Today is Orthodox Easter. Blessings on all those who observe the holy day.
And I am in Toledo with the Great Heartland Zen Buddhist temple which just celebrated the dedication of its new temple building. A very interesting marker in our Western Zen communities, where if a building is owned it is mostly repurposed from some other use. I recall, for instance, the rise of the “barn-do,” Do meaning hall.
I’ll be sharing a larger reflection on the Toledo Zen community in a day or so.
Here I find myself thinking of Houn Jiyu Kennett, my ordination master, with whom I spent several intense years. I then left and have followed a rather different path. But, certainly not unmarked by my time with her. Her ordination lineage in fact has passed through me to the clerical community in Toledo.
I’ve been dipping into some of her writings, taking a particular interest in her dealings with theism.
When I knew her there was no body of writing. I was one of her flunkies when putting together what would be her first book, published by Pantheon as Selling Water by the River. I actually had the task of ghosting a preface to the book. My very first “published” writing, actually. The book is still in print as Zen is Eternal Life, which was the working title for the manuscript. I looked at the book and that book uses the word “god” seven times. None of them relevant to a theory of god. Nor was this part of my time with her.
But her later writings are replete with such. And she has been criticized as being some sort of theist.
Her apologists say this is a misunderstanding. She was concerned with shattering misconceptions about atheism and theism and taking us to another place. And it her moment the issue was that most people attracted to Buddhism were trapped in atheism, or near enough. So, that’s why she wrote more from that perspective. Maybe.
A casual perusal of her writings puts me more in the camp that she was in fact some sort of theist. But, I am also aware I’ve been called a theist, as well. More specifically, I’ve been called a Christian. Two words which almost always overlap, although I had a phase where I read a fair amount of Thomas J.J Altizer and other so-called Christian atheists. So, I know while non-normative, non theism is an option within the broad Christian camp.
What Kennett Roshi meant is left to her institutional heirs and historians of the foundations of convert Zen in the West.
What I mean when I use God language is my immediate concern. A great deal of my practice is concerned with clarification. Clarification of the great matter. And part of that includes how I use language as I approach the mystery. I am a child of the West, and even seminary educated, and Christian theological language lives deep within me. I am also a Zen Buddhist, emphasis on Buddhist, of the Mahayana school, if including a large modernist and I suppose a dash of post modernist influence.
And, as I approach the mystery, as I have approached the mystery, as I continue to do so, out of this raw encounter I reach for words. My tradition of practice calls us to the ordinary. A constant pushing away from conceptual traps. In furthering this attempt at unleashing the restrictions of our ideas, one of its conceits in language often is to use abuse as praise. In this Kennett Roshi is no doubt right, shattering our normative conceptions of reality is important. As we get closer to the heart of the matter it is even more important not to be trapped in the tangle of words.
So in Zen, contrary to what some casual readers might think, ordinary language or language of the ordinary very important. But, within the way words and language also begins to mutate and take its own shape. Prose begins to dissolve and poetry begins to replace it.
And here the traditional language of the West and its gods appear, or reappear. For me, anyway.
When we front into the empty, what are we encountering? I don’t find a God in the classic Western understanding of an entity with a human-like consciousness which starts the whole ball rolling, occasionally reaching into the works, and will in time bring it all to a close. So in that sense I’m a non theist.
And. When Mohammed said God is closer to you than your jugular vein, I get it. Totally. Completely. Down to the beating of the blood in my jugular vein.
The West has a long tradition of a non dual, where our encounters are all relational. The Zen line comes to mind, “you are not it. But, in truth, it is you.” That thing. That place. Totally ordinary. And, it calls forth hymns of praise. Lots of alleluias in the face of the mystery. Like a fire.
Today is Orthodox Easter.
Albert Camus once said “I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.”
Truth. And, here’s another truth, my friend. A great secret. Easter is not a dream of the past, nor of the future. Easter takes place every day. Every moment. Every heartbeat.
We understand this, and the ancient languages of East and West, all fall short, and all point. Life and death join. Not one. Not two. And from that a great fire.
Pretty easy to call it God.
And, perhaps in that moment we find our own alleluia.
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