Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place of Zen in Christian Life

In sum, Father Kennedy convincingly argues that the teachings and practices of Zen can help Christians to more deeply appreciate their own traditions, beliefs and practices, especially contemplation, prayer and social outreach. He is not the first person to make this claim; Fr. Thomas Merton, the Cistercian monk and writer from the 50s and 60s wrote quite a bit in the same vein. But Kennedy belongs to the Jesuits, who have a long institutional history of interaction with Japan and its Zen tradition. Unlike Merton, Kennedy spent time in Japan, studied there under a roshi, continued his Zen involvement in the United States, and thus become a roshi himself. Merton was an interested Zen observer; Kennedy is a part of Zen itself.Therefore, Kennedy has much more at his disposal to build bridges across the divide that separates these two very different traditions. Merton himself said that comparing Christianity with Zen was like "trying to compare mathematics and tennis". But Kennedy finds ways to establish common ground. One of his most powerful techniques is the use of literature and poetry, which he obviously loves.There are places in the book where Kennedy stretches things, and more often it is the Christian and Biblical teachings that are flexed rather than Zen. Kennedy strongly defends the esoteric, obscure, and sometimes shocking words that teachers proffer as Zen wisdom. He can engage in abstract and seemingly profound Buddhist word-games just as well as Dogen once did, or any of Dogen’s successors can do today. E.g.:All reality is produced by the interplay of cause and effect and as soon as the conditioning causes are exhausted, the effects vanish away. But we must not think there is something that will vanish away. Rather, at every moment, there is neither self nor other. The whole phenomenon world that delights or frightens us is wholly empty.Ah, yea, OK, got it. Kennedy also tells us about "dharma combat", another form of word-play where complex unapparent meanings are given to plain language. This is certainly of interest, but how much will this help a mid-week Lenten discussion group seeking to deepen their faith at a church in Arkansas or Omaha?At another point in the book, Kennedy defends the great wisdom of an ancient koan involving a Zen Master who took a knife and cut off the finger of a young boy who dared to mimic his gestures. Kennedy tries to convince us this wasn't all that different from when Jesus advised his followers to cut their hands off if those hands would cause them to be condemned to hell. (I can't help but paraphrase the argument that gun rights advocates often make, i.e. it isn't hands that sin, it's people who sin; but perhaps Jesus supports gun-control advocates, i.e. if hands help people to gravely sin, then restrict or ban them!).Kennedy concludes his discussion of this koan by saying "What a mercy that the Master cut off the boy's finger . . . the boy lost his finger but found his own true self". I'm not sure what kind of "cruel to be kind" mercy this is – but OK, Kennedy wrote this in 1994 as a younger man, and perhaps he would no longer word it quite that way. However, as to the koan and how it relates to Christianity: Jesus left it to us to decide what to do with our sinning hands; whereas the Zen Master took the fate of the boy's finger into his own hands!An interested Christian reader will not learn much about her or his own tradition from Father Kennedy, but they will experience a lot of Zen teaching. I have been involved with a Zen sangha for about a decade (full disclosure, this sangha has indirect ties with Kennedy and his own Zen sangha), and I can testify that this book gives you a good and representative sampling of what you hear and read over time as a Zen student, whether aspiring or complacent (admittedly, I have become more the latter than the former). And yes, much Zen wisdom is conveyed through "shock" techniques meant to mentally disorient the student.Nonetheless, I believe that most readers can overlook Kennedy's occasional enthusiasm for Zen double-speak; after all, he needs to maintain "cred" as a lineaged and respected Zen teacher. What is more important and valuable is that Kennedy can indeed help the sincere Christian to get more out of what they already know about Christianity, through the "fresh perspective" that eastern-oriented Zen thinking can sometimes provide (so long as you don't get too dizzy from being put off-balance so often).However, I will point out that Kennedy goes out of his way in the book to minimize the real and significant differences between Buddhist-based spiritual wisdom traditions and western-oriented theistic religion. And he fails to even mention what I believe is a very interesting converse to his own main theme: if the Zen Buddhist can help the Christian theist to better appreciate and experience her or his own faith, then perhaps the Christian can also help the Buddhist to more fully realize their own quest for a life grounded in ultimate wisdom.It seems to me that too many Christians either condemn Buddhism as an inferior and incomplete guide to human purpose, and thus they seek to convert its masses to Christ; or, they embrace Buddhism as the magic potion that can fill the gaps in their own spiritual grounding and make them better followers of Christ. Very few of the ecumenical faction ask if perhaps Christianity could also help to fill some gaps in the Buddha world, as to help that tradition address some topics that they could do a better job with.Such as human relationship. At one point in the book, Kennedy puts on his Zen robes and looks down upon "American concerns with relationships, love, and friendship". But throughout the book, Kennedy himself is grasping at the nature of human relationship, seeking to build sturdy foundations for his bridge from east to west. Kennedy deals with the paradoxical Zen teachings on self and no-self by explaining that "our 'selves' are constituted by our relationships". At many points in his book, Kennedy explains that we have no independent existence (which the Buddhists agree with), and that we are best defined and made real by the web of our relationships.But those relationships are ever changing and impermanent, something that the Buddhists emphasize. To the degree that we appear to possess self-unity, it is only "accidental" (as Kennedy says, in his Zen Roshi role). Ultimately, our existence, perhaps all physical existence, can be seen as a hall of mirrors. Buddhism tells us that every phenomenon is subject to dependent origination, i.e. nothing exists independently, there is no ultimate grounding. For the Buddhist, dependent origination leads to a great void of existential emptiness.And yet, in this book, Kennedy (in his Father Kennedy role) stops well before this precipice. He does this by infusing our illusory relationship webs with a kind of sinew, a real source of grounding. A grounding in God. God is the ontological anchor that Kennedy offers. The Bible says that God is love. And love is the ideal, ultimate form of relationship. So God is inherently relationship, the truest grounding of relationship. Beyond that, God is mysterious and ineffable, just as mysterious and ineffable as the main Buddhist anchor, i.e. nirvana.The unbridged gap between east and west is the difference between God and nirvana. The western theistic traditions usually attribute human-like qualities to God; e.g. sentience, love, feeling, hearing, sensing, and in some ways, even speaking. These are all essential to our earthly relationships, and thus we suspect that they must also be fundamental to God. We value and treasure these things. Our best wisdom tells us that these are more valuable than anything else, better than gold, better than fortune, better than fame, better than earthly beauty. However, when they go wrong or are absent, they hurt us the deepest. And attributing elaborate human-like qualities to God has caused a lot of distortions and illusions, even wars and disasters. Our desire for an imminent God has paradoxically caused much “suffering”, as the Buddhists would say.And Buddhism, by insulating its nirvana from any human-like qualities, has historically avoided many of these wars and disasters (not that Buddhism has been immune to war; even today there are Buddhists who fire shots in anger). By insulating nirvana from human desire, Buddhists claim to end suffering. In America, Buddhism often offers emotional harbor to those who have been hurt and overwhelmed by relationships gone terribly wrong. Including bad relationships with the people and institutions of the Christian churches. Kennedy’s own Catholic Church has still not yet fully reckoned with the magnitude of suffering that many of its priests had imposed upon vulnerable members of the laity over the past 40 years.And yet, in the end, something seems to be missing. Many western Zen teachers are going out of their way to integrate modern thinking and guidance about human relationships into Zen practice. Perhaps it is no coincidence that many modern Zen teachers -- yes, including Father Kennedy -- are practicing psychologists or psycho therapists.So, perhaps the "American concern with relationships, love, and friendship" is already being used by Americans to build a better Zen. But I believe that the concerns of sincere Christians (and Jews and Islam) regarding the ontological reality of love-relationship in God should also be a part of this process. Father Kennedy has helped to build a bridge; now it's time to make sure that the lanes on it run both ways!PS, let me offer one clarification and one addendum to my little essay here. To clarify, I am not advocating any position on gun control in my little aside about Jesus and his sermon about cutting off the sinning hand. I'm just pondering the parallels between an ancient teaching and the various positions being taken in a modern social issue. As to the addendum – I forgot to mention the famous Buddhist writer who has pondered the importance of Christian teachings on love, i.e. the venerable Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. So, there already may be some “two way traffic” on the Buddhist-Christian bridge!

