Zen, it is said that a person knows cold things and hot things only when she herself experiences them.14 Everything is taken in as the real life-experience of self.15 This means there is no true value in definitions of things, reports of other people, or so-called pure observation of things, from which the life-experience of one’s self is removed. As far as that goes, the difference I see between Zen and existentialism is that present-day existentialism is the philosophy of general existence, not the practice of the very life of the existentialist himself.
Zen and existentialism.
