If you’re a techie like me, perhaps this is the kind of meditation we should be doing:
I want to make a few comments about Christian Zen mostly for my own sake so that I can process the topic. But I’d also like to hear from those of you who read this blog and have ideas and opinions regarding the overlap between Christian devotional practice and Zen meditation. What I want to explore here briefly is not necessarily the incompatibility between two great religions but rather the impulse that drives Christians in the Western world to consider Zen, whether there are elements of Zen already present in Christian practice, and some possible responses to Christians who are incorporating Zen practice into their lives.
Modern life is stressful. And human relationships are fraught with conflict. These are two things that can motivate Christians to consider meditative practices such as yoga. Centering our mind, breathing calmly, relaxing, and cleansing our system of impurity are all necessary and restorative activities. Recent Christian history has not shown enough attention to the modern person’s struggle with stress and the quest for inner calm and relaxation. In fact, the recent practice of preaching the whole Bible has slanted Christian teaching away from a focus on Jesus, the prince of peace. The violent imagery of much of the Old Testament especially the Psalms leaves a person grasping for words of peace and harmony. And the writings of Paul are full of confrontational and militaristic themes. So, I have personally found myself stumped when trying to offer someone Christian alternatives or equivalents to Zen chants, mantras and koans. The obvious exception is the words of Jesus. Many Christian traditions place an emphasis on reciting the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount or from the writings of John. That’s certainly getting closer to the spirit of meditation that people find missing in their Christian experience. Two more equivalents are prayer and singing. Both activities are frequently mentioned in the New Testament and I think we underestimate their calming properties. Many times I’ve been a bundle of nerves and then someone has prayed for me or I’ve begun singing hymns and found myself much calmer afterwards. The Zen practice of focused breathing is very similar in this sense to the Christian practices of prayer and singing.
One big distinctive between Zen and Christianity is the isolation sought by practitioners of yoga versus the fellowship practiced by Christians. Yoga is often about getting alone, centering the mind and focusing on the self. In contrast with this, church is about getting together, thinking collectively and focusing on God. This is the great strength and weakness of church. One of the reasons people don’t like church is because of the conflicts that exist there. The pastor and the board are in conflict. Various groups within the church are upset with one another. The music is too slow or too loud. The sermons are too long or too insubstantial. It’s tempting to withdraw from such a messy place, get by yourself and just try to find inner peace.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to censure Christians who are experimenting with Zen meditation. For one thing, I think that much of the meditation called Zen or Yoga in the Western world is thoroughly secularized. It would be easy to criticize or condemn the practice but I think that is only going to further isolate believers who are feeling uncomfortable or unsatisfied in the church. Far better in my opinion is to focus on the three irresistible qualities of Christian devotional life. First, Christianity addresses our human needs by looking to a benevolent and all-powerful God. Focusing on ourselves and the divine within is pale and unsatisfying compared to focusing on the magnificent Christ. Second, community is the great strength of Christianity. Church will always be a bother because its filled with people rather than statues. But those people and the relationships and emotions that bind them together are what we all desperately need in our hyperlinked yet lonely modern existence. Finally, we should advocate more meditative forms of prayer. Whenever possible we should meet with others, pray out loud, hold hands, hug each other, sing songs and hand around the tissue box. There’s nothing like the koinonia of a group of believers for releasing stress and gaining strength to face the week.
Church can address some of societies ills but I’m afraid that quite often church is one of the contributing factors. There are too many activities in a modern church and these activities are incredibly complex. Not only that but when people are “together in one place” many of our churches chop up all the demographics and isolate them from one another in age and gender specific groups. I disagree with this strategy simply because it creates so much work for so many people, causes them to miss out on opportunities for fellowship and results in Sunday being one of the most stressful days of the week. No wonder people prefer to stay home in their pajamas, put some nice music on and read a book.
I personally have never wanted to engage in Eastern meditation. Corporate prayer, singing and Scripture reading have been the great sources of strength for my spiritual life. If you are a Christian and are using Zen practices in your personal life I don’t have any condemnation for you but would be interested to hear your reaction to what I’ve written here.
A few links that I’ve found on this subject:
Gee, I would have thought there would have been many coments to this post, but maybe everyone is still sleeping. I don’t do meditation, but may try. I am never in a quiet setting where God can speak to me and I can hear him. I have tried some yoga, and it hurts. My macho friend, Andy who does the super workout program P90-X says the Yoga program is the most strenuous.
