An Open Letter to Hans Küng

Originally posted May 18th 2011

This post is a response to Fr. Küng's open letter to the Bishops of the Roman Church published in the Irish Times [reposted in full on Orate Fratres]. The cover of Time was on June 7th, 2010 issue. It took me more than a few hundred words to say half the message of this graphic.

 

Dear Father Küng:

 

I want to tell you how much I appreciate your stand against the thousand-year-old tradition of priestly celibacy in the Latin rite. I admire both its eloquence and urgency.

 

However, I would be uncomfortable if you were to take the lead in the effort to reverse this policy of mandatory celibacy.

 

It is not that I don’t find your arguments cogent. They are.

 

It is not that I disagree with your overall assessment that the insistence on papal infallibility is a huge blunder. It was and will continue to be. I admire your conduct after you were disciplined for arguing against the declaration of Vatican I and refused to back down.

 

It is not that I disagree with your analysis that the insulation of the priestly class has resulted in a massively dysfunctional organization that relies on secrecy, manipulation, and force to preserve its power. The current crisis has demonstrated that beyond any shadow of a doubt.

 

It is not, as some may argue, that you might appear to have an ax to grind with the current leadership, Benedict and his Curia. You have never denied that you do, but have always maintained an admirable level of civility. Too many revolutionary leaders have stepped out of prison and sounded the call to arms when the political winds change.

 

It is not that you might appear to be fanning the winds of scandal. The world is dong it; the press is doing it; religious leaders of other churches are doing it; rank and file members of the Latin rite are doing it; the elite leadership in Rome themselves are doing it through their defensive, strident, and often just plain stupid pronouncements.

 

If the Latin rite's leadership in Rome refuses to take responsibility, no one can force them to. No one can force them to do anything. They have insulated themselves against any outside moral force. Even if we could tell them how to resolve the untenable situation they have created—if those who have been gravely injured and those who are rising up in indignation could agree on a remedy—that would still only satisfy those groups. It might be a good first step, but it does not address the root problem.

 

It is the failed leadership itself that has to decide what they must do to take responsibility for the crisis. As far as I can see, the only solution is for them to make themselves accountable to the Teaching of Jesus. What they’ve done so far has not measured up. They will use their authority to claim that it does. Their professional class, priests and lay people in their employ, will claim that it does, but so far, public reaction indicates that few people believe them. I don't believe them. Please keep pointing to the failure of their argument.

 

In 1517 when Luther nailed 95 good reasons why the papal Ponzi scheme devised to finance the grandiose rebuilding of the mother church of the Latin rite was not in accord with the Teaching of the Gospel, the revolt that ensued was not just about money. Luther unleashed a complete reexamination of the Christian life: how to live a good life, your “works," and what constitutes sin and failure when faith counts on the Gift of God’s grace and forgiveness.

 

So far, the public debate, the accusations and recriminations, the posturing have all been about the role of the church’s leadership in a cover-up. The fact that the crimes themselves touch human sexuality at its core is only spoken of very carefully and obliquely. No one yet dares examine the perversion of Church teaching on sexuality. Luther began a revolution in the way humans were able to view their relationship with the transcendent. I hope to see a powerful movement that will free us from the tyranny of onerous teachings on sexuality that are steeped in denial and negativity.

 

Hans Küng by David Levine

And that is why I hope that you, Father Küng, do not assume the leadership in ending the 1000-year-old celibate stranglehold on Latin rite.

 

Let a whole new generation of powerful, thoughtful, skillful, faithful Christian leaders emerge. Let them begin to analyze the structures of our economic and political systems and find ways to make every voice heard, especially the ones that Jesus loved, the poor and disenfranchised. Let men and women assume equal leadership roles in the church so that every person who asks for grace, blessing and forgiveness is welcomed. Let them envision a new spirituality of sex so that every man and woman can enjoy its mystery, grace, and wonder in love and freedom. And that might be only a small beginning of the list of their accomplishments. Our God is generosity and love.

