{"id":20727,"date":"2018-08-10T11:38:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T18:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=20727"},"modified":"2018-08-10T11:38:53","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T18:38:53","slug":"a-zen-priest-talks-to-some-unitarian-universalists-about-a-naturalistic-mysticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2018\/08\/a-zen-priest-talks-to-some-unitarian-universalists-about-a-naturalistic-mysticism.html","title":{"rendered":"A Zen Priest Talks to Some Unitarian Universalists About a Naturalistic Mysticism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Lecture six of six delivered by the Reverend James Myoun Ford on the 10th of August at the Eliot Institute at Seabeck Conference Center, Seabeck, Washington.<\/p>\n

The monk Fayan visited Master Dizang who asked the young student of the way, \u201cWhere have you come from?\u201d Fayen replied, \u201cI wander from here to there on my pilgrimage.\u201d The master asked, \u201cWhat is the point of your pilgrimage?\u201d Fayan answered, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d Master Dizang replied, \u201cNot knowing is most intimate.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Case 20, The Book of Serenity<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nHere are the facts on the ground as I\u2019ve come to understand them. I am here as this body as this life. And my life over these past seventy years has been filled with many experiences, so many joyful, too many sad, some just plain terrible. While often bittersweet, sometimes bitter, I find life is nonetheless, lovely. I am so grateful. And. And, I know that this all ends. I\u2019m in no rush, but I know my death will come, eventually. No doubt.<\/p>\nThis knowing of life and death is our common inheritance as human beings. The question is how do we react to these twin knowings?<\/p>\nMany find themselves wracked with anxiety and fear about death. And, in response, there are those offering all sorts of nostrums to address these questions. Some even claim we don\u2019t die. The variations on this assertion include those who claim there are secret, or not so secret ways, and all one has to do is buy their product or service, and your body will live forever. \nOthers say our real selves are not our bodies, and should we buy their product or service our souls will disentangle from our corpses and live forever. Many variations on the theme out there, many. Some are cons, plain and simple. Others are sincere, indeed heart achingly sincere.<\/p>\nBut the bottom line for me is I\u2019ve never encountered a claim of individual human immortality of either the physical or spiritual sort that stood up to close examination. The facts on the ground as I encounter them seem profoundly otherwise than are presented by those who would live forever.<\/p>\nI look around and it is pretty obvious my body cannot live forever. Actually, nothing does. I mean even stars die. As to a soul-as-separate from my body, if there is some part of me that isn\u2019t completely caught up with my physicality I can\u2019t find it. (And, I promise, I\u2019ve looked hard at this\u2026) Everything I experience is best explained, and simply enough explained to be very hard to ignore, through natural means.<\/p>\nTo be clear. Here, today, I\u2019m simply confessing who I am and where I am. Although out of this, I hope I can also offer you all something of use on your own individual ways through life and death. I am asserting what you see is what you get. As it says in the Diamond Sutra, a Mahayana text closely associated with the Zen way, life is \u201ca star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; a flash of lightening in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd, so, out of this bubbling knowing I find my whole body asks why and for what purpose do I have, as Mary Oliver calls it, \u201cthis one wild and precious life?\u201d<\/p>\nIf this is it, if this world in which we rise, live, and die, is it; how would a completely naturalistic view of the matters of life and death manifest as a spiritual perspective? And, I believe that is a fair question. For me constant touchstones that have led to a healing of my heart and a compass pointing true for my life are the teachings of the Buddha and the school of <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Buddhism<\/a> that arose in early Medieval China and spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, in Japan taking on the name Zen, and then coming West, together, and is important in my life, together with the naturalistic and rationalist perspectives that arose in the European Enlightenment and evolved into both modern evolutionary thought and Unitarian Universalism. East and West informing each other and allowing something wonderful to present itself. It is the life of the wise heart, and it speaks the language of dragons.