Jesus and Buddha
- Practicing Across Traditions
Robert Kennedy, Chung Hyun Kyung and Paul Knitter lead us on an adventure through spiritually nourishing terrain where Christian and Buddhist paths meet.
“Each of the teachers in this film was called by the Buddha to a deeper understanding of God, rediscovering the heart of Christianity through Buddhist practice. Their spellbinding personal stories transmit Buddhist-Christian wisdom in fresh, surprising ways that leave the viewer full of wonder. The film shows how inter-religious learning and practice is reinvigorating the meaning of faith in our time.”
John Makransky, Assoc. Professor of Buddhism & Comparative Theology, Boston College
“Each of the teachers in this film was called by the Buddha to a deeper understanding of God, rediscovering the heart of Christianity through Buddhist practice. Their spellbinding personal stories transmit Buddhist-Christian wisdom in fresh, surprising ways that leave the viewer full of wonder. The film shows how inter-religious learning and practice is reinvigorating the meaning of faith in our time.”
John Makransky, Assoc. Professor of Buddhism & Comparative Theology, Boston College
Zen Christianity: A Simple Path
- Accept life as it is, don't strive for special experiences.
- Don't think everything needs to be explained.
- Accept the present as holy ground.
- Know that each moment is unique and precious.
- See the universe in each person, each plant, each animal.
- Know that you are a new person at each moment.
- Trust that the universe is enfolded in a Great Compassion.
- Listen for the beckoning of the Compassion in your own heart.
- Honor wisdom wherever you find it.
- Let breathing be your practice.
- When you fall down get up again.
- Serve the world.
There is more to Zen Christianity than this, but not less. In my life process theology has offered a unique way to say "yes" to each of the insights offered above and weave them into a single way of living. See Can a Christian be a Buddhist, too? and Can a Christian believe in No-Self and On Being English teacher for a Zen Master. But many people find ways of integrating Buddhism and Christianity without process theology and, for that matter, without focussing on Zen. Their ways are immensely valuable, too. The video below introduces you to three people who integrate Christianity and Buddhism into their own lives. They represent a unique path in religious life today, that of practicing across traditions. Enjoy.
- Jay McDaniel, 12/2/2021
Two Landmark Books
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Without Buddha I Could not be a ChristianWithout Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian narrates how esteemed theologian, Paul F. Knitter overcame a crisis of faith by looking to Buddhism for inspiration. From prayer to how Christianity views life after death, Knitter argues that a Buddhist standpoint can encourage a more person-centred conception of Christianity, where individual religious experience comes first, and liturgy and tradition second. Moving and revolutionary, this book will inspire Christians everywhere. Paul Knitter on Double Religious BelongingIn your book you speak of “double belonging.” Just what does that mean? |
For further study: The Society for
Buddhist-Christian Studies
There are many books seeking to integrate aspects of Buddhism and Christianity into a whole that can nourish a person's life. Click on button below for a bibliography, published in 20120, with 105 of them. See also the work of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, the purpose of which is to suppor activities related to the comparative study of, and the practical interaction between, Buddhism and Christianity, whether by groups or individuals.
Why Christians Turn to Buddhism: Six Reasons
A small but growing number Christians in the West are turning to Buddhism for spiritual guidance. Many are reading books about Buddhism, and some are also meditating, participating in Buddhist retreats, and studying under Buddhist teachers. They are drawn to Buddhism's emphasis on "being present" in the present moment; to its recognition of the interconnectedness of all things; to its emphasis on non-violence; to its appreciation of a world beyond words, and to its provision of practical means -- namely meditation -- for growing in one's capacities for wise and compassionate living in daily life. As they learn from Buddhism, they do not abandon Christianity. Their hope is that Buddhism can help them become better Christians. They are Christians influenced by Buddhism.
1. Julia is typical of one kind of Christian influenced by Buddhism. She is a hospice worker in New York who, as a Benedictine sister, turns to Buddhism "to become a better listener and to become more patient." As a student of Zen she has been practicing zazen for twenty years under the inspiration of the Vietnamese Zen teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, whose book Living Buddha/Living Christ gave her new eyes for Christ, proposing that Jesus himself was "mindful in the present moment." She practices meditation in order to deepen her own capacities for mindfulness, particularly as it might help her be more effective in her life's calling. As a hospice worker she feels called to listen to dying people, quietly and without judgment, as a way of extending the healing ministry of Christ. Like many people in consumer society, she sometimes finds herself too hurried and distracted, too caught up in her own concerns, to be present to others in patient and healing ways. She turns to Zen practice because it has helped her become more patient and attentive in her capacities to be available to people in a spirit of compassion.
From Julia’s perspective, “being present” to people in a compassionate way is a spiritual practice in its own right. She calls this attention “practicing the presence of God,” and she believes that this listening participates in a deeper Listening – an all-inclusive Love -- whom she calls God, and whom she believes is everywhere at once. She turns to Zen meditation, then, not to escape the world, but to help her drawn closer to the very God whose face she sees in people in need, and to help her become gentler and more attentive in her own capacities for listening. In her words: “I hope that my Zen practice has helped me become a better Christian.”
2. John, too, is a Christian who practices meditation, but for different reasons. He suffers from chronic back pain from a car accident several years ago. He has turned to meditation as a way of coping more creatively with his pain. “The pain doesn’t go away,” he says, but it’s so much worse when I fight it. Meditation has helped me live with the pain, instead of fighting it all the time.” When people see John, they note that he seems a little more at peace, and a little more joyful, than he used to seem. Not that everything is perfect. He has his bad days and his good days. Still, he finds solace in the fact that, even on the bad days, he can “take a deep breath” and feel a little more control in his life.
When John is asked to reflect on the relation between his meditation practice and Christianity, he reminds his questioner that that the very word Spirit is connected to the Hebrew word ruach, which means breathing. John sees physical breathing—the kind that we do each moment of our lives--as a portable icon for a deeper Breathing, divine in nature, which supports us in all circumstances, painful and pleasant, and which allows us to face suffering, our own and that of others, with courage. “Buddhism has helped me find strength in times of pain; it has helped me find God’s Breathing.”
3. Sheila is an advertising agent in Detroit who turns to Buddhism for a different reason. She does not practice meditation and is temperamentally very active and busy. But over the years her busyness has become a compulsion and she now risks losing her husband and children, because she never has time for her family. As she explains: “Almost all of my daily life has been absorbed with selling products, making money, and manipulating other people’s desires. Somewhere in the process I have forgotten what was most important to me: helping others, being with friends and family, and appreciating the simple beauties of life. Buddhism speaks to my deeper side.”
When Sheila reflects on the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity, she thinks about the lifestyle and values of Jesus. She recognizes that Jesus himself had little interest in appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement, and that he was deeply critical of the very idea that “amassing wealth” should be a central organizing principle of life. She doubts that Jesus would approve of the business culture in which she is immersed, in which the accumulation of wealth seems to be the inordinate concern. For her, then, Buddhism invites her to rethink the values by which she lives and to turn to values that are closer to the true teachings of Christ. “I find this simpler way challenging,” she says, “but also hopeful. I hope that Buddhism can help me have the courage to follow Christ more truly.