I have been practicing zen for a while now in the tradition of Roshi Kennedy, and am a contemplative for most of my life, mostly in the Christian tradition. But Christian prayer used to elude me until I found zen. Zen teachers can be found who are nondenominational-- and this is what Roshi/Father Kennedy speaks to--how Christian contemplative prayer and zen practice merge in emptying out so that God can enter. But zen practice is a little "sharper" I found and can help more with emptying and opening to the Absolute or almighty God. However, this book is very valuable for non Christians too in that it is written in a clear and direct way about zen practice. This book does not teach you zen practice. Other books or zen practice centers can do that. Just very powerful, on my second read.

One of the finest books I have read to understand the connection. Kennedy roshi has really brought Zen to the Christian spiritual seeker.

Good book on the commonality of spiritual practice, rather than focusing on the differences between religious traditions. This is my second copy, as I lent one out, and it never came back. Father Kennedy is a teacher in the lineage of Maezumi Roshi.

It is a beautifully written work which points to ways in which Buddhism can add flavor to Christian life. Kennedy uses a fine selection of both Eastern and Western literary work to illustrate his points. It is an excellent read for anyone curious about the Buddhist tradition. Kennedy is a Jesuit and also a Zen master and therefore is very knowledgable about both ways of life and how they can complement each other. Highly recommended!!PETER KIMBIS

Life changing

Great read!

Well written. Clear account of Zen and Christianity. If you're a contemplative soul, this is a must read. The author shares keen insight into the place of Zen in Christian life.

A good introduction to Zazen meditation