I'm a copywriter, so I like it when I find a product with a clever name. One of the first jobs I got as a writer was the naming of a new panty/girdle from Playtex that, like the "cross your heart" bra, lifted and separated the buns instead of the breasts. They wanted something playful but not too risque. I thought, copywriting is sure gonna be fun. And it is much of the time. So you have some background to my reaction when I came upon this product being sold in my local grocery:
I was amused, delighted at the clever word play and once again horrified to see a the name of a spiritual path, Zen, once again used to sell stuff: Zenergize energy drink tablets. Of course, this is better than the fraud that is kabbalah water, which is just water that costs a lot
more. Here you actually have a vitamin drink with some nutritional value, and you can pretend you're still a kid and drinking Fizzies! Except of course, the energy that one can discover from sitting zazen is beyond anything a fizzy drink can deliver. This stuff isn't cheap either. But I will say this, it is greener than buying not so Smart Water or Vitamin Water which just adds more plastic bottles to the world's trash heaps and polluted oceans. But does Zenergize have anything to do with Zen Buddhism other than a clever marketing name? Not a drop.
At least Original Zen, a powdered drink mix sold as a healthy substitute for coffee was formulated by
someone who studied Chinese herbal medicine. FIlled with lots of traditional herbs that have been studied in academic settings to determine what their health effects really are, the site for Original Zen takes a serious approach and links to studies showing the anti-cancer properties of Astralagus for example. Still, I don't think this is what was Originally Zen.
I realize that since no one is selling wood from the true cross anymore, and since holy water doesn't from Lourdes doesn't have the cachet of eastern religion (after all, Lourdes is just superstition, right) marketers are looking for whatever seems both cool and real. Zen fits the bill.
However, to mangle a phrase from Lao-tzu, the Zen that can be sold is not the true Zen.
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