Zen Cath

Bored last night, looking for something interesting aside from the War Between the States, the Old West, or lingua franca, I rummaged through a box of books at the foot of my desk. The hour was getting late and I was seeking to browse through something while I had my cookie and milk. Ah! This looks intriguing – Zen Catholicism, a slim volume I bought about a decade ago, made one unsuccessful go at, and thereafter exiled to The Box. Turns out I read most of the first chapter, about a dozen pages.

On the surface, Zen Buddhism and Catholicism are antithetical. Now, I’m not theologian enough to go into specifics, but I have done my share of reading in both to convince myself of this. Zen admits no God; Catholicism is all about relationship with God. That’s about as opposed as you can get, though I will say that the more ascetical strains of Catholic mysticism fall curiously in line with Zen practice.

Zen practice has always held interest for me. I’ve meditated about 200-250 times in my life. Before you think this makes me a Buddhist monk, let me just say that this is over the course of ten or fifteen years. So I’ve never been able to make it a daily habit. (I do, however, pray every night.) Reading koans has always been a source of whimsical curiosity for me, too, over the years, but I’ll be darned if I could ever figure out the Big Idea they try to illustrate. Even my own koan, which I’ve never been able to solve.

I’ve often wondered whether the best of both belief / practice systems could be incorporated. Indeed, that’s why I picked up this book all those years ago. I do think the man who walks with God is quite similar to the Zen monk who has attained Samadhi. The question I’ve always pondered was, regardless of the starting point, how do you get to that end?

Reading the first couple of pages last night, I was nearly overwhelmed by a very strong point the author quickly makes. The early Church Fathers took Greek thought and synthesized it with this developing thing called Christianity. Augustine did the same thing with neo-Platonism. And it is well known that Thomas Aquinas brought Aristotelian thought into the Catholic fold. The realization is – Christianity makes no bones about taking the thoughts and beliefs of the culture it finds itself in and “Christianizing” it. Baptizing it. Taking the good, leaving the bad, and re-shaping that good to fit the revealed plan of God.

See where he’s going with this?

Why could not the same be done for Eastern thought, now that we have been a global village for almost a century now?

Why not bring Zen into the Catholic tent? Would this make Catholicism unrecognizable, or would it further refine it, like Plato, the neo-Platonists, and Aristotle did?

Well?