<\/p>\nWith that first a few words about engaging Buddhism, at least as I do, and with that suggesting what might be useful, and what may not be so helpful.<\/p>\nNear as I can tell we moderns have taken the fact that the Buddha himself wasn\u2019t particularly concerned with questions of deity or cosmology as evidence he had a generally skeptical attitude about these matters. Me, I go along with that.<\/p>\nAlthough, some have also pointed to the Agganna Sutta<\/em>, which uniquely among texts that claim to relate what the historic Buddha actually said, does have him making some cosmological assertions. In the Agganna <\/em>if someone squints hard and tilts her head, it is just possible to see a form of Big Bang cosmology.<\/p>\nAnd if while continuing to squint, one stands on his head, it is just possible to discern a rough version of evolution. But you really, really have to want to find it, to do so. I don\u2019t. I feel no need to. I\u2019ve never felt that <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Buddhist<\/a> thought anticipated anything especially relevant to contemporary science, in any particular given field. Well, except maybe psychology. No, let me restate that: except psychology. What I find within Buddhism, and particular Zen, are the perspectives that lead to a sense of meaning and direction. And that has been as important to me as my very life.<\/p>\nHere, throughout this week, and today, I have been suggesting a meeting of East and West, of Buddhism, particularly <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Zen Buddhism<\/a>, together with rationalism, naturalism, and, most of all, the deepest longings of our human hearts. What has resulted, as I\u2019ve said, helped to heal my heart and gave me that compass I so deeply need. And, maybe this can be useful for you. I\u2019ve been exploring aspects of this all week. Today, I want to try to summarize it all. As best I can.<\/p>\nThis leads us for a moment or two, at least, to consider Thomas Huxley, and the rise of what I\u2019ve found so powerful within the Western traditions of naturalism and rationality. Huxley was central to the establishment of evolutionary theory in the minds of the public.<\/p>\nMy own introduction to Huxley as anything more than a name associated closely with Charles Darwin or as Aldous Huxley\u2019s grandfather, comes through the controversial contemporary Western Buddhist Stephen Batchelor, author of the seminal study Buddhism Without Beliefs<\/em>. along with a host of other studies and reflections.<\/p>\nI consider this particular book within the entirety of Batchelor\u2019s work of enormous importance for contemporary liberal spirituality. I personally embrace a considerable part of his perspective on my own spiritual way. Although not all of it. I hope to touch on that a little as we go forward.<\/p>\nStephen today prefers that stronger term \u201catheist\u201d to describe himself, although he rushes to assert his atheism shouldn\u2019t be tied too closely with those for whom atheism is an emotional assertion, more anti-theism than simple disbelief. He isn\u2019t angry, just doesn\u2019t find deities or actually the whole supernatural realm likely enough to even consider possible. Most of us who hold similar views to his regarding the supernatural actually prefer the term \u201cnontheist\u201d to describe ourselves.<\/p>\nWhatever. More importantly to me Stephen also makes much of the term \u201cagnostic,\u201d which Thomas Huxley coined in the late nineteenth century. And, while he continues to be a really important thinker. Oh, here you can see him and me together at a conference.<\/p>\nIn an essay titled \u201cthe Agnostic Buddhist\u201d Stephen writes how Huxley coined agnostic \u201cas something of a joke. Huxley belonged to a small philosophical circle in London in which he increasingly felt out of place. While everybody else in the group could readily identify themselves as a Christian or a Rationalist or a Schopenhaurian, or whatever, he felt perplexed that no such term seemed applicable to him. So he decided to call himself an \u2018agnostic\u2019 in order that he too could \u2018have a tail like all the other foxes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\nBy combining the prefix \u201ca\u201d to gnostic, agnostic means without knowledge, or not knowing. However, not in the sense we commonly find today, \u201cI don\u2019t know and I don\u2019t particularly care.