Reflections of a Christian Zen Practitioner
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by Kim Boykin
"A big part of my struggle with my spiritual practice was that I had smashed up against the limits of my own willpower. The style of practice at the Zen monastery at that time felt willful, effortful, goal-oriented, and that was my own approach to Zen practice. I thought it was all about pushing for kensho-an enlightenment experience, or 'breakthrough'-but I hadn't had any breakthroughs. Buddhism is supposed to be about liberation from suffering, but I was still miserable."Both Zen and Christianity teach that our liberation is not something we can earn or create or achieve, but it was in the Christian tradition, through my retreats with Eleanor [my spiritual director], that I finally started to understand what this means. I had begun to recognize the vital importance of grace. I had begun to recognize that if my liberation depended on me or anything I did, it was hopeless.
"Gerald May's Will and Spirit...helped clarify my struggles and gave me some vocabulary for the 'willingness' of true contemplative practice as opposed to the 'willfulness' with which I had been practicing Zen. I had been trying to use my spiritual practice to get what I wanted, when spiritual practice is actually about being with reality as it is. I had been trying to satisfy my own will instead of opening to God's will. No wonder my practice had been such a struggle!
"With this new insight into spiritual practice, I thought that now I could get back into Zen and practice willingness instead of willfulness. But whenever I started to think about it, I would immediately get caught up in thoughts about how it would be good for me. That is, I would immediately fall back into making my Zen practice an instrument of my will. So I decided I'd better give my Zen practice a rest for a while longer, since it seemed only to exacerbate my willfulness.
"An insight I was missing at the time was that of course I would practice willingness willfully-that's natural and inevitable-and my willfulness could be treated like any other wandering thought that arises during meditation: notice the willful thought, and return my attention to the present moment. Notice, return, notice, return, notice, return-that's what Zen practice is. It was fine if I kept noticing myself thinking, "I will be willing!" But I didn't get that then."
"Having decided to formally become a Christian, I realized that although I had done intensive spiritual practice in the Zen tradition, which bears strong resemblances to certain elements of the Christian contemplative tradition, I had very little experience with the basic Christian spiritual practice of verbal prayer. I said all the communal prayers that are part of the Mass, but I had trouble praying on my own. I had a lot of inhibitions and questions about prayer."
"...Karl Rahner, one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, assured me that no matter the depth of my doubts about God and Christianity, I could still pray. 'If you think your heart cannot pray,' he says, 'then pray with your mouth, kneel down, fold your hands, speak loudly, even if it all seems like a lie to you (it is only the desperate self-defense of your unbelief before its death, which is already sealed)....' Although I couldn't will my heart to have a stronger faith, I could certainly will my body to take a posture of prayer and my mouth to say some words of prayer. Rahner assured me that not only was there no hypocrisy in this, but it was vital that I express my half a mustard seed of faith in this way.
"My favorite definition of prayer also comes from Karl Rahner, who says that prayer is opening our hearts to God. In the most familiar type of prayer, verbal or discursive prayer, we open our hearts to God using words. We talk to God, either aloud or mentally. But that's not the only way to pray. Christianity also has a tradition of contemplative prayer, in which we open our hearts to God without words or with very few words. We heed God's call in Psalm 46: 'Be still, and know that I am God.'"
The previous excerpts are from Kim's book, Zen for Christians: A Beginner's Guide, published by Jossey-Bass (A Wiley Imprint), 2003. Copyright (c)2003 by Kim Boykin. Used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Kim and her husband, Brian, are both graduates of Shalem's Group Leaders Program, which is now called "Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups & Retreats."
© 2008 The Shalem Institute.