In spite of its official contempt for merely human ideas, Zen encompasses a wide variety of ideas. The most important one is inherited from Buddhism: the idea that the mind itself is an illusion. I'm calling this particular idea from Zen the "Z" meme, with due recognition that there is more to Zen than this meme. In fact, Zen meditation is particularly valuable in allowing the practitioner to sharpen his skills in self-reflection: the first step in answering the question, What am I. The Z meme purports to answer this question in a particular way (answer: nothing). I think this idea arises from fundamental errors of categorization and imagination. We are no longer required to think of the mind as a special kind of "stuff" (as Descartes did). We now routinely speak of "things" like processes and structures which are clearly real - not "illusions". Of course, there is usually some kind of old-fashioned "stuff" involved, but you can'