\u201d Modern agnosticism is often a rather tepid cup of tea. Huxley\u2019s agnosticism had a lot of heart about it. \u201cHuxley even described his view as \u2018the agnostic faith,\u2019 thus giving it the kind of seriousness that one might otherwise expect only amongst religious people.\u201d And Huxley followed this way with great passion.<\/p>\nAs Stephen explained, Huxley \u201csaw agnosticism as demanding as any moral, philosophical, or religious creed.\u201d Well, maybe not creed. Actually, he seemed to have much the same reservations about formal creeds contemporary Unitarian Universalists usually feel. Because, Huxley wasn\u2019t seeking pat answers. For him agnosticism was first and foremost, a method. The method he had in mind is broadly the same as which underpins scientific inquiry. And for him this method led to a naturalistic, and what we might call today a humanistic spirituality. It is that generous skepticism of which I\u2019ve spoken several times this week.<\/p>\nThat generous skepticism, that \u201cnot knowing\u201d allows us to see things in new light, to discern much about the human heart. And Huxley\u2019s rigorous observations within the spirit of not knowing led to some basic principles. And these are principles that can inform us and takes us deep into the ways of wisdom.<\/p>\nActually, whether God exists was not a primary concern for Huxley although he saw no particular reason to postulate a deity. And I find this terribly important. Huxley\u2019s real challenge for most of us cut much closer to the bone. He challenged how we see ourselves. He was adamant that human beings did not exist outside the flow of events and their intimate interrelatedness.<\/p>\nHuxley wrote, \u201cIn the whole universe there is nothing permanent, no eternal substance either of mind or of matter.\u201d He felt any idea of an abiding self, an eternal individual \u201cpersonality is a metaphysical fancy; and in very truth not only we, but all things in the worlds without end of the cosmic phantasmagoria, are such stuff as dreams are made of.\u201d \nAs we go forward I will suggest understanding this viscerally becomes a key to authentic wisdom.<\/p>\nAs I repeat a lot, and cited on our first day together. Unitarian Universalist theologian and minister Forrest Church observed the genuine work of religion flows out of our knowledge we are alive and that we are going to die. I would add to that religion, spirituality addresses the hurt, fear and anxiety that seems to haunt the human condition.<\/p>\nI find much of that hurt and fear and anxiety in our lives arises out of a fundamental cognitive error. The error is that we are isolated beings. Certainly, as I look at myself honestly, relentlessly, in the spirit of a generous skepticism, a not knowing, frankly I find it impossible to discern any part of me that isn\u2019t formed by conditions coalescing out of my genetic makeup and my ongoing encounters with events and people.<\/p>\nI am this because of that. And the \u201cthat\u201d which makes \u201cthis,\u201d is both multitudinous and changes in a heartbeat. Who I am as this skinbag changes sometimes slightly, sometimes dramatically with the very next addition of experience. Me, I find this an inescapable truth. I am as mutable as the events that occur all around me.<\/p>\nThere are all sorts of reasons why we see ourselves as discrete and separate from each other. To me it seems obvious it is an unfortunate psychological side effect of our amazing ability to divide the universe, to find the information that allows us to survive. A way of seeing, thanks to Koko, we know we share with Gorillas, at the very least. And I believe that list is in fact quite long.<\/p>\nAnd there certainly is a truth that in any given moment, we are in fact separate. You are you and I am I, at least in the moment. And at the very same time there is a larger sense in which we are totally wrapped up together in a very real web of mutuality. The intuition of the spiritual enterprise is that we can reconcile these apparent contradictions, our separateness in the moment, and our essential connectedness. This is sometimes called the nondual perspective.<\/p>\nThrough his commitment to not knowing, Huxley found the nondual perspective. While he was writing before the discovery of genes, like the Buddha, he got the principle that we are all moments in the great rush of time and space, verbs rather than nouns, notes in a symphony.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XGK84Poeynk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\nThe spiritual enterprise as I see it, is to find how this is in fact our truth, yours and mine. And it is discovered when we open our hearts and minds, as we embrace a way of deep agnosticism, of truly not knowing.