement that was probably never actually a part of Zen Buddhism. If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?

Yes, btw. The answer is yes, based on previously observed patterns.

But we all know that's not the point of the statement. If you use that answer on someone, they'd say you didn't understand, and they're right. Kind of. The statement is intended to make you think, to get your mind flowing. The fact that it(along with other common 'zen' statements) has an answer is entirely beside the point. Your monk should be keeping that in mind. He doesn't need to be illogical, and in fact could guide someone toward 'Zen' thinking by explaining this exact thing to them. Of course, if he's evil, he might just gloat at someone else's small mind. In general, though, meaning, metaphor and significance are going to be more important than bare logic.


So I hope this helped. This sort of feeling and tone is a little hard for me to explain and I hope that hit the mark. Not every monk needs to do this, and in fact a "pure logic" monk who studies facts and techniques instead of philosophies can be fun too. In fact, applying this feel and habit to a different class can be really memorable. It doesn't even need to be a wisdom class, since Zen is more a way of thinking than anything else.

As a parting thought, if any Zen Buddhists are reading this and cringing at my terrible explanations...sorry! This was born more from martial arts movies than real world philosophy.