Reading the Parables of Jesus as Koans.

My Scriptural justification for reading certain passages from Holy Writ as koans!

Matthew 13:11-12

“Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”

Matthew 13:52

“He said to them, ‘Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.’”

In less than a decade, by most reckoning, we will mark two thousand years since the death of Jesus. I mention that not because I am counting the years for any particular purpose, but more to emphasize that over these many millennia the emphasis that Christians place on various aspects of his teaching has changed. It is quite clear that most early Christians in the first hundred years expected the Second Coming, and when that didn’t happen as quickly as expected, they began to refocus, and some would argue, radically alter the Teaching of the early communities.

An Indian Buddhist friend has just transferred to a University in America’s Bible Belt. Of course, some of his new friends and classmates there have encouraged him to start reading the Bible. Manik is finding some of the language and imagery jarring. I am a Christian by birth and have spent many years as a Jesuit. When I read passages from the Gospels now, the canonical ones as well as the Gnostic sources, but also the Hebrew Bible, with the possible exception of some of the prophetic writings, I find it jarring too.

But when I read one of the parables of Jesus that Manik mentioned, the Parable of the Tares, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, I thought, oh, why don’t I read this as if it were a koan? If I am going to demand that Christians give up some of the unyielding ideology of their belief systems, why not try to delve into the parts of the tradition that still speak to me, or where I suspect that there might be some treasure?

The early followers of Jesus were very clear about one teaching: the Kingdom of God is at hand. When it didn’t appear in a way they might have recognized in the early sayings of Jesus, they transformed their hope, looked for the Kingdom with fresh eyes, and took action. They realized that this process itself was as endless and as boundless as the love they saw in Christ Jesus. They began to see the Kingdom wherever and whenever it appeared, and they made it appear when only they could envision it. That place is always right here. That moment is always right now.

The Great American Delusion

Americans have been subjected to religious indoctrination almost from the very beginning of our great experiment by Divines with shoddy religious training, and we’ve paid big bucks for it. We suffered two Great Awakenings that produced some of the most outrageous and hypocritical religious movements seen since the Roman Senate decreed that Julius Caesar deserved a cult statue, and a temple shared with the goddess Clementia. Mark Antony was appointed as his priest, and Caesar was to be invoked under the name Jupiter Julius. What are we going to call Rex Donald? His Divine “whatever-I-can-lick-grope-steal-and-get-away-with " Holiness?

The Evangelical Bible-thumping of our beloved forebears is the root of the religious sham afoot today. And the New Age is not exempt! “Teachers” of MacMinfulness, hucksters with a full hundred hours of meditation training under their various colored robes, earn a certificate, and charge big bucks for some humbo jumbo gibberish, laced with tongue-twisting cliches designed to anesthetize those of us subjected to the demands of a dehumanizing corporate culture that has made profit the Golden Calf.

Read Elmer Gantry, the 1927 American satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis, which satirizes religious activity in evangelistic circles and public attitudes toward it during the 1920s. It was banned in Boston. The novel centers on Elmer Gantry, an ambitious, corrupt minister who rises to prominence in the Methodist Church despite his hypocrisy, sexual misconduct, and opportunism.

Lewis researched the novel in 1926 with the assistance of the Unitarian minister Leon Milton Birkhead, a former Methodist whose knowledge of American religious life helped shape the work. May I suggest that this might be the next worthwhile spiritual foray for James Ismael Ford?

The head of Donald Trump’s religious office is televangelist and pastor Paula White-Cain. I’ve written about her elsewhere: Call it by its correct name: Lying. “Don’t believe a word coming out of the mouth of Rev. Paula White-Cain or Bishop Robert Emmet Patrick Barron!”