<\/p>\nSusan Blackmore in her delightful book Consciousness: An Introduction<\/em> reflects on these assertions and asks.<\/p>\n\u201cHave these people really seen nonduality, directly, in their own experience? If they have, could we all see it? Might the psychologists, philosophers and neuroscientists working on the problem of consciousness see nonduality directly for themselves? If so, it seems possible that they might bring together two apparently totally different disciplines: the third-person discipline of science and the first-person discipline of self-transformation. If they did so, might they then understand exactly what had happened in their own brains when all the illusions fell away and the distinction between first and third person was gone? This way the direct experience of nonduality might be integrated into a neuroscience that only knows, intellectually, that dualism must be false.\u201d<\/p>\nDeep agnosticism, not turning away, remaining present, heals many wounds. As to what this really looks like there\u2019s a story from Blackmore\u2019s book. \u201cJohn Wren-Lewis was a physics professor with decidedly anti-mystical views when in 1983, at the age of sixty, he was poisoned while traveling on a bus in Thailand. A would-be thief gave him some sweets laced with what was probably a mixture of morphine and cocaine, and the next thing he knew was waking up in a dilapidated and dirty hospital.<\/p>\n\u201cAt first he noticed nothing special, but gradually it dawned on him that it was as if he had emerged freshly made, completely with the memories that made up his personal self, from a radiant vast blackness beyond space and time. There was no sense at all of personal continuity. Moreover, the \u2018dazzling darkness\u2019 was still there. It seemed to be behind his head, continually re-creating his entire consciousness afresh, instant by instant, now! And now! And now! He even put his hand up to feel the back of his head only to find it perfectly normal. He felt only gratitude toward everything around him, all of which seemed perfectly right and as it should be.\u201d<\/p>\nI\u2019m very taken that Blackmore didn\u2019t chose an example from the traditional spiritual literature. This wasn\u2019t a thirty-year practitioner of an austere spiritual discipline. This was someone drugged and robbed. This experience is accessible to all of us because it is a natural part of how our brains naturally work. Meditation and other disciplines help, a lot.<\/p>\nBut in the last analysis all we need do, is let go of our certainties. As the lady said, \u201cIt\u2019s all in your head.\u201d We, if you will, evolved to be able to do this. Why I don\u2019t know. And, you know, we don\u2019t need to know the answer that particular question. Within the scheme of the universe it is probably a nonsequitur. And, while questions of meaning are important to us as humans, we need to be careful as to what might actually be worth pursuing. And, how. In my experience the really big questions of meaning have been resolved in a full on turning into the moment. The answers are not words, but presence itself.<\/p>\nAnd as it happens, some sense of this experience never abandoned Wren-Lewis for the rest of his life. In his own words Wren-Lewis described the place of not knowing as a living experience. \u201cI feel as if the back of my head has been sawn off so that it is no longer the sixty-year-old John who looks out at the world, but the shining dark infinite void that in some extraordinary way is also, \u2018I.\u2019\u201d Just this moment. And. Only don\u2019t know.<\/p>\nThis is where not knowing takes us, each following our own trajectory, each with our own moments, and all joined. For me I found it sitting in a Buddhist monastery, eating a thin cabbage soup. For you, perhaps playing with a child. For another, perhaps listening to Mozart. Another, perhaps just noticing that it is possible for this moment only, to not have that drink. For another, well, who knows? The secret is only not knowing. As the master Dizang said, \u201cNot knowing is most intimate.\u201d<\/p>\nSo, from here let me return to the personal. Here I open my heart to you. I have walked the way for a life time and what I share here is the best I can to present what I find, and along with it, what I find might be useful for others on their paths.<\/p>\nI suggest a deep agnosticism; truly engaging not knowing is the universal solvent. It will release us from our hurt and fears by showing us, not in some abstract cognitive therapy sort of way, but in the deepest, most visceral way, who we really are. This has been my experience. At the beginning of his Buddhism Without Beliefs<\/em> Stephen Batchelor gives two quotations. I find they neatly summarize the issues.