system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can someone explain Zen Buddhism and how it differs from traditional Buddhism?

It would be much appreciated.
gpt
Zen is the form of buddhism that had the most influence from taoism. In practice though, the people who present it as totally unique from all other buddhism are being a little misleading. It emphasizes a concept of spontaneity that resembles the taoist concepts of action without action and naturalness. And says that while scriptures convey things, that ultimately your practice has to be something you learn internally, and for this reason need to be directly trained by a master. Merely memorizing scriptures will not inherently help you internalize anything. Its known for saying things that are seemingly vague or ambiguous like the kill the buddha thing, or saying that all beings are already enlightened, and that practice is just the realization of it. For non monks, it would have looked very similar to any other form of buddhism though. Many of what are now famous koans were not things that laypeople would know of. But were things a teacher told a student in monk training to frustrate the intellect, letting him gain room for direct insight.

One other thing it has, though this is less relevant is expanding the concept of rebirth. Saying that rebirths is not just between lives, but as things change they are reborn moment to moment as well. Since the change you undergo during the passage of time is similar to the change you undergo through a death as well, just on a different scale.