The forked-tongue Bishop Baron ought to shut his filthy mouth and study the career of soon-to-be-canonized Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. Sheen knew five languages: Greek, German, Italian, Latin, and French. He spoke French, Italian, and Latin fluently. He studied at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where his coursework was entirely in French and Latin, and he even practiced television scripts in French and Italian. Biographers noted that he was so comfortable with Latin that he naturally "thought in Latin".He had a reading/working knowledge of Greek and German, which he used heavily in his academic and philosophical studies.

After 6 years of seminary training required for ordination, he pursued an additional five years of rigorous higher education to prepare for his intellectual mission in the Church: He earned a Doctor of Canon Law degree in 1920 in one year from The Catholic University of America; after three years at the Catholic University of Leuven he earned a PhD in Philosophy by 1923; he studied in Rome for another year, earning a Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1924 from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. He authored over 70 books.

Bishop Baron can’t get his tongue out of The Divine Pussy-Grabbing Holiness’s asshole long enough to quote our Dear Lord’s sayings correctly or learn the values Fulton Sheen espoused in his modern rendition of the Teaching: “Life is Worth Living.”

Wildflowers

Song by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt ‧ 1987

The hills were alive with wildflowers and I

Was as wild, even wilder than they

For at least I could run

They just died in the sun

And I refused to just wither in place

Just a wild mountain rose

Needing freedom to grow

So I ran fearing not where I'd go

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

And the flowers I knew

In the fields where I grew

Were content to be lost in the crowd

They were common and close

I had no room for growth

And I wanted so much to branch out

So I uprooted myself from my home ground and left

Took my dreams and I took to the road

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

I grew up fast and wild

And I never felt right

In a garden so different from me

I just never belonged

I just longed to be gone

So the garden one day set me free

I hitched a ride with the wind

And since he was my friend

I just let him decide where we'd go

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

Just a wild rambling rose seeking mysteries untold

No regret for the path that I chose

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

https://youtu.be/rlbDaY7UFD4?si=ENlloj6POzL_f4Ye

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Dolly Parton

Wildflowers lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Jesuit Zen Roshis, a Roster

Several questions about Jesuits authorized to teach Zen meditation led me to put together this roster:

Zen and the Birds of Appetite was my first exposure to Zen when I was in the Jesuits. Even though it seemed very esoteric to my very doctrinaire way of thinking, it made a powerful impression. When Pedro Arrupe became the General of the Society, I wondered why he did his meditation on a zafu, and that led me to discover the role of Father Enomiya-Lassalle, who, in 1979, was the first of several Jesuits to have his realization authenticated by his teacher, Yamada Kōun (though because of the time and place, it was not initially made public).

Almost two decades ago, while Tom Marshall was alive, I examined the letters Francis Xavier sent to Ignatius of Loyola between 1546-1548 describing his encounter with a Zen Master, whom he calls Nixnit. It is the first recorded meeting between a Christian priest and a Zen monk. Here is a link to my rather lengthy paper, Buddha S.J.:

At the time, I said that this encounter almost made it inevitable that a few Jesuits in the future would find their way into a zendo.

I began my list of Jesuit Zen masters with Father Lassalle, who is the first in this lineage. Four have been publicly authorized to teach. Other Catholic religious have finished their koan training, most notably Father Pat Hawk C.Ss.R., Bob Aitken’s heir, and the Benedictine monk Willigis Jäger, who was also Yamada’s student. Father Kennedy, in Maezumi Roshi’s lineage, has also given transmission to Kevin Hunt Sensei, a Trappist monk from St. Joseph's Abbey at Spencer, Mass., a sister monastery of Merton’s Gethsemani.

Yamada Kōun also gave transmission to Sister Elaine MacInnes, a member of the Canadian order of Our Lady’s Missionaries. I associate her with the Jesuit Zen Masters because of her friendship with Father Lassalle, and because she began sitting with Lassalle in his zendo at Shinmeikutsu when she first went to Japan.

I cannot even guess where their Zen practice will lead; I hope their work will open and enrich the spiritual lives of many people.