4. Robert is an unemployed social worker in Texas, who feels unworthy of respect because he does not have a salaried job like so many of his friends. He, too, has been reading books on Buddhism, “Most people identify with their jobs,” he says, “but I don’t have one. Sometimes I feel like a nothing, a nobody. Sometimes I feel like it is only at church, and sometimes not even there, that I count for anything.”
Robert turns to Buddhism as a complement to the kind of support he seeks to find, but sometimes doesn’t find, in Christianity. Buddhism tells him that his real identity—his true self, as Buddhists put it—lies more in the kindness he extends to others, and to himself, than in the making money and amassing wealth. Like Sheila, he sees this as connected with the teachings of Jesus. “Jesus tells me that I am made in the image of God; Buddhism tells me that I possess the Buddha-Nature. I don’t care what name you use, but somehow you need to know that you are more than money and wealth.”
5. Jane is a practicing physicist who works at a laboratory in Maryland who goes to a local Methodist church regularly. For her, a religious orientation must “make sense” intellectually, even as it also appeals to a more affective side of life, as discovered in personal relations, music, and the natural world. But she also finds God in science and in scientific ways of understanding the world. She is troubled that, too often, the atmosphere of church seems to discourage, rather than encourage, the spirit of enquiry and questioning that are so important in the scientific life. Jane appreciates the fact that, in Buddhism as she understands it, this spirit is encouraged.
This non-dogmatic approach, in which even religious convictions can be subject to revision, inspires her. In her words: “I plan to remain a Christian and stay with my Methodist church, but I want to learn more about Buddhism. I sense that its approach to life can help me see the spiritual dimensions of doubt and inquiry and help me integrate religion and science.
6. Sandra is a Roman Catholic nun in Missouri who leads a retreat center. Twelve months a year she leads retreats for Christians, Catholic and non-Catholic, who wish to recover the more contemplative traditions of their prayer life and enter more deeply into their interior journey with God. At her workshops she offers spiritual guidance and introduces participants to many of the mystics of the Christian tradition: John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen. Even as she does this, she herself is on the very journey to God, and she makes this clear to people who come her way.
Sandra turns to Buddhism because she believes that its teaching of no-ego or no-self, when understood experientially and not just intellectually, is itself an essential dimension of the journey to God. She sees this teaching as complementary to, and yet enriching, the teaching of “death and resurrection” that is at the heart of Christian faith. In her words: “Christianity and Buddhism agree that the spiritual pilgrimage involves an absolute letting go, or dropping away, of all that a person knows of self and God. Indeed, this is what happened in Jesus as he lay dying on the cross, and perhaps at many moments leading up to the cross. Only after the dying can new life emerge, in which there is in some sense ‘only God’ and no more ‘me.’ I see the cross as symbolizing this dying of self and resurrecting of new life that must occur within each of us. Buddhism helps me enter into that dying of self.”
As you listen to their stories, perhaps you hear your own desires in some of them. If so, you have undertaken an empathy experiment. You need not be “Christian” or “Buddhist” to do this. There is something to learn from them even if you are not religious at all. Don’t we all need to live by dying? Don’t we all need to listen better? Don’t we all need to inquire and seek truth? There is something deeply human in their searching, and deeply human in our willingness to learn from them, even if we don’t share their faith. And even if we do.
- Jay McDaniel
1. Julia is typical of one kind of Christian influenced by Buddhism. She is a hospice worker in New York who, as a Benedictine sister, turns to Buddhism "to become a better listener and to become more patient." As a student of Zen she has been practicing zazen for twenty years under the inspiration of the Vietnamese Zen teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, whose book Living Buddha/Living Christ gave her new eyes for Christ, proposing that Jesus himself was "mindful in the present moment." She practices meditation in order to deepen her own capacities for mindfulness, particularly as it might help her be more effective in her life's calling. As a hospice worker she feels called to listen to dying people, quietly and without judgment, as a way of extending the healing ministry of Christ. Like many people in consumer society, she sometimes finds herself too hurried and distracted, too caught up in her own concerns, to be present to others in patient and healing ways. She turns to Zen practice because it has helped her become more patient and attentive in her capacities to be available to people in a spirit of compassion.
From Julia’s perspective, “being present” to people in a compassionate way is a spiritual practice in its own right. She calls this attention “practicing the presence of God,” and she believes that this listening participates in a deeper Listening – an all-inclusive Love -- whom she calls God, and whom she believes is everywhere at once. She turns to Zen meditation, then, not to escape the world, but to help her drawn closer to the very God whose face she sees in people in need, and to help her become gentler and more attentive in her own capacities for listening. In her words: “I hope that my Zen practice has helped me become a better Christian.”
2. John, too, is a Christian who practices meditation, but for different reasons. He suffers from chronic back pain from a car accident several years ago. He has turned to meditation as a way of coping more creatively with his pain. “The pain doesn’t go away,” he says, but it’s so much worse when I fight it. Meditation has helped me live with the pain, instead of fighting it all the time.” When people see John, they note that he seems a little more at peace, and a little more joyful, than he used to seem. Not that everything is perfect. He has his bad days and his good days. Still, he finds solace in the fact that, even on the bad days, he can “take a deep breath” and feel a little more control in his life.
When John is asked to reflect on the relation between his meditation practice and Christianity, he reminds his questioner that that the very word Spirit is connected to the Hebrew word ruach, which means breathing. John sees physical breathing—the kind that we do each moment of our lives--as a portable icon for a deeper Breathing, divine in nature, which supports us in all circumstances, painful and pleasant, and which allows us to face suffering, our own and that of others, with courage. “Buddhism has helped me find strength in times of pain; it has helped me find God’s Breathing.”
3. Sheila is an advertising agent in Detroit who turns to Buddhism for a different reason. She does not practice meditation and is temperamentally very active and busy. But over the years her busyness has become a compulsion and she now risks losing her husband and children, because she never has time for her family. As she explains: “Almost all of my daily life has been absorbed with selling products, making money, and manipulating other people’s desires. Somewhere in the process I have forgotten what was most important to me: helping others, being with friends and family, and appreciating the simple beauties of life. Buddhism speaks to my deeper side.”
When Sheila reflects on the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity, she thinks about the lifestyle and values of Jesus. She recognizes that Jesus himself had little interest in appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement, and that he was deeply critical of the very idea that “amassing wealth” should be a central organizing principle of life. She doubts that Jesus would approve of the business culture in which she is immersed, in which the accumulation of wealth seems to be the inordinate concern. For her, then, Buddhism invites her to rethink the values by which she lives and to turn to values that are closer to the true teachings of Christ. “I find this simpler way challenging,” she says, “but also hopeful. I hope that Buddhism can help me have the courage to follow Christ more truly.
4. Robert is an unemployed social worker in Texas, who feels unworthy of respect because he does not have a salaried job like so many of his friends. He, too, has been reading books on Buddhism, “Most people identify with their jobs,” he says, “but I don’t have one. Sometimes I feel like a nothing, a nobody. Sometimes I feel like it is only at church, and sometimes not even there, that I count for anything.”
Robert turns to Buddhism as a complement to the kind of support he seeks to find, but sometimes doesn’t find, in Christianity. Buddhism tells him that his real identity—his true self, as Buddhists put it—lies more in the kindness he extends to others, and to himself, than in the making money and amassing wealth. Like Sheila, he sees this as connected with the teachings of Jesus. “Jesus tells me that I am made in the image of God; Buddhism tells me that I possess the Buddha-Nature. I don’t care what name you use, but somehow you need to know that you are more than money and wealth.”
