Religions (& philosophies/world views) change as they travel and filter thru other cultures. Usually, new ones merely overlay entrenched older ones --sometimes thinly. Sometimes, they morph into the older, taking on the ceremonies of the previous religions and changing the names (easter, Xmas).

Buddhism went thru other cultures too. It took on characters that the Buddha wouldn't have recognized. Prayer-wheels were added in Tibet (I think). But in China, on it's way to Japan, it "interbred" with Taoism (to over-simplify), resulting in Zen. This went further into pure-&-simple-reality than Buddha did.

Reality is like the real drug in a pharmaceutical experiment. The placebo is the mere image of reality that resides behind our eyes. The only people who get the "real pills" are the Zen Masters & all who've had an enlightening experience.
The rest of us manage to get thru life imagining ("imaging") the world we walk thru, like our head's in a box, and we can see out only thru mirrors. ("reflected reality")

Reality can be seen by your awareness, when relieved of the burden of your own input... when observed without your accumulated... automatic... colored... filters. Reality is pure intake, no input. That's enlightenment.

Where is reality, really? Finding it is like finding how not to hold your head on a pillow. You may lay your head for an hour and find a fatigued neck muscle. Muscle? You thought you'd totally relaxed. Ok, now feel it again. Are you sure it's relaxed now? No muscles used? This may take a while.

So, finally, find how your head rests on the pillow without using a muscle... without effort. Now extend the idea to the rest of your body. Let the chair hold your weight; see the weight taken by the floor, the beams of the building, and down into the ground. Your atoms were always in the earth, and were always supported by it.
. . Zen is the attitude that gives the weight of your head totally to the pillow. ...that gives the weight of your body totally to the earth.
. . Trying to see reality.... is like trying to hold your head on a pillow. You can't find reality via mental effort.
. . Likewise in the effort to be... to find yourself... with the weight of mental effort. The effort to see reality only prevents it from revealing itself. (You cannot try to sleep, as the very definition of sleep is the cessation of effort!)
. . Like the effort to hold your head prevents sleep, the effort to hold a fabricated reality prevents your waking up! Awareness takes no study or effort. To see reality, you must avoid constructing another one.
. . This is the same thing... walk thru a forest and take it in without your personal or cultural input to contaminate it. This is prime Zen: In both ways... Rest your head! Let reality hold it.

You've heard the phrase: a "different reality". I hate it. The things you don't understand, or have never seen, are not a "different reality", they're just... things you don't understand, have never seen, or see thru the filters colored by your experience and your in-experience. (I know --the phrase should say "a different lens on reality".)

Real things don't care what you think of their existence or characteristics; they just are what they are anyway. The human brain tends to see more than there is... and less than there is... rather than what just is. Let it go... rest your head. There is a things-as-they-are, and they don't care a whit about your things-as-you-want-them-to-be... or your things-as-you-think-they-are.

Abe Lincoln asked "If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does the dog have?" The trick, of course, was that it doesn't matter what you call it, a tail is still only a tail, even if you truly believe it's a leg. No matter how hard you try to believe.

With a free translation of his basic message, I think it was the Buddha who first said "Keep It Simple, Stupid"! :-)

Zen aims at pure awareness. Remember,

CONCEPTION CLOUDS PERCEPTION.

What previous thoughts and feelings you have about what you now see... changes what you see into what you think you see! It's contaminated... it moves --to some degree --from reality toward fantasy. The retina and the brain disagree.
. A Zen Master takes a walk in the forest and sees things as they really are --an experience a thousand times more powerful than what the rest of us perceive. Is it a goal to be empty-headed and passionless? No, no! That's a misunderstanding.
. Look. You might organize a Corporation, with by-laws, meetings with Robert's Rules of Order, hierarchies, funding campaigns, P.R., lobbying... all to give sick kids a last vacation, or prevent the destruction of a forest, or any such thing.
. Is it impossible to do all that and still get into an "unfiltered" frame of mind at the trailhead?
. Most people would, indeed, switch modes from one environment to the other. It might seem necessary to be the passionate opinionated activist here, and the purpose-free "monk" there. Passionate here, empty-headed there --but that would be posing. The truly aware, I suspect, would be without a dichotomy in any place or situation. They are merely aware of different things as different things come to them. And the "empty-headed"-ness is really a relaxation of those filters, so that more experience comes in.

Take a walk in Thoreau's wilderness. It can be a rainforest or the Aussie Outback. (It is not a cornfield... not a lumber company "forest".) Let the culture of your life fade away. What's the usual pattern?

1. Images of that culture overlay the scene.
2. A mental replay begins, of culture's "noise", like a security blanket.
3. A physical replay begins, of culture's "noise", like singing or yelling --very out of place in the wilderness.
4. Realization of a fear of the unknown. Not Ls, Ts, & Bs, oh no, but of the quiet. The... difference.
5. First sight of something unfiltered! A surprise!
6. First lack of fear; acceptance as safe; awakening. Time forgotten.
7. First amazement.
8. First realization of your integrity with it all.
9. First realization of the awesome; the sacred; the spirituality of it all.
10. And so on....

It's not just that it's good to be less egocentric... I finally realize the larger point: with less of the filtering-out and coloring-in done by the ego and the memory, we are more free to see what reality is --what we want to see is not the forest as your mind constructs it... it's the forest there IS, as it is! Without the awareness of what the world is, we don't know what we would be, without all that filtering-out and coloring-in.

-- ---
Be OF the Earth, not just ON it.
You can be the equal of the fish who discovered water. There's fish-water all around you!

On judgement: What's the point of having an opinion on how nature is? Nature doesn't care what you think --it'll continue to be as it is, regardless. This applies both ways --to mosquitoes and sunsets.
. On Enculturation: You are not that much better off to use the Japanese words for concepts that have equivalents in English. But be not only of one culture --diversify!
. [end:] Is there a "secret" to Zen? Sure, but everybody flies right past it, looking for something difficult to achieve. You hafta work hard and be like a saint to get into nirvana/heaven, right? It's probably the "heaven" part that throws the average westerner off. Even asian people went thru years of monkish life to "achieve" enlightenment. (Tho I must say that more of them make it than those who don't go there.)
. Y'see, the secret is too simple. Forget workin' on it. You don't "get it" by trying. You don't need a map --it's right here! It's like trying to sleep, when sleep can almost be defined as not-trying.

[rest your head]
. Zen is not the answer --Zen is to realize that there is no question.

But I know nobody will accept that so easily. Nobody does. I can't that much, myself. Tho many do save themselves a few years in the monastary. It's just awareness --this is --this thing, this world, this life.