Christian Zen?

A dear friend says she found her way back to the Church through the practice of Christian Zen so I listened respectfully and attentively to “Jesus and Buddha: Practicing across Traditions,” a DVD of presentations by Fr. Robert Kennedy, SJ, Chung Hyun Kyung, and Paul Knitter. My reservations about Christian Zen were intensified. The claim, of course, is that Zen is itself compatible with our faith because it is not itself a competing system of dogma; rather, it is a practice and a way of seeing and knowing that is beyond our theological or cognitive thoughts. What I heard, however, was surely mysticism but by no means an irrationalism; rather an affirmation of a coherent system of interlocking truths…in other words, a real philosophy of life or religion. And these I found to be alternatives to and incompatible with Christian beliefs…albeit in a gentle, non-direct manner. Questions for Christian Zen: 1. Do you have the faith of a child? Christian faith, in the persons of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, is first of all childlike: profoundly analogous to the trust of a child in a good father. A common refrain of the practitioners was the disparagement of “a Santa Clause figure” or “god as a being up in the sky next to other beings.” The sense conveyed by the presenters is that each had lost childish faith, been in some way “scandalized,” but not been graced with a mature but childlike faith in the person(s) of God in the way of our saints. 2. Creator/creature? The doctrine of creation is absolutely the foundation of our faith. We know, first of all, with 12-steppers, that “there is a God and it’s not me!” This is basic! I am not God; but I am created and later redeemed and destined for eternal glory by a God out of His generous, abundant love. In Zen there is no talk of God; He is their “null curriculum.” Instead, there is talk of being “one with all being.” To me it is clearly pantheism, even if they refuse to acknowledge it. By neglect if not by assertion, there is a denial of a transcendent God and a re-direction to seek release from the false self and union with “all” as the enlightened path. 3. Time and history? Christianity is all about remembering and hope. The present, paradigmatically in the Eucharist, is always a remembering of the past actions of God, in time and history, and a hope in God, eventually an eternity in heaven. Zen seems to have no use for the past or the future but seeks abandon to the “NOW.” With John Lennon they prefer to “imagine there’s no heaven.” Again: there is no explicit rejection of Christian eschatology; rather an intentional glance away into a mystified “NOW.” Again, the “null curriculum,” although politely and graciously. 4. What’s the problem: sin or delusion? For the Christian THE problem is sin: a deliberate, decisive decision of the will to prefer something to God. Sin is personal above all else: a rejection of God’s overtures of love, like the spurning of a Lover. It is distrust and unbelief; the refusal to receive, surrender, and obey; the decision to take control of life and become my own god. Zen seems indifferent to sin. Rather it identifies false consciousness as the problem and enlightenment as the solution. This enlightenment is a mystical state of union with Being, a release from the illusions of the “false self” into a state of peace. 5. Who is Jesus Christ? The Zen practitioner speaks of Christ but this seems not to be the actual man Jesus who agonized and was tortured and murdered on that cross on that hill. “Christ” becomes a word suggesting a state of enlightenment, peace and release. For us, on the other hand, Jesus Christ is the man on the cross. And we all stand level before Him: we are either killing Him, again and again, or we are repenting. Zen does not deal with repentance and conversion, but with enlightenment; and they are NOT the same thing. 6. Word and words. Ours is a religion of The Word: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Pope Benedict is one of many who have helped us to see that the Hellenic concept of “logos” as reason, reality, truth was providentially available for St. John and the Fathers as they understood the Mystery of Christ as Logos, combining the Hellenic wonder before Truth with the Hebraic sense of God’s Word as dynamic, creative, powerful, fruitful, and merciful. For us then, all our words and thoughts and theories need to somehow lead to and spring from our communion with The Word. By contrast, Zen seems tired of words as empty, ephemeral, and deceptive. And so, rather than seeking to be penetrated by the Word and all words that flow from Him, they seek release into “wordlessness.” 7. Prayer or Meditation? For us prayer is always an interchange with a Person: some kind of dialogue between the I and the Thou, be it petition, intercession, thanksgiving, praise, meditation or the silent and loving glance of contemplation. Christian meditation (for example, many of the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola) is attention to a specific text or scene/drama from salvation history in order to pierce beneath the concrete details to the deeper Mystery manifest in the word or actions or image. Zen seems to mean something different: a technique to empty the mind of images and distractions to arrive at a state of peaceful emptiness. What that is I don’t know! It sounds more iconoclastic than iconic! 8. The eternal soul or the real self? Our belief is simple and clear: each of us is created out of nothing as an eternal (bodied) soul destined for an eternity of participation in the life of the Trinity. Zen talks about the false self (egotism, anger, desires, etc) in contrast with the True Self but what the latter is remains obscure. It is a state of peace, of dissolution of the false self, and of union with All but not God as we understand. 9. What is desire? Zen seeks release from desire as delusion and the root of suffering. For us it is different: we are created to desire…to desire God and to desire all that is true and good and beautiful. For us the problem is not desire: our very substance is the Eros desire for God; and (again Pope Benedict instructs us) God Himself is Eros as desire for us (understood with all the safeguards of analogy). We seek to direct, sublimate and eventually sanctify our desire. 10. Holiness? Zen has a pronounced sense of reverence for life and for Mystery. But this is not “holiness” as we know it. Holiness applies only to God Himself and by extension to the things of God: Moses before the burning bush; Jesus transfigured, talking with Moses and Elijah before Peter, James and John. Holiness is a Mystery of “otherness”…of goodness beyond goodness as we know it in reality as we know it. And so, to become holy is to be set aside, to separate from life as we know it in order to be in union with a higher life, supernatural life. Zen seems to have no use for the supernatural or for holiness in this sense. Yet, it is the heart of our faith. 11. What about the basics like the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Holy Spirit? Perhaps the worst aspect of Christian Zen is that it uses words precious to us with a different meaning. For example, there is much talk about the Spirit in a way that sounds like Christianity. But for us the Holy Spirit is the one that affirms that God has come in the flesh and is the Spirit of Love between the Father and the Son. Zen has no mention of “in the flesh” or the Trinity except in that they are redefined as alternate, pantheistic realities. 12. Esoteric? With this we return to our first concern: the Gospel is for the childlike, the simple, and especially the poor. Notice that Marian apparitions are always to poor children. Zen, as practiced in our culture, seems to be the practice of an elite, mostly highly educated and sophisticated people who are searching for truth and meaning because they lack the “faith of children.” Zen is gentle and passive. Unlike other versions of liberal Christianity that draw from feminism, Marx, Freud or Nietzsche, it can coexist in Catholicism because it lacks the fierce aggressiveness against our faith. On the down side it therefore lacks martial, passionate, masculine zeal. I am not a professional theologian but I have spent a lifetime trying to hear the voice of Christ in His Church. What I heard in these presentations was reverent, gentle, gracious, and peaceful…admirable in many ways. But I did not hear the voice of my Lord.