5. Jane is a practicing physicist who works at a laboratory in Maryland who goes to a local Methodist church regularly. For her, a religious orientation must “make sense” intellectually, even as it also appeals to a more affective side of life, as discovered in personal relations, music, and the natural world. But she also finds God in science and in scientific ways of understanding the world. She is troubled that, too often, the atmosphere of church seems to discourage, rather than encourage, the spirit of enquiry and questioning that are so important in the scientific life. Jane appreciates the fact that, in Buddhism as she understands it, this spirit is encouraged.
This non-dogmatic approach, in which even religious convictions can be subject to revision, inspires her. In her words: “I plan to remain a Christian and stay with my Methodist church, but I want to learn more about Buddhism. I sense that its approach to life can help me see the spiritual dimensions of doubt and inquiry and help me integrate religion and science.
6. Sandra is a Roman Catholic nun in Missouri who leads a retreat center. Twelve months a year she leads retreats for Christians, Catholic and non-Catholic, who wish to recover the more contemplative traditions of their prayer life and enter more deeply into their interior journey with God. At her workshops she offers spiritual guidance and introduces participants to many of the mystics of the Christian tradition: John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen. Even as she does this, she herself is on the very journey to God, and she makes this clear to people who come her way.
Sandra turns to Buddhism because she believes that its teaching of no-ego or no-self, when understood experientially and not just intellectually, is itself an essential dimension of the journey to God. She sees this teaching as complementary to, and yet enriching, the teaching of “death and resurrection” that is at the heart of Christian faith. In her words: “Christianity and Buddhism agree that the spiritual pilgrimage involves an absolute letting go, or dropping away, of all that a person knows of self and God. Indeed, this is what happened in Jesus as he lay dying on the cross, and perhaps at many moments leading up to the cross. Only after the dying can new life emerge, in which there is in some sense ‘only God’ and no more ‘me.’ I see the cross as symbolizing this dying of self and resurrecting of new life that must occur within each of us. Buddhism helps me enter into that dying of self.”
As you listen to their stories, perhaps you hear your own desires in some of them. If so, you have undertaken an empathy experiment. You need not be “Christian” or “Buddhist” to do this. There is something to learn from them even if you are not religious at all. Don’t we all need to live by dying? Don’t we all need to listen better? Don’t we all need to inquire and seek truth? There is something deeply human in their searching, and deeply human in our willingness to learn from them, even if we don’t share their faith. And even if we do.
- Jay McDaniel
Double Religious Belonging
Being nourished by more than one tradition
There are many forms of double religious belonging today. The purpose of this page is to offer springboards for consideration of one form: Buddhist-Christian double belonging. The page is for self-identified Christians who want to learn from Buddhism and also self-identified Buddhists who want to learn from Buddhism
Two things should be noted. First, the very idea of "belonging" to a religious tradition is not universal. It is familiar to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but less so to people who are nourished, for example, by different strands of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and folk religion, as is the case with many in China. Arguably, the whole idea of allegiance or loyalty, much less exclusive loyalty to a tradition is primarily an Abrahamic sensibility, deeply connected with a sense of being loyal to a community (the people of Israel, the Church, the Ummah). It would seem strange to a Daoist if she were told that she could "belong" only to Daoist communities and must avoid Confucian and Buddhist gatherings. Or, for that matter, to a Native American if she were told that she could belong to Native American traditions but not also to Christianity.
Second, there are different kinds of belonging. You can belong to a community or a tradition. But in a different way you can also belong to a set of ideas if they mean a lot to you, or to a set of practices such as meditation and prayer. Christians influenced by Buddhism may well belong to ideas and practices of Buddhism, but not to a Buddhist community. The very notion of "belonging" is stretched here.
In truth, the very idea of double religious belonging really refers to being nourished by two (or more) traditions in a conscious and intentional way, with at least one of those traditions being one that you were not born into. Double religious belonging might better be called double religious nourishment. And, needless to say, people can be consciously and intentionally nourished by more than two traditions. Many people today are nourished by multiple religious traditions, not just two. Let "double religious belonging" be a metaphor for multiple sources of nourishment.
- Jay McDaniel
Two things should be noted. First, the very idea of "belonging" to a religious tradition is not universal. It is familiar to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but less so to people who are nourished, for example, by different strands of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and folk religion, as is the case with many in China. Arguably, the whole idea of allegiance or loyalty, much less exclusive loyalty to a tradition is primarily an Abrahamic sensibility, deeply connected with a sense of being loyal to a community (the people of Israel, the Church, the Ummah). It would seem strange to a Daoist if she were told that she could "belong" only to Daoist communities and must avoid Confucian and Buddhist gatherings. Or, for that matter, to a Native American if she were told that she could belong to Native American traditions but not also to Christianity.
Second, there are different kinds of belonging. You can belong to a community or a tradition. But in a different way you can also belong to a set of ideas if they mean a lot to you, or to a set of practices such as meditation and prayer. Christians influenced by Buddhism may well belong to ideas and practices of Buddhism, but not to a Buddhist community. The very notion of "belonging" is stretched here.
In truth, the very idea of double religious belonging really refers to being nourished by two (or more) traditions in a conscious and intentional way, with at least one of those traditions being one that you were not born into. Double religious belonging might better be called double religious nourishment. And, needless to say, people can be consciously and intentionally nourished by more than two traditions. Many people today are nourished by multiple religious traditions, not just two. Let "double religious belonging" be a metaphor for multiple sources of nourishment.
- Jay McDaniel
Can a Christian be a Buddhist, Too?
Yes, with help from process theology.
Jay McDaniel
Many years ago, when I was in seminary, I had the unusual experience of living in two religious worlds simultaneously: one Christian and one Buddhist.
In the mornings I would take classes on Christianity under the guidance of gifted seminary professors, all of whom were preparing me to become a minister. And then, in the afternoons, I would serve as the English teacher for a Zen Buddhist monk from Japan, who had recently completed his monastic training in Kyoto, having had the satori (enlightenment) experience with help from his Zen master.
For a young seminarian fresh out of college, my year as an English teacher for this Zen monk – now my good friend - was a very intense year. I would leave morning classes thinking about the self's relation to God as understood in the Gospel of John, deeply steeped in the richness of a Christian path. Then I would visit with a Zen monk in the afternoon, talking about Zen, and wondering if the self and God even existed. He is pictured below.
One day in seminary illustrates the whole year. I remember going to chapel in the morning, before class, and singing Amazing Grace along with my fellow seminarians. I felt enveloped in God’s love. That afternoon I then discussed with my Zen friend the meaning of the well-known koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" He explained that there is no rational or formulaic answer, but that there is an "answer" and that it has to do with not having a self separated from the world. He and I were always talking about the Buddhist idea of no-separate-self, or anatman.
I left our discussion wondering if Jesus had a self in the first place, and if God had one as well. Maybe they, too, exemplifiedanatman. Maybe they could hear the sound of one hand clapping because their selves, like that of a good Zen Buddhist, were empty of substance and completed by the world. It seemed to me that the whole year was like this: trying to link the amazing grace of God’s love with the sound of one hand clapping.
Of course this year did not emerge in a vacuum. For me, it emerged as the outcome of a rather deep search, not simply for Christian identity, but for a living Christian faith. I was myself surprised to find that Buddhism might help me find that faith.