 

There are some who think that the role of religion in our 21st century lives is far less powerful than 500 years ago, and this crisis will fade away. I hope it doesn’t. If it does, we will lose an opportunity to find God once again in our lives.

 

The early followers of Jesus were very clear about one teaching: the Kingdom of God is at hand. And when it didn’t appear in any recognizable way, 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.

 

 

For another article by Fr. Küng, go to http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/apr/01/why-celibacy-should-be-abolished/

Notes on Jesuit Zen Adepts & other Christian Zen Masters

Jesuits enter the Zen hall

Father Enomiya-LaSalle, S.J. is buried in Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, he was walking only eight miles from the epicenter of the atomic explosion that destroyed the city. He survived. He also was a Zen student for the remaining 45 years of his life, attaining fluency with the practice of zazen and a mastery of the koans that was fully recognized by his teacher, Yamada Koun Zenshin. He wrote about his long experience with the practice, and led many fellow Jesuits into the sphere of zazen, including Pedro Arrupe who was his superior in Japan and Ignatius’s successor as the General of the Society during the time that I was a Jesuit.

My friend and teacher, David Weinstein Roshi, was a student of Yamada Roshi during Father LaSalle’s last years, and often saw him coming and going at the zendo in Kamakura. He worked with his teacher almost until the day he died. David told me this story. One morning after zazen, after Yamada had finished seeing students who were working on a koan, he was standing next to Yamada as LaSalle was leaving. Yamada turned to David and said, “There is the man who taught me how to apply the koans in my life.”

After reading Xavier’s letters to Ignatius describing his encounter with Ninjitsu it seemed inevitable that some Jesuits would eventually enter a Zen hall, and with the discipline learned from their training under the Spiritual Exercises, some would complete their koan training and teach Zen.

I begin my acknowledgement of Jesuit and other Christian Zen Masters with Fr. LaSalle. His example and teaching influenced most of these men and one woman who became Zen teachers in their own right. I cannot even guess where their Zen practice will lead, but I hope that their work will open and enrich the spiritual lives of many people.

Fr. Hugo Enomiya-LaSalle, S.J., Roshi (dec. 1990)

Fr. William Thomas Hand, S.J. (dec. 2005)
Fr. Willigis Jäger, O.S.B., Roshi (dec. 2020)
Bro. Tom Marshall, S.J. (dec. 2010)
Fr. Bill Johnson, S.J. (dec. 2010)
Fr. Pat Hawk, CSsR, Roshi (dec. 2012)
Fr. Kakichi Kadowaki, S.J., Roshi (dec. 2017)
Fr. Niklaus Brantschen, S.J., Roshi
Ruben Habito, (former Jesuit), Roshi
Bro. Kevin Hunt, OCSO, Trappist, Sensei
Rev. James Ismael Ford, UU Minister, Roshi
Fr. Robert Jinsen Kennedy, S.J., Roshi

Sr. Elaine MacInnes, Our Lady’s Missionaries, Roshi
Rev. David Parks-Ramage, UCC, Roshi
Fr. Ama Samy, S.J., Roshi.


December 12th, 2008
Further Notes on Jesuit Zen Adepts

Not including the name of Fr. William Johnston in my article original “Buddha, S.J.” was a major oversight on my part that will be corrected. Morgan Zo Callaghan and I have yet to approve the final galley proof for Intimate Meanderings, and besides, at least with regard to Zen study, nothing is ever really final.

And a special thanks to Paul Kelly. I was very moved by these few sentences from his email which was forwarded to me: ¨Twenty years later, I was led to Zen practice by his best book, to me, at least: The Still Point. We corresponded by long distance airmail -- it was 1974 -- and he helped me begin Zen practice by simple, yet detailed instructions, and his own prayers on my behalf. All by mail. As each one of his books came out, I bought it, read it, kept it in a special place on my little library shelves. I owe him much.” This reminds me of many stories that I heard about Bob Aitken over the years. Students would write to all the Zen Centers in the US asking for guidance and, time after time, student after student, Bob was the only head of a practice center who responded, and usually with a personal letter, not a mimeographed application for a practice period. The encounter with Zen, though it may begin with reading, at least from my point of view, takes place outside books, in real human contact.

