ZEN AND THE BIRDS OF APPETITE - THOMAS MERTON

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The pandemic lockdown continues, the libraries remain closed, so I’ve had to dip into the stash of books I actually own. ZATBOA is actually a book of my dad’s, no surprise, that I copped the last time I was in NC. The receipt in the book makes it clear he bought it in ‘96. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book of Christian theology and it was interesting to dust off the ol’ Christian thinking muscles. It’s amazing how not for me this book is. I’m trying to put myself in the mindset of someone who would have read this book when it came out. It was published in ‘68, so basic non-Christian religious ideas (like, say, dharma, or meditation) were not commonly known by YT amerikans. Likewise, the level of Christian chauvinism was, somehow, even more extreme that it is now so Merton spends a lot of time trying to convince us that Buddhism, Zen specifically, is to be considered the equal, in terms of spiritual insight, to Christianity. This comes off as extremely strange these days, the idea of a Catholic priest being both a font of spiritual insight as well as a big-hearted world citizen, sensitive to other religions, seems like it’s from another planet. Merton is really interested in taking some of the practices and insights of Zen and using them as non-specific spiritual tools. He claims more than once that Zen (and by this I think he actually means Zazen, the practice of sitting, not Zen as a whole) can be removed from Buddhism and used as a sort of universal tool for spiritual growth. In some ways, he was ahead of his time. This has largely happened. Mindfulness and mediation and, especially, yoga are now common “spiritual” practices in the West and they’ve been basically completely removed from their place in non-Western religious structures. I’m not sure this is as easy as he thinks it is, or even if it is possible. I would like to know if he thinks a religious practice like communion or confession could be removed without too much trouble from their Catholic contexts and still be considered “communion” and “confession” still provide spiritual succor. He makes what I would consider the classic Perennial (one could say the error itself is perennial) Philosophy mistake of assuming all religions and religious practices points towards the same thing, despite the religions themselves saying the opposite. Take for example Merton insistence that the state of Nirvana or Zen enlightenment is the same as being a perfect vessel for God. Despite the fact that the Buddhist scholars frequently talk about emptiness and becoming a void and Christian writers are always speaking of being filled up with a personal, knowable god. It strikes me as quite a stretch to assume these writers are describing the same thing. All that said, I really enjoyed the back and forth with D. T. Suzuki, it was cool to see two masters of their respective traditions try to talk with one another, even if I disagree on how much they actually agreed on. I’m certainly prepared to believe this is due to anti-Christian bias on my part. The book also includes a really fascinating discussion on Paradise vs. Heaven. I had never considered a distinction but Merton points out Paradise is a state before a knowledge of good and evil, an innocence, while heaven is something different. That was a cool little thought cul-de-sac. It also includes this quote: “This is of course to be sought above all in the revelation of the Holy Spirit, the mysterious Gift in which God becomes one with the Believer in order to know and love Himself in the Believer.” I spent a lot of time inside of Christianity and I honestly have no idea what this is suppose to really mean nor have the mysteries of the Holy Spirit ever been described to me in these terms. Why would God want to know himself? Why would he need the Believer to do this? Likewise for God knowing himself. Very strange. 0 voids.