‘Zen Catholicism’: Zen and Christianity Have Quite a Lot in Common
A review of ‘Zen Catholicism’, by Dom Aelred Graham; Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1964.
There is something approaching a tradition of Zen Catholicism. We could cite Thomas Merton, whose exchanges with D.T. Suzuki became Zen and the Birds of Appetite. Pablo d’Ors, in talks and in books like Biography of Silence, has cast light on the uses of Zen to ordinary Christians. And we could mention the priest Willigis Jäger, a teaching Zen master who founded a centre at Münzerschwarzach Abbey. This tradition — if we can describe it as such — sprang from the boom in Western interest in Zen in the mid-20th century, helped by the Beat Generation. And in Zen Catholicism, Dom Aelred Graham grapples with two questions that this explosion in interest raised. What is the attraction of Zen to Westerners? And might it be found in their own tradition — that is, Christianity?
Leaning heavily on St. Thomas’ Summa Theologica and Ananda Cooraswamy’s essay ‘East and West’, Graham sets out what he perceives to be the essential features of Zen Buddhism and Catholicism. In doing so, he both illuminates what these great traditions share, and advances an argument that the heart of Zen — ‘direct pointing’ at reality itself, ‘seeing into one’s own nature’ — is just as essential to Catholic Christianity. For Graham, this is best expressed in Christ’s instruction to ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow’ (Matthew 6:28). Like T.S. Eliot’s roses, which ‘have the look of flowers that are looked at’, the lilies are to be contemplated for their own sake, not seen through the lens of what they might be for us: decoration, for instance, or the subject of a painting.
Like T.S. Eliot’s roses, which ‘have the look of flowers that are looked at’, the lilies are to be contemplated for their own sake.
Christ’s comment on the lilies casts light on what binds Zen and Christianity, for Graham: the notion of non-attachment. This a central theme that runs through Graham’s book: both Christ and the Buddha enjoin us to shed our prejudices, likes, dislikes, hopes and fears and see the world as it really is. Cardinal Newman speaks to us of the world ‘behind the veil’. For the Buddhist, this veil is maya: an ignorance whose fabric is woven out of the expressions of our conscious ego, our sense of ‘me’. Reflective Catholics, suggests Graham, would have no problem agreeing. Nor would they have any trouble agreeing with the solution: to cease craving and clinging to worldly things and trust that they will be provided for — in the Catholic tradition, by God:
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. (Matthew 6:25).
Not to be attached is not to view the world as something that is to be manipulated for our purposes. It is not to impose ourselves on the world, in other words: not to to grasp at it, but simply to live it. This is why, for Graham, Christ says that ‘whoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it’ (Matthew 6:25). We must forget ourselves, to quote Pablo d’Ors, in order to find out who we truly are. That quotation would seem to betray what, for Graham, may be an essential difference between Zen and Christianity: Zen does not recognise the God that will provide us with the things we give up with ourselves.
Another theme that runs through Graham’s book is one that finds expression almost word for word in d’Ors’ Biography of Silence: that our culture is too intellectualised. An approach to religion that is chiefly cerebral empties it of its experiential essence, so that those who have not had an experience or even intimation of the divine wind up rejecting it on the grounds that it ‘does not make sense’. But God, as St. Thomas teaches us, is found above and beyond knowledge: ‘Si comprehendis, non est Deus.’ Zen, in its independence from words, exalts that experience which, for Graham, is also at the heart of Christianity. So too is the experience of enlightenment, or satori. Graham cites the writings of Julian of Norwich, St. John of the Cross, St. Catherine of Siena and, of course, Aquinas, who dismissed his Summa as ‘so much straw’ after having a powerful experience of the divine.
An approach to religion that is chiefly cerebral empties it of its experiential essence.
The technical problem with such a book as Zen Catholicism is what Gerald Kaufman, to whom Graham honourably dedicates a post-script, calls ‘gerrymandering’. Theologians are always moving the goalposts to affirm their own beliefs, Kaufman claims, as though—to change the metaphor—merely assembling a jigsaw puzzle whose final image will always be the same. Graham persuasively shows that Kaufman himself is partial to a little gerrymandering in his own work, while questioning what might lie behind the strident tone in which Kaufman condemns religious tradition. But one must be intellectually honest enough to admit that there are many credible ways in which to interpret any religious writing, and any theologian, exegete or commentator must be judicious in his citations and lucid in his explanations.
And lucidity—which I am afraid to say is not a characteristic of much modern academic writing—is perhaps what elevates this book to such heights. If Graham can use a familiar word, he does so. If he can use a simple construction, he does so. He chooses Biblical passages that any child in the West will have come across. He wears his considerable scholarship lightly. He is fair-minded, open-hearted and welcoming. To paraphrase Martin Amis, he is the kind of author who offers you his best seat and best wine. In his writing, he is categorically not in the business of confusing, let alone in concealing. His talent is in showing. And in that respect, the book reflects its content. There is meaning behind the words, Graham says. Zen may stress experience over language, but do not for one second believe those who say that Catholicism lacks a rich mystical core.