I have been trying to figure out how Johnston escaped my notice. First of all, I began formal practice about 20 years ago, not as a Jesuit or even a believer—in fact quite the opposite. Once inside the zendo, I began asking questions, both about the practice and its history. To my astonishment, the most recommended, and by far the most complete, thorough, sympathetic, accessible and scholarly work was the three-volume history of Zen Buddhism by Fr. Heinrich Dumoulin, another Jesuit from Sophia. (Phil Whalen called him Douggie DeMoulin, as if he were an old friend. Even as Phil was going blind, when I asked him a question, he would often point in the direction of a shelf in his extensive library and say, Douggie has something to say about that, go look in the second volume -- on the second shelf of the third cabinet, Chapter 5, page 279, that will be the right hand page, the third paragraph from the bottom. And damned if he wasn’t right on most of the time).

All this to say, my discovery of the Jesuit-Zen connection came from my narrow Zen point of view, and I studied, read priest practitioners who had connections to the Zen teachers I worked with. I tended to stay away from those who set out to make connections between Zen meditation and Christian prayer. There was a definite anti-Christian stance in some American Zen circles, a reaction against the Church of our fathers, and to some degree this prejudice is still in place. The first book that I read that made that connection for me, and one in which I felt the power of Zen, was Fr. Kadowaki’s Zen and the Bible. Kadowaki linked his realizations working with certain koans to stories from the Gospel of Jesus, especially stories and sayings that he connected with the themes from the 4 weeks of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: the Kingdom, the Three Classes of Men, and the Three Degrees of Humility. He opened my inquiry into what was happening among Christians who practiced Zen.

There are at least two other Jesuits I neglected, besides Johnston, whose work I am unfamiliar with. Fr. deMello has been mentioned many times by some in a group of former Jesuits and Jesuits, the Compañeros. I have at least 2 of his books in my library that I have only skimmed. And then there is Dan O’Hanlon whom I met when I was a JSTB. It was only after his tragic death that I discovered how respected he was in Zen circles. In a conversation with Sonja Fenne Margulies, a dharma heir of Kobin Chino Roshi, she spoke about Dan with such love and respect that I regretted not having gotten to know him better when I was up on holy hill of the GTU.

And finally, I feel now that the Zen-Jesuit connection is not just a one-way street—that it is not just what Zen can contribute to the prayer life of Christians. Christian practice has something tangible to offer a Zen student. I want to tell a story about what may have been the first Mass said in a zendo. I have heard that Fr. LaSalle said Mass during retreats in Japan, Fr. Kennedy said Mass at ZCLA, but before that, in 1991, my friend, Fr. Joe Devlin, S.J., of the New England Province said Mass in the zendo at the Hartford Street Center.

I had asked Joe to come by and say mass for the Catholic men in the AIDS Hospice. It was a Saturday evening. He was due to arrive at 5 or so, and I was scrambling, assembling a few basics, bread and wine, and a tablecloth for the dining room table. Issan, who was at the time in the final stages of HIV disease came downstairs in his bathrobe, He asked when Joe was due to arrive and see what I was doing. After I explained, he said, “Mass will be in the zendo,” and took over directing me in all the preparations with the same care that he would have given to a full-blown Zen ritual. He went back upstairs and came down dressed in his Zen robes, and greeted Joe at the door with a hug and kiss, thanking him for coming and telling him that Mass would be in our chapel, the zendo, and I would get him anything he needed.

Issan and 5 or 6 of us sat in meditation posture on cushions while Joe improvised the Liturgy, beginning with the rite of confession and forgiveness. When it came time to read from the New Testament, Joe took a small white, well-worn Bible out of a pocket in his jacket, and told us that his mother had told him that the following story contained all the essentials for a Christian life. Then he read Luke 11, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Issan sat giving his entire attention to Joe and the Mass, but I couldn’t get a read on how he was reacting. The next day, I found out that he had fallen in love with Luke's parable, and Joe.

