Zen and The Bible

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Shakuhachi

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“Be Still and Know: Zen and the Bible” by Ruben Habito

I am in a very good book discussion group on this led by a Methodist philosophy professor. We were talking about permanence and impermanence. Of course that is the crucial difference between Christianity and. Buddhism. There are a lot of good practical habits we can share with Buddhism. Even when it comes to our outlook on the nature of the phenomenal world. It all changes so the Buddhist teaching on impermanence has value. But the Buddha and thus Buddhism did not recognize that which is permanent.

And maybe that is a matter of faith. But when it comes to the experience of mystics, could it be their experience is the same but they interpret it differently? What a saint interprets as union a Buddhist interprets as Nirvana. Both take one outside the normal parameters of self, to something unspeakable.
 
Nirvana is a concept.

Enlightenment, as the Buddhists put it, can be simply perception/realization - an epiphany (in its non-religious sense). Because the process of enlightenment is too broad a term encompassing countless steps.

Perhaps, at this point, one should mention the key concept of “Satori” particular to Zen. As an experience of conversion.

However !!! The main issue, in those steps of enlightenment, is that they are mostly without a clear-cut moral code (in the Judaeo-Christian sense of the term.) But what is more, they are without the person of Christ.

Now, regarding your question:
Shakuhachi said:
But when it comes to the experience of mystics, could it be their experience is the same but they interpret it differently?
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The term Mysticism (Mystical Experience is what makes a Mystic) should first be defined as contact with the divine. An experience of contact with the divine.

In the name of good method: God being omnipresent and omnipotent can act on any human, on their hearts and their conscience, through the Holy Spirit. Thus, you can distinguish the Holy Spirit by its fruit.

Now, it’s defined humans are able to understand some of the Divine Nature and Divine law through their own reason. However, General Revelation couldn’t be attained through our own reason, the clear-cut General Revelation could only be given by God and God cannot deceive us or contradict Himself.

Thus, being endowed both of General Revelation and knowledge of the Holy Spirit, you can to some extent separate what is in accordance and in contradiction with Divine Revelation. Because, the difference between the catholic mystics and mystics not catholic, is that the latter weren’t based on a clear-cut theological system, thus you should be able to see what part of their experience is in contradiction with God’s revelation and what part is in accordance with God’s revelation. In what part they were right in their interpretation and in what part they erred in their reason.

And what part was plausibly a mystic experience, and what part could not have come of God.
 
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@Shakuhachi very good question BTW. Mystical Theology has tons of method to it.
 
There’s a Jesuit priest, in good standing to my knowledge, who is also a “Zen Master”.
 
But isn’t the pinnacle of Buddhism to empty yourself of all desire, whereas the pinnacle of Christianity is to desire God with your whole heart and soul? Buddhism is about emptying yourself, and Christianity is about filling your soul with God? etc.
 
But if you have to empty yourself of lower self (“deny yourself”) to be filled with Christ, I think it come to interpretation.
 
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Well Buddhism does have the 8 fold noble path (or whatever it is called) that is a moral code Christians can welcome. On the question of emptiness just asked, in the mystical depths I think it can be one and the same as fullness.

Did God touch the Buddha and guide him befor Christ? But he did not interpret it “personally” as Moses or Abraham or one of the prophets even though he came from Hindu culture that had a concept of a personal God…even though it also had impersonal Brahman.

I don’t know. From our perspective the Buddha may have had enlightenment but it was not total since it lacked the main and most important enlightenment…God is a Person.
 
We filter everything through our limited human faculties. Conversely, our human faculties are often deeper than we realize.

The concept of Zen has numerous flaws that conflict with revealed truth and natural law as understood by the church. It is possible, however, that they have uncovered natural ways to relax the mind that produce the so-called Zen state.

I also think it is likely that God himself gave us this zen-like state mental faculty for the benefit of Saints and Catholic mystics to spread the faith.
 
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Shakuhachi said:
Well Buddhism does have the 8 fold noble path (or whatever it is called) that is a moral code Christians can welcome.
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The few Buddhists I met I liked. They left an overwhelmingly positive impression on me. They were, simply, LOVELY !! (some were “read”, others not much, however they practiced and believed. If anything, I lack negative examples.)
Shakuhachi said:
On the question of emptiness just asked, in the mystical depths I think it can be one and the same as fullness.
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From the Buddhists I met, they did attain themselves. Now comes a dangerous part: did they attain insight into their “nature” or into “divine nature”. I’m afraid to say: a significant part of their “attainment” was of their nature - but also of sanctity, as defined in catholic faith, through their own means and likely God’s grace.

The “8 fold path” is only partial if compared with the catholic moral system - in its theoretical dimensions (you’d have to unfold it explicitly to allow a one-to-one mapping). Take any function or algorithm, if it “loses” information it’s called “not sound” in the mathematical sense that it isn’t invertible Bijection.

Again, one of the most powerful aspects -that again&again, strikes me- when looking at Buddhism, is their poetics. (Which, in some traditions, wouldn’t lend itself to the -sometimes overwhelming- explicit and analytic exposition of the catholic faith - which is entirely public, and not subject to pursuit of a specific path.)
Shakuhachi said:
Did God touch the Buddha and guide him befor Christ?
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A question I’ve asked myself thousands of times.

As you know @Shakuhachi, we don’t have first accounts of Buddha’s life. At best we’d have an untainted oral/practiced tradition that was likely written centuries after his death.

However, (here comes 1 strong argument !!): The Buddha had fathered a child at one point in his life. And, on his path to enlightenment, abandoned that child and the child’s mother. Here, I, personally, find an incompatibility with the catholic faith that can’t be harmonized or the Buddha’s example reconciled with the Holy Spirit, this casts reexamination of what enlightenment the Buddha had drawn at that point. -So, too, because I lack any example of a catholic mystic having done so.

