Actually I was standing on the shore (so to speak), when all that Eastern flotsam (to coin a term) floated up back in the 60s. I was far to involved with all the people who knew Baba Rum Rasin when he quit Harvard and started to do the Hindu thing, and I still have my first edition of Alan Watts (signed even, which is kinda not Buddhist, him signing it mean) because he was friends with a nun who taught me (Catholic, I don't hold it against her, she also turned me on to Eric Hoffer, who did meaningfully affect my life*). I wasted weekends out at Tassajara. And to me it always smacked of just what you posted, Enlightenment in 8 seconds flat. No work, no dedication, just sudden enlightenment. I did learn later at the Zen Center of San Francisco that there is a deeper tradition, one of real austerity, but give that stuff to Westerners and it just becomes McReligion, all hat, no cattle, as they say in Texas.
* - I'd strongly suggest reading him, about the only non-Freudian intellectual of his age. Basically he said that fanaticism, faith, the need to preach and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. Of particular interest to me all the time when I read posts in there is the though he repeats over and over in the The True Believer, where people who had a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people, and their thoughts and opinions is merely a useless and dangerous attempt to compensate for a total lack of meaning in one's own life. It's nice if people accept you, but it's not necessary by a long shot so long as you accept yourself first. In that way the options of others are just coloring for the tapestry of life, not the fabric.