Sunday mornings were the usual community gathering of the Hartford Street community, and Issan began to talk about Fr. Joe and the liturgy. He turned to me and asked, “What was the little white book that he read from?” Startled, I said that was the New Testament. “Oh,” said Issan, “it must have been in Latin when I heard it as an altar boy—or something, but it was exactly how we should lead our lives as Buddhists.” He then said that during the Mass he had the experience of really being forgiven and that the experience had allowed him to feel such peace with his early religious training. Joe and I had dinner the night before he flew back to Boston. I told him about what Issan had said. A few days later, the small New Testament that had been in jacket for years arrived in an envelope addressed to Issan. He would die 6 months later, and, during one of our last meetings, asked me to thank Joe again for the zendo mass after he was gone. I did. And that New Testament which passed from the pocket of Joe’s jacket to Issan’s room at Hartford Street is now on my altar.

I’ve included some of their books in the Christian-Zen Bibliography.

Old wyves tales, covered bridges & the best 19th century structural technology

Old wyves tales, covered bridges & the best 19th century structural technology

In our rush to solve whatever crisis is in our face, we can trample over people, neglect our own best instincts, or craft solutions worse than the problem that consumes us. I have come to believe that human conversation requires a protected passage over the deep ravines and dangerous waters of our own thoughts before we find the way through.

I also sense that solutions already exist, that they don’t have to be entirely invented, but, in our panic – yes that’s a strong word – we have lost  sight of them. Then a friend’s evocative description of a trip through the dazzling New Hampshire foliage of early October inspired me! Of course, the path of our thoughts needs the safety of covered bridges.

I became obsessive in my search for anything about covered bridges. 

In 1909, the Oxford city fathers bridged Logic Lane, a short alley that carried the name from the 1300’s. As you will see from the picture, it is reminiscent of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, but the Logical Bridge has more of a ring to it and, to my mind, might lead to a living solution, not the gallows.

I found examples of bridges dating from the 14th century, as well as more proximate ancestors of the New England design from Germany. I discovered the 1852 Philippi Covered Bridge across Tygart Valley River that is still part of the US Highway system and, according to legend, the site of a secret meeting between Lincoln and Jefferson to discuss the terms of surrender before the end of the Civil War.

Now onto old wives' tales. Familiar with New England seasons, town squares, bright maples and covered bridges, I am a sucker for almost any romantic notion that can be suggested, especially when the fantasy is confirmed by a heart stopping experience.

Very early one morning in the late fall of 1965, before Highway 89 was finished, I was speeding back to Hanover New Hampshire from Boston. Somewhere between Concord and Lebanon, I lost the road: a sudden cold snap coupled with the moisture of a slight rain, the bridge came up before I had time to adjust my speed. The car spun 180 degrees and slid 200 feet horizontally, never touching a guard rail. It was an eternal second before I reached the other side, gently nudging the car forward into a shallow drainage ditch with what speed remained.

From that time until this morning, I believed that the purpose of the covered bridge was to save speeding fools like me - the surface temperature of the suspended roadway cooled more quickly than the ground! And with no town plows to spread sand and chemicals, a quaint roof might have saved me if luck had not been in my corner and the road had not been deserted!

This morning I began to explore why those tight-fisted old Yankees wasted all that money on fancy roofs that might have saved me if I were driving my mother’s 1962 Ford station wagon on winter roads at a dangerous speed in the early to mid 19th century, the highpoint for covered bridge construction.

So why a covered bridge? The structural strength of a rectangular box is far stronger than any one of its surfaces suspended between two points. This allowed for study bridges for transportation and trade using heavy timbers; steel I beams were not available before the Civil War. Hell, I should have known Yankees only care for income producing projects.

My love of words drove me to the dictionary to see if I could discover the roots of “a time, place, or means of connection or transition” - the second meaning of bridge. I discovered a hidden link, a reference to god language! Violà.

Middle English brigge, from Old English brycg; akin to Old High German brucka bridge, Old Church Slavic bruvuno beam.

