The Ambiguity of Christian Zen

Is the practice of Christian Zen a step towards Christ or away from him? An enrichment or a distraction? 

This past week I participated, by Zoom, in a Zen "sitting" which honored a dear friend who recently passed away. Self-consciously Irish Catholic, Rosemary practiced her faith intermittently, but for decades zealously participated in the Zendo: working hard to organize it, participate daily, attend many retreats and nourish rich friendships. She had a curious, intelligent mind and memory; she was an encyclopedia of history and geography. But she couldn't explain Christian Zen. In part that is due to the nature of the thing: Zen is non-conceptual and anti-intellectual; it does not articulate truths or dogmas; it aspires to an "enlightenment" that is non-cognitive, mystical, intuitive. But in her case she suffered a deeper, personal wound: due to her parents' divorce, she attended Catholic boarding schools in the 1950s. She craved her mother and was hurt by Catholic teaching on divorce. She never recovered from that. As bright and experienced as she was, she suffered a deep incapacity to grasp the Catholic faith in its childlike simplicity. In that she perhaps resembles many of her fellow Zen practitioners: a restless, searching soul, allergic to the Catholic faith in some mysterious way.

I personally lack any expertise in or familiarity with Christian Zen. I enjoyed in college a course on "Oriental Philosophies" with an astute scholar from nearby evangelical Wheaton College, Illinois. At the time I was also reading Gilson and Maritain: I saw the sharp contrast between classic Catholicism and the Eastern religions and philosophies. I retained an urgent desire to go deeper into my own faith, but little interest in the alternatives. I was disappointed, for example, to see Thomas Merton, the great Catholic apologist of the 1950s, be distracted from his monastic vocation into the Catholic Left and dialogue with the East. Merton is perhaps also exemplary of the Zen Christian: sublimely gifted and insightful, he was a searching, restless spirit, incapable of rest and contentment in the faith and his vocation as given.

Christian Zen aspires to some synthesis of the two: it alleges that Zen practice does not contradict the Gospel, but can enhance one's engagement with it. So, I was curious to see if Christian truth was present in the meeting. I did not find much.

Demographics

Located in NYC and Jersey City, this community was what you would expect: older (mostly boomers), white (in the non-pejorative, non-ideological sense), educated, professional, affluent, liberal, and mostly women. {Aside: that last may have something to do with the Roshi: a tall, handsome, gracious, confident, charming, PhD in both theology and psychology,  nonagenarian Jesuit.} Many were raised Catholic. A small group retain Catholic zeal, observance and piety. More seemed to have replaced the practice of Catholicism with Zen mediation and community.

Catholicism and Zen: Incommensurate, Not Directly Contradictory

Catholic magisterium has been fairly gentle with Christian Zen. There has been no clear prohibition or condemnation to my knowledge. A 1989  Vatican document from then-Cardinal Ratzinger, with the approval of Pope John Paul II, warned about confusion and dangers. But it did allow for dialogue and some prudent use of meditation techniques and the  like.

This contrasts, sharply, with the way the Church handles competitive faiths: Islam, Mormonism, Marxism, Cultural Liberalism, radical Latin Mass traditionalists, and so forth. Zen is an entirely different thing. It is not a philosophy or religion in the Western sense. Mohammad, Luther, Joseph Smith, Karl Marx were all Christian heretics: they developed out of Christianity, but accentuated and denied aspects so as to propose an alternate faith. But Zen is something altogether different. It does not propose an intellectual interpretation of reality. It does not deny or affirm God, Jesus as Lord and Savior, our Bible, papal infallibility, natural law, the unitive/procreative nature of sexuality, or anything else in our faith. Zen theoretically can coexist with Christianity since it does not directly compete. It is a different game entirely. 

We see then that one might conceivably, without explicit self-contradiction, with caution, practice Catholicism and and some form of Zen. Thus the light approach of the Vatican. However, realistically, the two are incommensurate, not really compatible, if practiced with integrity.

Buddhism is an alternate path of life, an understanding of reality, a practice. Pursued in any depth and consistency, it leads not to the Person of Jesus Christ, but in a different, obscure direction.

 Non-Theistic

Zen does not cognitively assert the existence of a supreme, absolute Creator. It is not assertively-lucidly- militantly atheistic in the manner of Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and our Western masters of suspicion. It is probably closer to what we call pantheism or panentheism. God is for Zen the "null curriculum"...not mentioned one way or the other. In that way it is implicitly but really a form of unbelief as it offers a path to meaning devoid of God. The Buberian I-Thou that is the heart of Revealed religion is absent, and replaced by something else.