Group hugs, holding hands, and greeting time are my least favorite times in chuch. I would much rather study the Bible(especially the red letters) and drink coffee, and sing a few songs. I agree that all the demographic seperation are less than productive. As I have often said if our corporate meetings are geared to ten year olds then all of us would be happier, and leave the heavy teaching for small groups.
I just published it. Try again on Sunday and hopefully some others will have commented.
Really interesting post about our search for quiet and peace in our busy stressful lives.
I was struck by the picture you paint of teh church – how complex its activities are, how full of conflict it can be. It’s also true that our tolerance for that sort of stress and conflict is much lower – we go to church not to have to deal with the same mess we have to deal with in the rest of our lives … the organisational life of church seems to many to be at odds with what people believe, feel others should believe. There’s still an idea church should be all sweetness and light – not quite the picture that always comes across in the Acts or Paul’s letters!
As for yoga – I often feel I should do some for my physical health that or Pilates. We do need to try to nourish people’s inner lives with the complex life-giving gospel stories, and also encourage the idea that the Christian way is not necessarily the path of “wellness” that can be bought into.
Worship which is only singing and listening to and studying the word will not satisfy me unless there is also real silence for reflection … a breath, a pause. I recently read Sara Maitland’s A book of silence which is very challenging on the search for inner quiet. Inner peace is perhaps not what it is popularly supposed to be.
From All Souls through Advent we sing holden Evening prayer once a week – it last 25 minutes and does all of us who attend in a rather irregular way a great deal of simple goodness. Easy music and words and easy much needed silence.
At the end of it I feel quite “zen” as the French would say.
David – you raise a number of issues. I will see if I can reply on my blog. In the meanwhile, here is a first cut at the issues: the sacred and the secular – a false distinction, meditating and presence, gathering and being alone. The extremes are greater than you outline. I concur with Jane – we sing Compline once a month – 35 minutes of plainsong with two or three pieces of polyphony. For some, it is good. It is also true to say that the liturgy of Communion works in ways we cannot define. I find personally that poor poetry and bad music are not a help. But corporate worship goes beyond taste.
Meditation, or contemplative prayer as it is more commonly called in the Christian tradition, is a very ancient form of Christian prayer. The desset mothers and fathers practiced this form of prayer and it has most strongly been practiced in the Christian Orthodox tradition. However, in the past 30 years there has been a return to this form of prayer. Two good websites to learn more are contemplative outreach (www.contemplativeoutreach.org) and the World Community for Christian Meditation (www.wccm.org). No need to turn to the Eastern religions to learn meditation – it is very present in the Christian tradition. It may have been underemphasized because there are many ways to pray in Christianity. I hope this helps.
Keep talking, friends. I’m listening.
David, I think you know this onion has many layers.
At the bottom of the discussion is whether Zen is divine – was it given by Yahweh as an approved way of meeting with Him. Clearly, it is not. There are some arguments against that, but they’re not substantial.
If Zen is not divine, then on it’s best day it’s only human. It’s a human tool for dealing with human problems. The practices of meditation, centering, and cracking through the cruft of consciousness with koans are making a lot of people happy, and even healthier. There’s no question that meditation has powerful effects when powerfully applied.
On it’s worst day, though, it’s a very spiritual business. And if it’s not divinely ordered, and if it’s spiritual, then what is it besides idolatry? Could the God Who rejected strange fire with divine fire possibly accept prayer He did not bring? Could the Spirit inhabit those prayers? Could the Son carry them into the Holy of Holies? Zen worship is an abomination to God.
Then you have the mingling of Zen and Christian contemplative prayer. I once thought Jesus could and did accept contemplative prayer as spiritual worship, but I’ve retreated from that belief. I have no beef with brothers and sisters reaching out for a deeper spirituality through contemplation, but I’d counsel anyone against it.
I practiced contemplation for about 10 years with a committed group of Christians. There’s no time here to detail the ways in which the experiment fell apart, but it did. I watched carefully as those best at contemplative prayer left Christianity for more expansive, accepting, anti-Christian religions. I watched carefully as my fellow practicioners grew more and more confused about spiritual things. I’ve read contemplative books. Guyon, Fenelon, Brother Lawrence and Molinos impressed me. Frank Laubach, Thomas Merton and a couple others of the new guys scared me.
I’ve been there and loved the Lord through centering prayer. I’ve loved brothers and sisters who did so, and love brothers and sisters who do. Zen is idolatry, while centering prayer is not. But when centering prayer is taught in the Merton way, it becomes a dangerous gateway into idolatry and I’m resignedly set against it.