I had first become interested in Buddhism during my senior year in college. I was looking for an alternative to a form of fundamentalist Christianity into which I had briefly fallen; and I found that alternative in the writings of the late Catholic writer, Thomas Merton. You will see photos of him on the right. He was a monk living in a monastery in Gethsemane, Kentucky, who wrote voluminously on many topics, including war and peace, social justice, contemplative prayer, mysticism, and Buddhism. Merton’s interest in Buddhism struck a chord in me because I, like he, was drawn to forms of spirituality that emphasize "letting go of words" and "being aware in the present moment." Protestant Christianity often seemed too wordy to me. Buddhism pointed to a world beyond words.
One reason I especially liked Merton was that he was sensitive to the fact that Christianity, too, points to a world beyond words. It points to the world of other living beings who are to be loved on their own terms and for their own sakes, who cannot be reduced to the names we attach to them; and it also points to the world of divine silence as experienced in the depths of contemplative prayer. Merton turned to Buddhism as a way of deepening his own understanding of the wordless, trans-theological dimensions of Christianity, and with his help I did the same.
Under the influence of Merton's writings, then, I began to take courses in world religions during my first year in seminary, even as I also took course in biblical studies, the history of Christianity, and Christian theology. At this stage, my interest in Buddhism was satisfied primarily through books and lectures in these courses. Growing up in a middle-class Protestant setting in Texas, I had not really known a Buddhist, much less a Zen Buddhist, in a personal way. I had known cowboys.
All this changed when I was asked by one of my professors to be the English teacher for the monk from Japan. My professor was a professor of world religions named Margaret Dornish, and I was taking a course on Buddhism under her. Her request, and my acceptance of it, changed my life. The monk’s name was Keido Fukushima, and he was being sent to the United States by his master in Japan to learn English and to learn about America. My assignment was to meet with him every day for one full year, teach him English, and also take him to numerous sites throughout southern California, from malls to monasteries. Indeed, I myself was to be part of the experience for him. In meeting me and getting to know how young people think, he would be meeting an "American." I tried my best to be an “American” for him, but I am sure that I was, at best, a middle-class Texan. I worried, along with Dr. Dornish, that I would be teaching Keido Fukushima to speak English with a Texas accent.
I quickly learned that my student, whom I was told to call Gensho, had already had seven years of English as a student in Japan. I later learned that Gensho means young monk and that I was calling him "young monk" the whole time. This was odd, because he was ten years my senior, but it never seemed to bother him. In any case, he was being sent to the United States, not to learn English, but rather to brush up on English, so that he could return to Japan and field questions from Americans about Zen. Given his facility with the language, our agreement was that I would teach him English by having him explain Zen to me. Thus, we spent hours upon hours talking about Zen and Buddhism.
As soon as we began talking about Zen, he explained to me that the best way to understand Zen is to undertake a daily practice of Zen meditation, or zazen. Under his guidance I did take up that practice, and I have been doing it ever sense. It introduced me to that world beyond words -- the world of pure listening -- that had led me to be interested in Zen in the first place. Twenty years of Zen meditation is at least part of the experience that I bring to this website. The other part is twenty years of teaching Buddhism and Asian religions to college undergraduates.
But Gensho's explanations of Zen did not stop with discussions or with zazen. The wisest teachings he gave me in those days were the gleam in his eye, his ever-present sense of humor, and his kindness. These activities were for me then, and are for me now, living Zen. Dead Zen is what you get in books, and perhaps even books like this. Living Zen is what you get when you are face to face with a Zen person or, still more deeply, with life itself. As Gensho would often say, the ultimate koan is not the question: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" It is life itself. It is how you respond to what presents itself: the birth of children, the death of loved ones, the caress of your beloved, the beauty of sunsets, the murder of innocents, the laughter of friends, the hunger of the child. When you respond with wisdom and compassion in the immediacy of the moment, you have become living Zen. Your life is your sermon. You are like the dog and cat in the photo: present in the present moment, true to your Buddha-nature in all its particularity.
With his help, then, I came to realize that Zen is not about arriving at another place called nirvana, but rather about arriving at the place where we start -- namely the present moment -- and living freely in the here-and-now of daily life. Zen is among the most down to earth and concrete religions I know. It is very bodily and practical. For this reason I think Zen can enrich the incarnational emphasis of Christianity, which likewise finds the infinite in the finite, the sacred in the ordinary, the word in the enfleshedness of daily life. Living Zen can help Christians enter more deeply into that form of living to which we aspire: life in Christ.
As I was spending my afternoons and many an evening with Gensho, my more conservative friends in seminary worried a little about me. They knew that Zen Buddhists do not often speak of God and that faith in God is not part of the Zen world. And they worried that I myself was falling into a dual religious identity. One of them called it "double religious belonging."
I was not comfortable with this phrase. Even as I felt like I was experiencing two different worlds each day, I did not feel that I belonged to two countries and had two passports. Rather I felt like one person who was receiving nourishment from two intravenous tubes: one the dharma of Buddhism and the other the wisdom of Christ. I borrow this metaphor from a wonderful Zen teacher in the United States, Susan Jion Postal. Intuitively I knew the two medicines were compatible, but I was trying to figure out how they were compatible with my mind. Moreover, I knew that if I had to choose one medicine over another, I would choose Christ. I was not all Buddhist and all Christian, or half Buddhist and half Christian, but rather a Christian influenced by Buddhism. Fortunately, the two fluids did indeed feel compatible and mutually enriching, so I wasn't forced to choose. Each had a healing quality that could add to the other.
What, then, was the healing quality of Christianity? Of course it has a lot to do with God and with the healing power of faith in God. Part of this healing quality can be described if I go into greater detail about the chapel service in seminary, when we sangAmazing Grace. When I sang along with the others, I felt that there was indeed a grace at hand, both in the lyrics and the melody and in the people singing it. We were somehow together in a communion of love, even as we were different persons. I sensed that there is a mysterious and encircling presence -- a sky-like mind -- in which we live and breathe and have our being, and that this mind is amazingly graceful. We can live from this grace and even add to it.
For my part, I felt this grace most vividly, not in ideas learned from books, but in the gifts of personal relationships, in the beauty of the natural world, in the depths of dreams, in hopes for peace, in the silence of the soul, in the eyes of animals, in the mysteries of music, and in acts of lovingkindness. There is something beautiful in our world, even amid its tragedies. For me, this beauty is God. God is the lure toward beauty in the universe, plus more. And God is in the beauty, too. The beauty of the world is God's body.
Admittedly, even in seminary, I did not always envision God as a male deity residing off the planet. Neither did my professors, especially those who were process theologians. With their help I arrived at a way of thinking about God that has made sense to me ever since. They helped me see that the universe is not outside God, like a servant seated far beneath a throne on which sits a king; but rather inside God, like developing embryos are inside a womb, or schools of fish are inside an ocean, or clouds are inside the sky.
My professors called this perspective pan-en-theism: a phrase which was coined in the nineteenth century, and which literally means that everything-is-in-God even as God is more than everything. It seemed to me then and seems to me now that pan-en-theism is closer to the truth of amazing grace. Grace is not something we approach from afar, like a throne on which sits a king, but rather something that is "always already here" as pure gift. Just as the ocean is "always already here" for a fish swimming in it, so grace is "always already here" for human beings. Our task, as humans, is to awaken to what is always already here.