There it is! When building bridges, raise high the church beam! Who can pronounce, bruvuno? I say sing it! (Bridge also means a musical passage linking two sections of a composition). Trust in God and love for one another are like a covered bridge.

In this first post, I have tried to lay out a few of the things that I will try to do in the future: I want to look at the way that we have framed the questions, the puzzles that face us; then, try to distinguish fantasy, nostalgia, and illogic in the conversation; and finally, see where we lost the road. That might be just the first step to finding our way. Let's see.

This is a conversation. Hopefully there will be more than one person talking. That is not a conversation. At best that’s is a monologue, but rant might also apply. Let’s dream of bridges and talk to one another.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Originally posted April 28th, 2010

“Very early I learned to value and respect words, and I also uncovered a passion for reaching my own conclusions.”

When I started to consider the origin of my values, a memory of my kindergarten teacher began to emerge. I struggle for real memories of early age, but this much is clear--she was a wiry woman with a tight bun who seemed a hundred years old, and, at least from the taste of decades-old feelings, someone who did not like children.

She ran her kindergarten in an upper room at the Methodist church that stood at the base of the triangular New England town green in Nichols. Her fixed ideas were shaped by the way Yankee families held that children should behave from time immemorial, or at least as far back as the 400 odd years since our religious fanatic forbearers fled Europe, and childrearing was fundamentally religion. My guess is that she had no love for Dr. Montessori who was, after all, a Catholic.

She was one of the elder “Misses” in town, who, along with the two spinsters who ran the library, always stood for us children as a clear demarcation between our families and single women who obviously preferred the company of their own sex. We were told that because spinsters were just not lucky enough to find husbands, they were forced into a world of loneliness and the company of other women. This we learned by listening to the disdain in the pauses between sentences of our parents’ conversations.

My own experience has lightened any ill will that I might have carried through the years, and perhaps even added a touch of magic to the story that I am going to tell.

I did not want to nap when were told in a voice that did not beckon negotiation: “Put your heads down on the desk.” I would defiantly look up and examine her, and another woman, her enforcer, who were clearly happy to be relieved from having to entertain, occupy or educate their charges. Several times my mother chastised me for not following instructions—she had been warned that I was very “willful”. My response to my mother was probably a complaint, setting the tone for a long battle in our relationship. I would bet the farm that her response was “That is the way things are. Some things are unchangeable and, besides, you are in no position to think for yourself.” So of course, I began to think for myself even if it was entirely reactive.

But there is one memory that comes back to me. It has even appeared in my dreams. I call it the “blue redbird.” We had coloring books that had rudimentary, inelegant, drawings of things-to-be named in the world, mothers and fathers, doctors, siblings and pets, houses and gardens, flowers and birds. The white spaces inside the outlines were labeled with names and colors. On command, in unison, we all opened to a prescribed page, scrambled for the crayons heaped in a pile on a low table in the center of the room, and began filling in the spaces neatly and correctly. Sometimes I would read the labels and oftentimes, not. My coloring was meticulous and colorful. I never had colors bleed from a shirt or cat. I was also very aware of the colors, even at the expense of labels. One day I was carefully coloring a bluebird red. I think it was the woman enforcer who looked over my shoulder and motioned for Frau Dominatrix to come and examine a bird that had been designated blue—clearly.

“Ken that is not a redbird. Can’t you read?”

“Of course I can read, but there are almost no redbirds in Nichols.’

“That was to be a blue-bird. You never going to go anywhere or make something of yourself unless you read and then carefully follow instructions.”

“But I want a redbird!”

“Hush. You have made a very serious mistake. I am going to have a word with your mother.”

I began to cry. And now everyone had turned to look at the boy who wasn’t man enough to hold back his tears.

When my mother arrived in the white station wagon to pick us up, very likely unhappy at the prospect of her two hours in the car with three preschoolers, she was not pleased to hear that I could not read nor follow instructions. She certainly didn’t comfort me. The martinet reflected her own theories of child rearing almost exactly. The kindergarten “Miss” had humiliated me and that meant one less thing that she would have to correct—with any luck.