When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, He did not say, “Quiet yourself.” The psalmists quieted themselves with words, promises, and truth, not quietness. None of the prophets ever convicted Israel of being too loud-hearted, only of unrighteousness.
Outside of half-sentences pulled from their contexts, there’s not a word in scripture recommending centering prayer. There’s also not a word in scripture recommending praise and worship concerts, systematic theologies, or para-church missions organizations and people find these things profitable. I’m sadly against contemplative prayer in many of its practices, but I’m not against those who know Jesus Christ and seek His face through its practice.
May the Lord bless us all together.
Ah codepoke – I haven’t read you for a while. I have to train a new developer over the next few weeks – I hope I still can.
David – I put some thoughts up here as promised. My images are about habit – what we wear, lifting up – what we offer, and acceptance – what is sufficient for us. Cain, Job and the psalms all play a part. I leave open any judgment of technique – whether it be Zen, centering prayer, or even Torah observance.
Thank you Bob and Codepoke. Bob I look forward to reading your post for my daily devotions…
Ps. 46:10 Be still and know that I am Lord.
Still can be defined as without sound or without motion. Sometimes we need to stop moving, stop talking, and stop listening to others and listen to God.I don’t think that is Zen, but obedience.
I agree with you, David, that church can be a cause of too much business and stress in our lives sometimes. (It can also be fill me like nothing else at times.) There’s often just too much going on, and usually the same core people being called on to do it all. We try to get others involved in serving, but so much of the time more and more just keeps getting piled on to our already full plates.
I also agree that it isn’t good for the church to try to censure folks from looking into Zen, as you said it is pretty secularized here anyway. But also, it reminds me of another large cult that I went on a missions trip to witness to (which happened to be in the state of Utah). At an event where some of us were mingling and just trying to start up friendly, thought provoking dialog, church leaders were telling their members not to speak to us. That kind of censorship screams insecurity. Zen practices may not be particularly beneficial to us, but as Christians, I think we should always be free to look into other points of view and ways of doing things. We have the truth to refer to, and if we are mature in our faith and grounded in the Word, whatever isn’t compatible should raise red flags in within our spirit.
Just my two cents.
Also, regarding centering prayer, I guess I’m not really familiar with that terminology, but I do know that Jesus called us to “Come away with me to a quiet place and pray.” I guess the difference may be in whether our focus is on centering ourselves and seeking peace under our own power, or simply removing distractions in order to allow the Holy Spirit to draw us into Him. Is it self-driven, or seeking Jesus’ face?
Hey Steve. You made me learn something today.
I’ve long looked at the English of Ps 46:10, and of the preceeding verses. When I rejected contemplation, I learned that the context says God is an active – terrifyingly active – refuge, and we should sit quietly and wait on His salvation. I saw that this passage is not about intimate communion with God, but about quiet trust in His works.
Today I looked at the Hebrew, though. Wow. It appears “be still” is a soft translation of the Hebrew, which really means:
1) to sink, relax, sink down, let drop, be disheartened
Look at other uses of this word, and you see a very different picture. (AV — feeble 6, fail 4, weaken 4, go 4, alone 4, idle 3, stay 3, slack 3, faint 2, forsake 2, abated 1, cease 1, misc 9.) We are to be feeble and know that He is God. This passage is a reference to our position before His strength, not to knowing Him.
Some contemplate as unto the Lord, and some don’t contemplate as unto the Lord. Whether we contemplate, therefore, or don’t contemplate we are the Lord’s. (Rom 14) Thank you for pushing back.
Allow me to push a little more. I think the verb in Ps. 46:10 means less than the sum of the AV parts. It’s a pretty generic word. But I think you’re right on here: “This passage is a reference to our position before His strength, not to knowing Him.”
I led a devotion at our evening fellowship on Psalm 46. Thanks guys for inspiration.
I’ve had a delightful time today, humming the newly reworded song, “Give Up, and Know That I am God”
And then, in church I wondered (as my mind wandered) if it would be accurate to translate it somewhere along the lines of “Stop striving, and recognize that I am God.”
As for the Zen topic, firstly I think that there is a very real longing for quiet in the midst of our hubbub. And, as has been mentioned, the church often contributes to the hubbub, rather than making space for quiet.