Anthropology: No Self, No Freedom, No Sin, No Salvation

Zen does not offer salvation as it does not believe in sin. It offers something else: release from suffering into peace by way of "Enlightenment" as freedom from the illusions of an autonomous Self. Suffering is an illusion because the Self is an illusion. Meditation leads to release from this. And it discards the entire  Catholic anthropology of the person as a image of God with freedom, intellect, will, and purpose.

No Revelation, No Event, No History

Catholicism is the reception, contemplation, and interiorization of a Revelation given over the centuries but culminating in Jesus. Zen knows no such thing. Rather the goal seems to be release from passions, concepts, aspirations.

Catholicism is eventful: it centers in the Encounter with Jesus Christ which saves us from sin. Zen knows no such thing. The "retreat" experience is different for the two. For Catholic many retreats resemble Cursillo in which there is a strong proclamation of the love of Christ in a way to radically change the lives of those listening. In the tradition of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, the retreatant is lead through particular meditations to an encounter with God's love that leads often to some form of life decision. By contrast, Zen practitioners can go to countless retreats but never experience a life-changing conversion, encounter or call. One gets the impression of a "groundhog day pattern": nothing new happens, but the pattern is repeated in accord with the cyclical nature of primitive religions.

History, salvation history, is the essence of Judaism and Christianity. God enters history; everything changes; we are on a journey to the Kingdom of God. Zen seems to be an escape from history and change into some state of non-binary tranquility. 

Content of Meditation

As we "sat" in silence, I kept wondering: "What is everyone thinking?" There was no content offered. In Christian meditation we focus on some aspect of life in Christ: events or teachings from Jesus himself or his saints. My understanding of Zen is that it observes, tolerates and detaches from the flow of thoughts and feelings. The end state is not clear. No external, objective gift is received. The goal is release from "self" but there is no one to effect that. Ratzinger has warned of a privatization, an enclosure of the self within itself. He spoke of an "auto-eroticism." It is puzzling: escape from the Self remains enclosed within that very Self. This is not promising from a perspective that looks for the self to transcend  in love for the Other, the Binary, for God and neighbor.

Broader Cultural Consequences

The serious, systematic practice of Christian Zen engages a very minute, niche demographic. As such it is not a prime pastoral concern of the Church. But Ratzinger said that a version of such may surpass Marxism as an alternative to Christianity. This would be broader, popular, less particular currents of spirituality that are very influential in informal, non-institutional ways.

We might call this: Therapeutic, Moralistic Pantheism. Zen aligns well with the triumph of the therapeutic: both focus on the Self. As there is no transcendence in God or the afterlife, there is concern for wholeness here and now. I would venture that many American practitioners of Christian Zen simultaneously are in private therapy. 

The goal of Zen is a moralism, similar to the Christian, of compassion and kindness, for the suffering. This is its most potent connection with Catholicism. But the mercy does not flow from a higher, supernatural source. Rather, it is an enlightened empathy, a sense of harmony, an overcoming of delusional self interests and a mystical communion with all of life.

Pantheism is not an organized religion in America, but is widely pervasive and influential. For example, Paul Vitz showed that lucid atheism is largely a male position associated with reaction against the father. Women, by contrast, lean less into assertive atheism than a pantheism that aligns well with radical feminism, eco-ideology, and nature mysticism.

Christian Zen may then be a clear, defined expression of a far broader, informal, influential, populist piety.

Conclusion

My observation: a consistent, vigorous observance of Catholicism and Christian Zen is an exception, an outlier, an eccentricity. More broadly, Christian Zen is a replacement, an alternative. It attracts a searching soul: sensitive, desirous of more, altruistic, possibly alienated from her childhood faith.  Christian Zen seems to be detached and ultimately distracted from the texts, sacraments, icons and practices that mediate our faith. 

It contrasts sharply with 12-step practices of AA which draw from our Christian legacy and pull in the same direction.  

It aligns with other dominant currents of middle class spirituality: individualism, the therapeutic, feminism, environmentalism, cultural and political liberalism, and the cosmopolitan sophistication of the upper echelons.

The question it raises is one that has haunted me since my youth: why is it that so many...intelligent, well motivated, good people...lack faith? We know that our faith is a gift from God; it is not merited or earned in any way. But why is it that so many have not received this gift? This is a Mystery...a sad and sobering Mystery! No simple answer presents itself.