I have said that from a pan-en-theistic perspective God is more than everything added together. This is certainly the case for process theologians. Just as an ocean is more than all the fish swimming in it, so God is more than our experience of God. Imagine a fish swimming off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in North America, and imagining that he knew everything about the ocean, including what it is like off the coast of New Zealand and South Africa and the Arctic. This fish would be equating its own experience of God with the whole of God.
Unfortunately, this is what I did during my senior year in college when I was a fundamentalist. I was pretty sure that I knew the whole of God and that others who disagreed with me were wrong. And this is why I am so glad to have discovered Thomas Merton, who helped me realize that the divine ocean is always more than our experience of it and we can lie back gently into its waters. From Merton I learned about God the more-ness, and about how silent listening was profound way to be connected with this God.
Oftentimes in seminary before I went to sleep at night, I would pray to the divine more-ness. Not only the contemplative prayer that Thomas Merton describe, but also the more traditional prayer of address that is at the heart of so much lived religion. I would open my heart to the divine ocean and say “Please be with them O Lord” or "I am so sorry, God" or "Thank you, it is so beautiful" or "May all beings be happy." Indeed, in times of sadness, I would also pray the harder prayers, the lamentations and protests, such as "Why did you let this happen?" and "Where are you, anyway?" and "Why have you forsaken me?" These were for me a kind of primal speech of the heart, more like poetry than prose. They were reaching out into the vastness of a mystery beyond my imagination, yet present even in its absence.
At first I felt a little guilty about these harder prayers. I knew that you find this kind of praying in the Bible quite often, in the Psalms for example, but for some reason I thought I was supposed to be nicer to God than the biblical authors. Thankfully, my professors explained that all these ways of praying are authentic if they come from the heart, because the divine ocean is big enough and powerful enough to receive and absorb all doubts, pains, sufferings and even all sins.
How did they know this? Most of them appealed to experience and also to Jesus. In the minds of most of my teachers, Jesus was not a supernatural figure who descended to the earth from above, but rather a man among men whose opened heart revealed a special aspect of God: namely God's open-hearted reception of the world into the divine life, with a tender care that nothing be lost. If we imagine God as an ocean, they said, then let us imagine Jesus as a fish among fish, whose opened heart reveals the Empathy and Eros of ocean itself. Jesus was, as it were, a window to the divine. I liked to think of Jesus as one of those fish with especially shining eyes. You would look into his eyes and see the ocean. Its name was not power or control or fear. Its name was compassion. You could feel this ocean every time you listened to other fish and cared for them. You could feel it when you had compassion for yourself, too. It was a very wide ocean, without boundaries, and somehow people saw it in the eyes of Jesus. Not his alone, of course, but also in the eyes of others.
Of course not all eyes reveal compassion. Some are all about power and control. People with power-hungry eyes have somehow lost sight of their capacities for vulnerable love. Their victims need our special love and care, and our hope that somehow the journey of live continues afterwards, so that their hearts find peace. And those with power-hungry eyes need our love, too. This is a teaching of Buddha and Jesus. We must not draw boundaries around love.
I think that the ocean of compassion is also an ocean of listening. It is affected by everything that happens all the time: omni-vulnerable, like a man on a cross. I had a few friends in seminary, and I have many friends now, who do not believe in prayer. Some of my friends in the college where I teach don't believe there is a divine ocean in the first place. They believe that the great receptacle in which the universe unfolds is an empty space rather than an amazing grace, more like a vacuum than an opened heart. And, of course, they may be right. When it comes to the mystery within which we all swim like fish in the sea, we all see through a glass darkly. No one can grasp the ocean, not even Christians.
Additionally, I have more religious friends who do indeed believe in a divine mystery of sorts, but who do not believe it receives prayers. They see the mystery more like an energy or force which can act upon things, but which cannot be acted upon. It has the power to give, but not to receive. Our task, they say, is to do the will of God, they say, cognizant that God does not need us in any way. For these friends, God is more like the male deity residing off the planet than an ocean of compassion. He stands above the earth, watching from time to time, and intervening from time to time, but he would do just fine if the earth and the whole universe ceased to exist.
For my part, I have no objection to other people imagining God as a male deity residing off the planet. I think we need many different images of God in our imaginations, and that this image is one among many that can help us. I have met people whose lives have been empowered to deal with great suffering, with great courage, through this image of God. But I do indeed have a problem with people who imagine this male deity as having the power to give but not to receive; the power to issue commands but not to empathize; the power to act in the world, but not to be acted upon by the world. When God is imagined in this way, we have, as the philosopher Whitehead once put it, rendered unto God that which belongs to Caesar.
I'm with Whitehead. A God who lacks the power to receive, who doesn't need the world in any way, is too monarchical. He is a lot like Caesar but not much like Christ. When I say "God" in this column I mean the Christ-like God as opposed to the Caesar-like God. I mean the God who is present to each living being on our planet and throughout the universe with a tender care that nothing be lost. I mean the God who is filled by the universe, just as an embryo fills a womb, or stars fill a dark and starlit sky, or fish fill the sea. I mean the God whose face is compassion not power, whose body is the world itself. I mean the God who is an ocean. The God whom Christians see revealed, but not exhausted, in the healing ministry of Jesus.
Faith in God is trust in the availability of fresh possibilities. And life in God lies in being present to each situation in a kindly way, open to surprise, honest about suffering, and seeking wisdom for daily life. I saw this kind of faith in "Gensho." He did not have an image of God in whom he placed that faith. When God becomes an ocean, we must sit loose with images, too, lest we make idols of them. Still we can have faith in something more, maybe even someone more: someone who listens and seeks our well-being. This is a faith to which I am drawn, moment by moment, as I try to walk with Christ, with help from Zen.
In the mornings I would take classes on Christianity under the guidance of gifted seminary professors, all of whom were preparing me to become a minister. And then, in the afternoons, I would serve as the English teacher for a Zen Buddhist monk from Japan, who had recently completed his monastic training in Kyoto, having had the satori (enlightenment) experience with help from his Zen master.
For a young seminarian fresh out of college, my year as an English teacher for this Zen monk – now my good friend - was a very intense year. I would leave morning classes thinking about the self's relation to God as understood in the Gospel of John, deeply steeped in the richness of a Christian path. Then I would visit with a Zen monk in the afternoon, talking about Zen, and wondering if the self and God even existed. He is pictured below.
One day in seminary illustrates the whole year. I remember going to chapel in the morning, before class, and singing Amazing Grace along with my fellow seminarians. I felt enveloped in God’s love. That afternoon I then discussed with my Zen friend the meaning of the well-known koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" He explained that there is no rational or formulaic answer, but that there is an "answer" and that it has to do with not having a self separated from the world. He and I were always talking about the Buddhist idea of no-separate-self, or anatman.
I left our discussion wondering if Jesus had a self in the first place, and if God had one as well. Maybe they, too, exemplifiedanatman. Maybe they could hear the sound of one hand clapping because their selves, like that of a good Zen Buddhist, were empty of substance and completed by the world. It seemed to me that the whole year was like this: trying to link the amazing grace of God’s love with the sound of one hand clapping.
Of course this year did not emerge in a vacuum. For me, it emerged as the outcome of a rather deep search, not simply for Christian identity, but for a living Christian faith. I was myself surprised to find that Buddhism might help me find that faith.