Secondly, I believe that the best quiet is not the quiet where I’m silenced, centered, at one with myself, but the quiet that comes from being in community. I don’t mean just quietness in the middle of a group service, but rather peace of being quieted, while being “with” (With is a preposition I use with an active meaning, almost in a verb sense, without needing an object after it).
No matter how alone and quiet I am, I know that I am anchored in community and that matters somehow to helping me be and find quiet. But also to be quieted, actually with someone, is really important. No words, no effort, no practice of discipline, just being with. To me that is something incredibly more valuable than being able to master quieting myself through a particular practice or method.
And finally, I like what Bob said over on his related post: “Technique is important and useful but ultimately insufficient.” and “Technique can provide a little discipline and can also be holy but it does not do the job of dealing with ___” [Bob said anger, but I read it as a fill-in-the blank].
That’s a helpful paradigm for me in thinking about technique, whether it be in connection with meditation or prayer or childbirth.
I’ve got mixed feelings about the Zen topic itself, but I’ve found all the little sideline conversations to be fascinating and thought-provoking.
Dana’s comment is helpful to me. Years ago, Psalm 46 was one of my first exercises in translation – you can see the very green diagram here. There is a center to the poem – God is in the midst of her. Equally – Be still – is in the center of the final stanza.
There are however ’shades of meaning’ in every word. Give up – sounds like a wrestling term – cry uncle and I will let you go. The Hebrew I see in my BDB does not give ‘uncle’ or ‘give up’ as a direct gloss – but relax, sink: e.g. sink down – as hay in fire! (Isaiah 5:24). It also can imply abating of temper (Judges 8:3). BDB glosses Psalm 46 as ‘do nothing’ or let go. What I get from this psalm is that God will be lifted up – and I cannot help but think of how our Lord is lifted up for us as an offering by his own hands that we might be in him as he is in the midst of us.
Wow – great discussion, deep insights, I’ve learned a lot – thanks!
I tend to side with anonymous and codepoke – there’s enough in Christian tradition, and Zen could start us on the slippery slope into idolatry.
I’m grateful to never have been tempted to try Zen; instead I was blessed by the spiritual exercises as developed by St.Ignatius – focusing on the Word who is the Son – and silence definitely does play a role in that.
Another psalm came to mind, Ps.19:1-3 where God’s glory is declared by creation without sound. And a silence which gives glory to God must also be part of the chief end of humankind. My 2p …
I spent most of my life blindly following Christianity because many generations of my family had followed this tradition. Having a personal experience of salvation made my devotion more than traditional. But after losing my mother to cancer and experiencing severe loss, adversity, and high stress in my personal life, I started looking for something to help me physically and mentally. The faith I had grown up with suddenly wasn’t enough. Maybe my foundation was wrong to begin with or maybe God led me to broaden my understanding of faith by letting me see the faith of those I had once condemned as “the heathen.” I had some serious health issues. I tried the traditional Christian methods of getting healed. But most of the Christians I knew put very little importance on physical and mental health. The more I read and searched, the more I found the word “meditation” popping up as a healthful activity. I even had a medical doctor recommend it to me to relieve anxiety and depression. I had a friend who had been practicing Zen for quite some time. I started doing yoga and meditating, not as an act of worship, but as a means to improve my health. I don’t offer incense or bow before statues, but if that would give me peace of mind, I probably would. This from a Christian who firmly believes the commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Call it desperation. It’s like people who do not believe in divorce, but their spouse beats them of cheats on them. Sometimes our theology is suddenly changed by circumstances. The lure of Zen is not to become an idolater, it is the hope of having physical and mental well-being, something most Christian denominations do not offer or even emphasize.
Hello Nita (and David, too.) You’ve made honest and heart-tugging points. I’m really sorry about the way Christianity has seemed to fall short when you needed it most. Christ hasn’t, I’m sure, but Christianity sure can raise questions about Him.
Let me offer an example of deeply Christian meditation. The concept of Christian meditation is precisely NOT to empty your mind, but to fill it with realities of which you’ve never dreamt. Some Christians have never tried to imagine what it means when God says every day in your life is like a thousand years to Him, and that His thoughts toward you in that day are more numerous than the sand on the sea shore, and that He knows His intentions toward you – that they are good.
There’s a richness and health to filling your mind with those thoughts. Especially when your life seems to prove them all lies.
The linked post (not one of mine) gives a wonderful example of Christian meditation. I hope it blesses you.
http://christthetruth.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/recipe-for-a-15-minute-quiet-time/