<\/p>\nThe first is from the novelist Marcel Proust. \u201cWe do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.\u201d<\/p>\nI\u2019ve given religions some hard hits here and there this week. Mostly I have problems with crowd control and the perpetuation of various social norms, particularly what we call patriarchy. Frankly, I think they deserve the knocks. However, I believe the worst of religion, as with the rest of our lives, comes through what I have to call \u201creification,\u201d a term with several meanings, but by which I mean taking that which is passing for that which is permanent.<\/p>\nThis is a human inclination, it seems. But religions, at their worst, seem more than other institutions to enshrine what really seems to me to be the fundamental conceptual error of human consciousness.<\/p>\nNow I genuinely believe one can find what one needs through any of the world\u2019s religions. To paraphrase one tradition, they contain everything necessary to salvation. But, they are also veritable magpie nests, with all the noxious stuff, sometimes, often leading with the unhelpful, and even poisonous. But, that said, and meant, dig deep enough, and there is much of value.<\/p>\nStill, historically, only one religion seems to address the fundamental problems in a way I find plain, straightforward, and helpful. In the Dhammapada<\/em>, an ancient collection of sayings of the Buddha, he offers three pointers. They are, in my paraphrase:<\/p>\nAll elements of conditioned things are without some special essence. When you fully understand this your heart will be liberated. All conditioned things are impermanent. When you fully understand this your heart will be liberated. Trying to hold tightly onto conditioned things as they pass is the source of the heart\u2019s pain. When you fully understand this your heart will be liberated.<\/em><\/p>\nTwo things. First, fully understand is an invitation into a body knowing, something a bit deeper than intellectual assent to a hypothesis, theory, or even prophetic pronouncement. And, second, these concepts themselves must, I find, must be engaged cautiously. Remember that generous skepticism. Although this time for a slightly different reason than is often the case. It appears the closer any concept is to what might be called \u201ctruth,\u201d the greater the danger of reification. And, here I think we have a description of our human dis-ease in life and its cure that is as true as any statement can be.<\/p>\nAlways hold truths lightly. They can liberate and they can add layers of entrapment. \nThis noticed, if we avoid the trap and don\u2019t let the spirit become so many dead letters, don\u2019t, if you , verbs), then the many spiritual traditions begin to sing of the way. Maybe, I suspect, all of them, if sometimes only through that glass, darkly, point to our possibility.<\/p>\nIt really seems within all religions there are voices calling to a depth that I find my heart resonates with, and which engages my mind, and compels me forward on the quest. \nHere I find that second quote at the beginning of Batchelor\u2019s book particularly helpful. It is what is revealed as I\u2019ve journeyed along this way.<\/p>\nIt comes from the medieval Chinese koan anthology, the Blue Cliff Record. \u201cEmperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, \u201cWhat is the highest meaning of the holy truth?\u201d Bodhidharma siad, \u201cEmpty, without holiness.\u201d The emperor said, \u201cWho is facing me?\u201d Bodhidharma replied, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\nFor me this is the whole of the path. Our journey is to that cloud of unknowing. To what turns out to be god beyond god. This not knowing is a profound opening. It is not simply a call to humility, although it includes humility. Rather, it is a call to our true home. I believe. I\u2019ve found. I confess. I offer.<\/p>\nAnd, here we are. Me, I\u2019ve found for much of my life the context of liberal religion the best place to explore this way. For me. I genuinely cannot claim this is so for everyone. But I believe I\u2019ve stumbled upon a pearl of great price. And, it turns out we each of us must find that pearl for ourselves, and it often turns out to be different.<\/p>\nLiberal religion embraces a broad tolerance, a provisional acceptance of many truth claims, and a belief that attention will sort it out. Actually, I\u2019ve seen this spiritual liberalism, a heartful universalism, a belief that the deepest truths cannot be contained, occurs in just about every religion. At least within modernity. In the West I\u2019ve certainly encountered it among Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims. Although, also, I find those individuals all near the edge of their traditions, each claiming varying degrees of unique authority. But also pretty much full on with members of the United Church of Christ, Episcopalians, Hicksite or Meeting Quakers, and Reconstructionist and Reformed Jews. Still, the principal and almost unvarnished expression of this spiritual liberalism, I feel, is found within Unitarian Universalism. (picture seven) At least within its more mature lived into expressions.