I had first become interested in Buddhism during my senior year in college. I was looking for an alternative to a form of fundamentalist Christianity into which I had briefly fallen; and I found that alternative in the writings of the late Catholic writer, Thomas Merton. You will see photos of him on the right. He was a monk living in a monastery in Gethsemane, Kentucky, who wrote voluminously on many topics, including war and peace, social justice, contemplative prayer, mysticism, and Buddhism. Merton’s interest in Buddhism struck a chord in me because I, like he, was drawn to forms of spirituality that emphasize "letting go of words" and "being aware in the present moment." Protestant Christianity often seemed too wordy to me. Buddhism pointed to a world beyond words.
One reason I especially liked Merton was that he was sensitive to the fact that Christianity, too, points to a world beyond words. It points to the world of other living beings who are to be loved on their own terms and for their own sakes, who cannot be reduced to the names we attach to them; and it also points to the world of divine silence as experienced in the depths of contemplative prayer. Merton turned to Buddhism as a way of deepening his own understanding of the wordless, trans-theological dimensions of Christianity, and with his help I did the same.
Under the influence of Merton's writings, then, I began to take courses in world religions during my first year in seminary, even as I also took course in biblical studies, the history of Christianity, and Christian theology. At this stage, my interest in Buddhism was satisfied primarily through books and lectures in these courses. Growing up in a middle-class Protestant setting in Texas, I had not really known a Buddhist, much less a Zen Buddhist, in a personal way. I had known cowboys.
All this changed when I was asked by one of my professors to be the English teacher for the monk from Japan. My professor was a professor of world religions named Margaret Dornish, and I was taking a course on Buddhism under her. Her request, and my acceptance of it, changed my life. The monk’s name was Keido Fukushima, and he was being sent to the United States by his master in Japan to learn English and to learn about America. My assignment was to meet with him every day for one full year, teach him English, and also take him to numerous sites throughout southern California, from malls to monasteries. Indeed, I myself was to be part of the experience for him. In meeting me and getting to know how young people think, he would be meeting an "American." I tried my best to be an “American” for him, but I am sure that I was, at best, a middle-class Texan. I worried, along with Dr. Dornish, that I would be teaching Keido Fukushima to speak English with a Texas accent.
I quickly learned that my student, whom I was told to call Gensho, had already had seven years of English as a student in Japan. I later learned that Gensho means young monk and that I was calling him "young monk" the whole time. This was odd, because he was ten years my senior, but it never seemed to bother him. In any case, he was being sent to the United States, not to learn English, but rather to brush up on English, so that he could return to Japan and field questions from Americans about Zen. Given his facility with the language, our agreement was that I would teach him English by having him explain Zen to me. Thus, we spent hours upon hours talking about Zen and Buddhism.
As soon as we began talking about Zen, he explained to me that the best way to understand Zen is to undertake a daily practice of Zen meditation, or zazen. Under his guidance I did take up that practice, and I have been doing it ever sense. It introduced me to that world beyond words -- the world of pure listening -- that had led me to be interested in Zen in the first place. Twenty years of Zen meditation is at least part of the experience that I bring to this website. The other part is twenty years of teaching Buddhism and Asian religions to college undergraduates.
But Gensho's explanations of Zen did not stop with discussions or with zazen. The wisest teachings he gave me in those days were the gleam in his eye, his ever-present sense of humor, and his kindness. These activities were for me then, and are for me now, living Zen. Dead Zen is what you get in books, and perhaps even books like this. Living Zen is what you get when you are face to face with a Zen person or, still more deeply, with life itself. As Gensho would often say, the ultimate koan is not the question: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" It is life itself. It is how you respond to what presents itself: the birth of children, the death of loved ones, the caress of your beloved, the beauty of sunsets, the murder of innocents, the laughter of friends, the hunger of the child. When you respond with wisdom and compassion in the immediacy of the moment, you have become living Zen. Your life is your sermon. You are like the dog and cat in the photo: present in the present moment, true to your Buddha-nature in all its particularity.
With his help, then, I came to realize that Zen is not about arriving at another place called nirvana, but rather about arriving at the place where we start -- namely the present moment -- and living freely in the here-and-now of daily life. Zen is among the most down to earth and concrete religions I know. It is very bodily and practical. For this reason I think Zen can enrich the incarnational emphasis of Christianity, which likewise finds the infinite in the finite, the sacred in the ordinary, the word in the enfleshedness of daily life. Living Zen can help Christians enter more deeply into that form of living to which we aspire: life in Christ.
As I was spending my afternoons and many an evening with Gensho, my more conservative friends in seminary worried a little about me. They knew that Zen Buddhists do not often speak of God and that faith in God is not part of the Zen world. And they worried that I myself was falling into a dual religious identity. One of them called it "double religious belonging."
I was not comfortable with this phrase. Even as I felt like I was experiencing two different worlds each day, I did not feel that I belonged to two countries and had two passports. Rather I felt like one person who was receiving nourishment from two intravenous tubes: one the dharma of Buddhism and the other the wisdom of Christ. I borrow this metaphor from a wonderful Zen teacher in the United States, Susan Jion Postal. Intuitively I knew the two medicines were compatible, but I was trying to figure out how they were compatible with my mind. Moreover, I knew that if I had to choose one medicine over another, I would choose Christ. I was not all Buddhist and all Christian, or half Buddhist and half Christian, but rather a Christian influenced by Buddhism. Fortunately, the two fluids did indeed feel compatible and mutually enriching, so I wasn't forced to choose. Each had a healing quality that could add to the other.
What, then, was the healing quality of Christianity? Of course it has a lot to do with God and with the healing power of faith in God. Part of this healing quality can be described if I go into greater detail about the chapel service in seminary, when we sangAmazing Grace. When I sang along with the others, I felt that there was indeed a grace at hand, both in the lyrics and the melody and in the people singing it. We were somehow together in a communion of love, even as we were different persons. I sensed that there is a mysterious and encircling presence -- a sky-like mind -- in which we live and breathe and have our being, and that this mind is amazingly graceful. We can live from this grace and even add to it.
For my part, I felt this grace most vividly, not in ideas learned from books, but in the gifts of personal relationships, in the beauty of the natural world, in the depths of dreams, in hopes for peace, in the silence of the soul, in the eyes of animals, in the mysteries of music, and in acts of lovingkindness. There is something beautiful in our world, even amid its tragedies. For me, this beauty is God. God is the lure toward beauty in the universe, plus more. And God is in the beauty, too. The beauty of the world is God's body.
Admittedly, even in seminary, I did not always envision God as a male deity residing off the planet. Neither did my professors, especially those who were process theologians. With their help I arrived at a way of thinking about God that has made sense to me ever since. They helped me see that the universe is not outside God, like a servant seated far beneath a throne on which sits a king; but rather inside God, like developing embryos are inside a womb, or schools of fish are inside an ocean, or clouds are inside the sky.
My professors called this perspective pan-en-theism: a phrase which was coined in the nineteenth century, and which literally means that everything-is-in-God even as God is more than everything. It seemed to me then and seems to me now that pan-en-theism is closer to the truth of amazing grace. Grace is not something we approach from afar, like a throne on which sits a king, but rather something that is "always already here" as pure gift. Just as the ocean is "always already here" for a fish swimming in it, so grace is "always already here" for human beings. Our task, as humans, is to awaken to what is always already here.