Jesuit Roshis, senseis, scholars and other meditation teachers:

Father Hugo Makibi Enomiya-Lassalle, S.J., Roshi (1898–1990). In 1956, Enomiya-Lassalle began studying Zen with Harada Daiun Sogaku. Following Harada's death in 1961, Enomiya-Lassalle became an apprentice of one of Harada's students, Yamada Kōun. Yamada authorized Father LaSalle to teach independently in 1969.

Father Heinrich Dumoulin, S.J. (1905 – 1995). Father Dumoulin was never authorized to teach the formal practice of Zen, but his scholarly work has influenced the progress of Zen in the West probably more than any other historian of religion.

Father William Thomas G. Hand, S.J. (1920 - 2005). Yamada formally accepted Father Hand as his student and worked with him for seven or eight years. However, when Hand decided not to complete his formal koan training and instead return to the United States to establish the East-West Center at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, Yamada gave him his “blessing.”

Father Niklaus Brantschen, S.J., Roshi. In 1988, Yamada Roshi gave him “teaching competence.” In 1999, he received "inka shōmei" from Tetsugen Bernard Glassman Roshi.

Rubén L. F. Hábito (born c. 1947) is a Filipino Zen Rōshi of the Sanbō Kyōdan lineage. Yamada Kōun gave him dharma transmission in 1989 while he was still a Jesuit. After he left the Jesuits in 1989, he founded the Maria Kannon Zen Center in 1991, a lay organization in Dallas, Texas.

Father William Johnson, S.J. (30 July 1925 — 12 October 2010) was an Irish Jesuit influenced by Shigeto Oshida and later practiced Zen under the guidance of Yamada Kōun. Johnson insisted on continuing to recite the Jesus Prayer despite Yamada's contrary instructions, which ended their master-disciple relationship. He later met Bernard Lonergan, and further study of Lonergan influenced him. (I am almost certain that I was also at that summer session at Boston College that Lonergan taught in 1968). He had many Jesuit disciples practicing his hybrid Zen-Christian mystical prayer.

Father Gregory Meyers, C.Ss.R., Roshi, was authorized by Yamada’s son, Yamada Ryôun Roshi. I mention him because he took over the Zendo at Mercy Center in Burlingame from Father William Thomas Hand, S.J.

Father Kakichi Kadowaki, S.J., Roshi (1926 - 2017). Father Kadowaki practiced Zen under both Yamada Roshi and Omori Sogen. He achieved authorization as a Zen master (Roshi) from the Rinzai Master Sogen. He wrote “Zen and the Bible.”

Father Robert Edward Jinsen Kennedy, S.J., Roshi (born June 20, 1933), is in Maezumi Roshi’s White Plum Asanga. He was a student of both Yamada and Maezumi. Tetsugen Bernard Glassman Roshi gave him formal inka in 1997.

Brother Tom Marshall, S.J. (1922 - 2010). Tom was ordained a Soto priest by Les Kaye, Roshi, at Kannon Do in Los Altos and completed koan training with Gempo Roshi in Utah. Tom never formally taught; though, in many ways, like Issan Dorsey Roshi, he taught me all I needed to know to practice Zen wholeheartedly.

Father Ama Samy, S.J., Gen'un-ken, Roshi, received authorization to teach from Yamada Roshi in 1989.

Father Mathew Cyril Antony, S.J., Jnana Bodhi Ken, Roshi, is a dharma heir of Father Samy. Father Anthony runs Bodhi “Little Flower” Zendo, which Father Samy established in Tamil Nadu, India.

_______________

Additions (after I posted my roster, I stumbled across a post on Patheos by James Ismael Ford and uncovered two more former Jesuits who have been authorized to teach Zen):

Stefan Bauberger (1969), School of the Heart's Ground, Nordwald Zendo; former Jesuit; left the Jesuits in 2025; Father Samy’s dharma heir.

Johannes Fischer, Bodhi Ken (1957), former Jesuit, Zen Circle Sinntal; Father Samy’s dharma heir.