The homologies, between Buddhism and Christianity’s Mystics can hardly be resolved in terms of phenomenology. Since you cite OT prophets, we should distinguish they had varying degrees and natures in their (office of) prophethood. There were good reason for why the Holy Spirit stopped Paul from going into Asia in the book of Acts…

However, it’s with saint Paul himself, that I personally, find the start of formal Christian Mysticism in its modern post-Pentecostes from. The inauguration of Christian Mysticism is -for me, without a doubt- the words of Christ in the Gospels. Since, there couldn’t have been a fullness to mysticism before the coming of the Holy Spirit.

God bless.
 
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Hey @Shakuhachi,

Still thinking about it. A guy also needs hyper-empirical data !!! Cause without empiricism it’s all conceptual.

So…Let’s take concrete examples of Zen Buddhism. Some of the samurai accounts are full of epiphany and uninterrupted Zen (by uninterrupted, I do mean uninterrupted. They slept in Zen, and sleeping was just a furthering of their daily mushin.)

Let’s take a beloved pop figure - who’s works are of far reaching effect to our day: Morihei Ueshiba. I suppose that in his youth derailing trains somewhere in Manchuria shouldn’t be downplayed. That he belonged to a specific sect and his writings are held as farfetched incomprehensible outside an extremely specific reading and context. And hearing a recording of him the man didn’t sound exactly saintly.

On the same note, there’s countless recounts of epiphany and non-stop zen from all sorts of samurais who were anything but moral in their morals, principles, code and conduct.

Then, we could (and should) pursue the above line of analyses to any specific from of Buddhism at any one given place or time. From the accounts of the first missionaries reaching Bhutan or Nepal to the contemporary minor sects (of all kinds, good or bad) that derive in one form or another from Buddhism.

So. The mainstay isn’t their mysticism, their method, or their epiphanies. It’s who they are concretely!!

And, from my personal experience: don’t fall in love with sensible graces you are sent, but with the author of the graces who is Christ.
 
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To complicate things further:

You could turn the principle of analyses on its head. And search for demonic signs in the concrete manifestations of Zen. The devil loves nothing better than masking himself as an angel of light.
 
Shakuhachi said:
Did God touch the Buddha and guide him befor Christ?
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I’m sure God touched a lot of people all over the world and guided them before Christ. We just had a discussion about how Native American spirituality, as it evolved before Europeans showed up and started Christianizing the tribes, seemed to have a cognizance of God the Father and his presence in nature and in people’s lives.

The Jewish people may have been the chosen ones to have the special and closest relationship with God, but I don’t think God just left every other seeking, thoughtful person in the world in the dark for thousands of years. Those who went looking for God could get some impression of him. But it was likely an incomplete impression, like the story of blind men who never saw or had past knowledge of elephants being placed in a room with an elephant. They would feel parts of an elephant and make judgments based on their limited perception as to what an elephant was like. People were just feeling their way in the dark until Christ, the Light of the World, arrived.
 
Words like “zen” and “karma” have made their way into our everyday language, and have changed somewhat in the process.
You hear people say “zen” for calmly accepting what is going on around you, similar to what we think of as stoic.
You hear people say “karma”, meaning “what goes around comes around”.

So taken with this in mind, you can sorta say that these concepts are found in the Bible, and you’d sorta be correct.

But in fact, these words mean something different to a Buddhist. The concepts are a lot more complicated, and come from a different worldview, one where there may or may not be an Almighty Creator-God, and suffering is an evil to be avoided by detachment.
 
I think based on the OP’s past posts and the fact that he is in a book discussion group on this topic, he is a little deeper into this subject than just using “zen” or “karma” in casual conversation.
 
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Great comments everyone. BTW, most people in the group know nothing about Buddhism and came out of curiosity. The philosophy professor leader is well versed and doing a good job of leading discussion. I think all humans are created with a “transcendent potency or dynamic” but culture gives it so many different frameworks. There is a lot I like about Zen. There is a purity to it and a lot we as Catholics can gain from it. But I cant get past the impersonal goal. And yet it makes me ask myself, do I really encounter a personal God? or is it my expectation, my programmed interpretation, my projected desire? Did the Buddha see through all that?

And that takes us to Jesus and his relationship with the Father, the source of our being that HE interpreted as Father and yet ONE with that Highest Good. I like Zen but find it ultimately, personally ungratifying.

The book takes select passages from the Bible and interprets them with a Zen perspective.
 
I like the Zen moral code and their general approach to life, keeping in mind that my exposure to it has primarily been through reading a couple of books when I was young and a lot of pop culture (kung fu, martial arts masters, Todd Rundgren when he was in his Zen phase). I know one guy from my hometown who actually entered a Zen monastery and another guy I know has a Buddhist wife.

But like you I do not think it’s much of a goal to just meditate yourself into complete detachment. It frankly always struck me as boring. The Catholic approach to the same type meditation, where you are striving to build both your own relationship with God and to help the world to some extent as it’s a form of prayer, is much more appealing to me.
 
adgloriam said:
However, (here comes 1 strong argument !!) : The Buddha had fathered a child at one point in his life. And, on his path to enlightenment, abandoned that child and the child’s mother . Here, I, personally, find an incompatibility with the catholic faith that can’t be harmonized or the Buddha’s example reconciled with the Holy Spirit, this casts reexamination of what enlightenment the Buddha had drawn at that point. -So, too, because I lack any example of a catholic mystic having done so.
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True, even if he made provisions, it is still abandonment.

And yet in that culture renunciation is taken to extremes. Have you seen this on Netflix? Naga: The Immortal Yogi?

https://www.netflix.com/title/80168052

I loved Yoga: Architecture of Peace.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80187188
 
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