I have said that from a pan-en-theistic perspective God is more than everything added together. This is certainly the case for process theologians. Just as an ocean is more than all the fish swimming in it, so God is more than our experience of God. Imagine a fish swimming off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in North America, and imagining that he knew everything about the ocean, including what it is like off the coast of New Zealand and South Africa and the Arctic. This fish would be equating its own experience of God with the whole of God.
Unfortunately, this is what I did during my senior year in college when I was a fundamentalist. I was pretty sure that I knew the whole of God and that others who disagreed with me were wrong. And this is why I am so glad to have discovered Thomas Merton, who helped me realize that the divine ocean is always more than our experience of it and we can lie back gently into its waters. From Merton I learned about God the more-ness, and about how silent listening was profound way to be connected with this God.
Oftentimes in seminary before I went to sleep at night, I would pray to the divine more-ness. Not only the contemplative prayer that Thomas Merton describe, but also the more traditional prayer of address that is at the heart of so much lived religion. I would open my heart to the divine ocean and say “Please be with them O Lord” or "I am so sorry, God" or "Thank you, it is so beautiful" or "May all beings be happy." Indeed, in times of sadness, I would also pray the harder prayers, the lamentations and protests, such as "Why did you let this happen?" and "Where are you, anyway?" and "Why have you forsaken me?" These were for me a kind of primal speech of the heart, more like poetry than prose. They were reaching out into the vastness of a mystery beyond my imagination, yet present even in its absence.
At first I felt a little guilty about these harder prayers. I knew that you find this kind of praying in the Bible quite often, in the Psalms for example, but for some reason I thought I was supposed to be nicer to God than the biblical authors. Thankfully, my professors explained that all these ways of praying are authentic if they come from the heart, because the divine ocean is big enough and powerful enough to receive and absorb all doubts, pains, sufferings and even all sins.
How did they know this? Most of them appealed to experience and also to Jesus. In the minds of most of my teachers, Jesus was not a supernatural figure who descended to the earth from above, but rather a man among men whose opened heart revealed a special aspect of God: namely God's open-hearted reception of the world into the divine life, with a tender care that nothing be lost. If we imagine God as an ocean, they said, then let us imagine Jesus as a fish among fish, whose opened heart reveals the Empathy and Eros of ocean itself. Jesus was, as it were, a window to the divine. I liked to think of Jesus as one of those fish with especially shining eyes. You would look into his eyes and see the ocean. Its name was not power or control or fear. Its name was compassion. You could feel this ocean every time you listened to other fish and cared for them. You could feel it when you had compassion for yourself, too. It was a very wide ocean, without boundaries, and somehow people saw it in the eyes of Jesus. Not his alone, of course, but also in the eyes of others.
Of course not all eyes reveal compassion. Some are all about power and control. People with power-hungry eyes have somehow lost sight of their capacities for vulnerable love. Their victims need our special love and care, and our hope that somehow the journey of live continues afterwards, so that their hearts find peace. And those with power-hungry eyes need our love, too. This is a teaching of Buddha and Jesus. We must not draw boundaries around love.
I think that the ocean of compassion is also an ocean of listening. It is affected by everything that happens all the time: omni-vulnerable, like a man on a cross. I had a few friends in seminary, and I have many friends now, who do not believe in prayer. Some of my friends in the college where I teach don't believe there is a divine ocean in the first place. They believe that the great receptacle in which the universe unfolds is an empty space rather than an amazing grace, more like a vacuum than an opened heart. And, of course, they may be right. When it comes to the mystery within which we all swim like fish in the sea, we all see through a glass darkly. No one can grasp the ocean, not even Christians.
Additionally, I have more religious friends who do indeed believe in a divine mystery of sorts, but who do not believe it receives prayers. They see the mystery more like an energy or force which can act upon things, but which cannot be acted upon. It has the power to give, but not to receive. Our task, they say, is to do the will of God, they say, cognizant that God does not need us in any way. For these friends, God is more like the male deity residing off the planet than an ocean of compassion. He stands above the earth, watching from time to time, and intervening from time to time, but he would do just fine if the earth and the whole universe ceased to exist.
For my part, I have no objection to other people imagining God as a male deity residing off the planet. I think we need many different images of God in our imaginations, and that this image is one among many that can help us. I have met people whose lives have been empowered to deal with great suffering, with great courage, through this image of God. But I do indeed have a problem with people who imagine this male deity as having the power to give but not to receive; the power to issue commands but not to empathize; the power to act in the world, but not to be acted upon by the world. When God is imagined in this way, we have, as the philosopher Whitehead once put it, rendered unto God that which belongs to Caesar.
I'm with Whitehead. A God who lacks the power to receive, who doesn't need the world in any way, is too monarchical. He is a lot like Caesar but not much like Christ. When I say "God" in this column I mean the Christ-like God as opposed to the Caesar-like God. I mean the God who is present to each living being on our planet and throughout the universe with a tender care that nothing be lost. I mean the God who is filled by the universe, just as an embryo fills a womb, or stars fill a dark and starlit sky, or fish fill the sea. I mean the God whose face is compassion not power, whose body is the world itself. I mean the God who is an ocean. The God whom Christians see revealed, but not exhausted, in the healing ministry of Jesus.
Faith in God is trust in the availability of fresh possibilities. And life in God lies in being present to each situation in a kindly way, open to surprise, honest about suffering, and seeking wisdom for daily life. I saw this kind of faith in "Gensho." He did not have an image of God in whom he placed that faith. When God becomes an ocean, we must sit loose with images, too, lest we make idols of them. Still we can have faith in something more, maybe even someone more: someone who listens and seeks our well-being. This is a faith to which I am drawn, moment by moment, as I try to walk with Christ, with help from Zen.
Healing Zen
Buddhist Wisdom on Compassion, Caring,
and Caregiving — for Yourself and Others
By Ellen Birx
A nurturing book filled with wonderful stories,
sayings, and illustrative material.
Book Review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
reposted from Spirituality and Practice
Ellen Birx is a nurse and professor in the School of Nursing at Radford University, Virginia. She became a Zen teacher under Roshi Robert Kennedy and Roshi Bernie Glassman. The cofounder of the New River Zen Community, she frequently lectures to patients, Zen students, health professionals, and the general public. She is a wife, mother, and grandmother.
With great skill and finesse, Birx relates Zen to health and healing. She makes wonderful use of ancient stories, sayings, and verses from three classic koan collections. Whether you are struggling with a health crisis, recovering from one, or just trying to cope with the everyday challenges and crises of life, this astute work is bound to lift your spirits.
Simplicity is an essential part of Zen practice. Anyone who is familiar with Japanese flower arrangements or the care put into the preparation of a single cup of tea knows what she is talking about. Zen practice requires a certain awareness, which is brought to sitting, breathing, walking, and all aspects of living. Paying close attention to what is going on inside us and around us is crucial in our care-taking efforts. One of our favorite passages is this one:
"Zen Master Zuigan worked very hard every day to wake up and pay attention. Each day he called himself, 'Master!' He answered himself, 'Yes!' Then he called out to himself again, 'Thoroughly awake! Thoroughly awake!' He answered, 'Yes! Yes!' "
Those who are gravely ill are forced to come to terms with mystery. Birx quotes this Zen verse for them:
"Moonlight reflected in the bottom of the pond is bright in the sky:
The water reaching to the sky is totally clear and pure.