<\/p>\nSo, for me Liberal Religion is broad and tolerant, and it creates a context for deep inquiry. Although it puts the onus upon the individual to dig in and to find for themselves. As a spiritual community it becomes a warm and embracing place to raise a family, a healthful place we can gather together and make the world and ourselves a little better. I\u2019ve been so grateful to be given a home and work among this crowd for so much of my life.<\/p>\nBut agnostic, well, that\u2019s a spiritual practice. More or less starting with its original use when coined by Thomas Huxley, as an engaged not knowing, is the method of wisdom. I believe this not knowing is the way itself. This is my heart. This is my path. I suggest it is the very language of dragons.<\/p>\nOnly don\u2019t know.<\/p>\nWhich is found when one applies the principle: don\u2019t believe anything you think. And start with yourself. Don\u2019t trust your own ideas of what is and what is not just because you thought them up. Here is the deep agnosticism which I\u2019ve been coming back to over and over of late. \nThat\u2019s the deep agnosticism I find in at least aspects of contemporary spiritual writers like Stephen Batchelor, Ranier Maria Rilke, Don Cupitt, Mary Oliver, Shunryu Suzuki, John Tarrant, Susan Murphy, Ken Jones, Barry Magid, Diane Rizzetto, Ezra Bada, Elizabeth Hamilton, Susan Blackmore. Oh, and the songs of Leonard Cohen.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6wRYjtvIYK0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\nPerhaps this spiritual practice of generous skepticism, of not knowing is all best expressed through the Zen tradition. I know of all the spiritual disciplines it has been Zen that has most helped me. The practices, zazen and koan introspection, lots of zazen and koan introspection; and the literature that accompanies these disciplines have shown me the way. \nAs a final example for our time together, I want to return to one famous anecdote that particularly captures the heart of all this. For me. It is captured, well, as captured as any dragon can be, as case twenty in the great koan anthology, the Book of Serenity<\/em>, recorded here with my own running commentary\u2026<\/p>\nFayen and some companions were caught in a snowstorm and took refuge at Dizang Monastery where the abbot, Luohan Guichen asked Fayen, \u201cWhat is your journey?\u201d In a Zen context always a dangerous question. How are you doing? Becomes the stuff of life and death. It becomes the meeting of dragons. Fayen replied, \u201cGoing around on pilgrimage.\u201d Not a bad answer, but not sparkling, either. Is there actually a dragon present? Dizang, abbots are often known by the name of their temple and the mountain upon which it rests, pushed a bit further, inquiring, \u201cWhat do you expect from pilgrimage?\u201d Then Fayen gave the simplest of answers. \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\nThe time was ripe, what in Christian theology is sometimes called kairos, the time of fulfillment. Dizang didn\u2019t even need to pluck the fruit, it was so ripe. Instead he simply blew on it, gently, saying \u201cNot knowing is most intimate.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd Fayen understood.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0nyMrjGX2vk\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Lecture six of six delivered by the Reverend James Myoun Ford on the 10th of August at the Eliot Institute at Seabeck Conference Center, Seabeck, Washington. The monk Fayan visited Master Dizang who asked the young student of the way, \u201cWhere have you come from?\u201d Fayen replied, \u201cI wander from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,1959,54,1962,579,8],"class_list":["post-20727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-buddhism","tag-naturalism","tag-not-knowing","tag-rationality","tag-secular-buddhism","tag-zen"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>A Zen Priest Talks to Some Unitarian Universalists About a Naturalistic Mysticism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"          Lecture six of six delivered by the Reverend James Myoun Ford on the 10th of August at the Eliot Institute at Seabeck\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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