Though you scoop it up repeatedly and try to know it,
Vast, clarifying all, it remains unknown."
Not knowing is a liberating way of being. Birx refers also to the Zen saying, "Not knowing is the most intimate." This is a profound truth for all who work with the dying. Husbands and wives could also use this phrase as a mantra and derive great pleasure from it.
In a superb chapter titled "Acceptance: Things Just As They Are," the author notes that this spiritual practice frees us to be a healing presence in the world. It happens when we are responding to what lies in front of us and not trying to control the future. Sharing our whole self with others becomes possible when we have become intimate with ourselves. "Taped to my refrigerator is a quote by Maezumi Roshi that I cut out of a Zen Center of Los Angeles newsletter years ago. It means as much to me today as it did when I first read it. It says: 'In your daily life, please accept yourself as you are and your life as it is. Be intimate with yourself . . . I want you to take good advantage of every chance you have to become a really intimate being.' When you are intimate with yourself, you accept and get to know who you really are deep down. When you are intimate with others you feel free to share who you really are and to say what you think. Roshi Kennedy speaks of the beautiful undefended self." This is a truly nurturing book.
With great skill and finesse, Birx relates Zen to health and healing. She makes wonderful use of ancient stories, sayings, and verses from three classic koan collections. Whether you are struggling with a health crisis, recovering from one, or just trying to cope with the everyday challenges and crises of life, this astute work is bound to lift your spirits.
Simplicity is an essential part of Zen practice. Anyone who is familiar with Japanese flower arrangements or the care put into the preparation of a single cup of tea knows what she is talking about. Zen practice requires a certain awareness, which is brought to sitting, breathing, walking, and all aspects of living. Paying close attention to what is going on inside us and around us is crucial in our care-taking efforts. One of our favorite passages is this one:
"Zen Master Zuigan worked very hard every day to wake up and pay attention. Each day he called himself, 'Master!' He answered himself, 'Yes!' Then he called out to himself again, 'Thoroughly awake! Thoroughly awake!' He answered, 'Yes! Yes!' "
Those who are gravely ill are forced to come to terms with mystery. Birx quotes this Zen verse for them:
"Moonlight reflected in the bottom of the pond is bright in the sky:
The water reaching to the sky is totally clear and pure.
Though you scoop it up repeatedly and try to know it,
Vast, clarifying all, it remains unknown."
Not knowing is a liberating way of being. Birx refers also to the Zen saying, "Not knowing is the most intimate." This is a profound truth for all who work with the dying. Husbands and wives could also use this phrase as a mantra and derive great pleasure from it.
In a superb chapter titled "Acceptance: Things Just As They Are," the author notes that this spiritual practice frees us to be a healing presence in the world. It happens when we are responding to what lies in front of us and not trying to control the future. Sharing our whole self with others becomes possible when we have become intimate with ourselves. "Taped to my refrigerator is a quote by Maezumi Roshi that I cut out of a Zen Center of Los Angeles newsletter years ago. It means as much to me today as it did when I first read it. It says: 'In your daily life, please accept yourself as you are and your life as it is. Be intimate with yourself . . . I want you to take good advantage of every chance you have to become a really intimate being.' When you are intimate with yourself, you accept and get to know who you really are deep down. When you are intimate with others you feel free to share who you really are and to say what you think. Roshi Kennedy speaks of the beautiful undefended self." This is a truly nurturing book.
Excerpt from Healing Zen
"As you practice acceptance, you grow in your ability to face and fully accept people, circumstances, and things just as they are. Acceptance is not a passive resignation to circumstances and situations. Acceptance is not just making the best of a bad situation. It is an active presence to life just as it is. Acceptance means not pushing away, denying, or excluding things or circumstances that you do not like. It is the process of continually dropping expectations and judgments and accepting what is. Acceptance expands your vision, acknowledging all aspects of yourself and the world. Nothing is walled off. Total acceptance connects you with everything and helps you experience wholeness.
"Acceptance takes place in the present moment. You remain right here and now dealing with what is. Your energy is not going into thinking about what might have been or wishing things were different. Your energy is available to respond most effectively to the situation at hand. We generally don't have a problem accepting good things. It is the bad things that challenge our ability to accept things as they are. Acceptance is the process of transcending good and bad, of transcending duality. Acceptance is transformative and frees us to be a healing presence in the world."
"Acceptance takes place in the present moment. You remain right here and now dealing with what is. Your energy is not going into thinking about what might have been or wishing things were different. Your energy is available to respond most effectively to the situation at hand. We generally don't have a problem accepting good things. It is the bad things that challenge our ability to accept things as they are. Acceptance is the process of transcending good and bad, of transcending duality. Acceptance is transformative and frees us to be a healing presence in the world."
Process Philosophy as Wisdom Tradition
for being nourished by Christianity and Buddhism
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Awakening to Life As It Is
When I Fall Down I Get Up Again
A monk asks the Zen Master what it's like to be enlightened? The Master says: "Nothing special. It's just that when I fall down I get up again."
At each moment of our lives we are born again. Just as every day is a new day, so every moment is a new moment. Our selves are the moments of our lives. This fact does not contradict the fact of inter-being (pratitya-samutpada). No moment is an island. Each moment is a coming together - a concrescence - of the entire universe. We are these concrescences, these gatherings of many into one. Thus we are not simply ourselves; we are also the universe becoming itself through us. And so is everyone else. In the face of the other person the universe appears to us, not as a cosmic consciousness but rather as that person in his or her individuality. Jeff and Jane, Mei and Zhihe, Jose and Maria, Vladimir and Anna, Muhammad and Adiba -- all are the universe presenting itself.
All of these presentations take place in the only time we really have: the present moment. Now and then we have tastes of this. We feel the radical inter-being which is the essence of who we are and who others are. None of this belies our individuality. No two moments are same, and no two people are the same. Even as we are composed of other people and the more-than-human world, we are self-creative in how we respond. This self-creativity is our true self. "When I fall down I get up again."
- Jay McDaniel
Awaken to Life as It Is |
Don't Explain Too Clearly |
The Present is Holy Ground
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. No more deadly harm can be done to young minds than by depreciation of the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.
- Alfred North Whitehead, Aims of Education
More in Open Horizons on Buddhism
and Buddhist-Christian Practice
- John Cobb on Vedanta and Buddhism
- The Perfection of Love: John Cobb on what Christians can learn from Buddhism
- The Buddhist Ground of the Whiteheadian God: Thomas JJ Altizer
- Don't Bow: Grace Jill Schireson
- Tibetan Buddhism in Process Perspective
- All is Void and there is no Buddha
- Buddhism Resource Page
- Whitehead and Zen Buddhism
- Why Christians Turn to Buddhism: Six Reasons
- Imagining a Methodist Buddhist
- Becoming: East and West
- Can a Christian Be a Buddhist, Too?
- On Being English Teacher for a Zen Master
- Whitehead and Chinese Philosophy
- Process Theology and the Tibetan Book of the Dead: Songs from the Bardo
- Becoming a Drop of Kindness: Yungchen Lhamo, Tibetan Buddhism, and Whitehead
- When I Fall Down I Get Up Again: Short Reflections on Whitehead and Zen