Why do I consider this an event to be appreciated? I learned that words themselves have consequences and that definitions cannot be assigned arbitrarily. Language was not a child’s game. Language was powerful. It could also become a tool for enforcement.

Rigid language stifled creativity. The blue bird that I had created was far more handsome than the red would have been. The person who had made the drawings of the alleged red bird was inept. The outline of its shape matched the blue birds that gathered on the big nut trees in our side yard. The sting forced me to notice their shapes and coloring with more attention and care.

But I am still left with a crying five-year-old boy with the unwanted attention of fifteen other five-year olds staring at him with fear in their eyes. The cruelty of adults is not entirely a learned behavior, but five-year old kids are perhaps more malleable than adults. Perhaps.

And finally, as a testimony to Creativity, a few words from the poet laureate:

THE PROBLEM OF DESCRIBING COLOR
by Robert Hass

If I said—remembering in summer,

The cardinal’s sudden smudge of red

In the bare gray winter woods—

If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat

Of the girl with pooched-out lips

Dangling a wiry lapdog

In the painting by Renoir—

If I said fire, if I said blood welling from a cut—

Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass scented summer air

On a wind-struck hillside outside Fano—

If I said, her one earring tugging at her silky lobe,

If she tells fortunes with a deck of fallen leaves

Until it comes out right—

Rouged nipple, mouth—

(How could you not love a woman

Who cheats at the Tarot?)

Red, I said. Sudden, red.

[Our Nichols Methodist Church is not pictured, but looked very much like the one that I found in Google images although the main door was set at an angle facing Longhill Road.]

The Meanderings of Francis Xavier

May 22nd, 2010

For my friends Garry Demarest and Tom Marshall, travelers and seekers.

"Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins where it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface: a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events. History is a construct....." Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

My friend Garry Demarest was in Goa a few weeks ago, and I suggested that he and his camera seek out the Basilica of Good Jesus, the final resting place of Francis Xavier. (I never imagined that I'd ever visit myself but now I've been twice!)

April 7th was the 504th anniversary of Xavier’s birth, and though neither Garry nor I were aware of any celebrations, if he had arrived just a few weeks earlier, he could have seen the mummified body of the saint carried in procession from Bom Jesu to the Cathedral across the street for veneration.

Veneration was also part of my request: I was asking Garry to help me complete a spiritual journey by paying respects to Xavier with his fine eye and camera. My experience of spiritual journeys is that they contain precious few endings, and many beginnings. In fact the journey seems like countless beginnings with a common thread. But I had intended my request, and my desire to complete my following Xavier in much the same spirit as I understand Ignatius’s making his confession to a friend before the Battle of Pamplona when no priest was at hand—the first step of his new life after soldiering.

I wanted to end my tracking of the meandering Xavier, but truthfully, I also wanted to be done with Xavier. His adventurous spirit was heroic—you have to admire that. He traveled to the edges of the known world over treacherous waters in vessels were like leaky rowboats compared with what modern mariners sail, and reportedly the man never acquired a sailor’s belly. On the other hand, he made me uncomfortable. His concern for all men and women, when that seemed fully present, was generous and loving, but reading from his own words, he seemed to trip up on a rigid, dogmatic understanding of the world.

Saints are human beings, and, in my view, some of the men and women whose lives Christians are told to admire and imitate also possessed, or were possessed by, some habits of mind that make the world less bright and friendly. Xavier seemed dogmatic, judgmental, and stubborn, always ready to pick a fight. He was also reckless. If just his own life were in jeopardy, I might be able to attribute it to his quirky behavior. However if you read carefully, he also put others in harm’s way. The ethos aboard a Portuguese man of war certainly encouraged bravado in the face of danger, but it seems to have fed a kind of fanaticism in the man. And although he was a guest in Japan, and didn’t know the language and customs, it is clear that he tried to stir up ill will towards Buddhist monks for what he perceived as sexual abuse of minors. He intention was to topple their authority as well as to present the teaching of Jesus. I make no secret that I would favor that outcome in the current scandal of abuse that has rocked the church. Perhaps Xavier forces me to look into a mirror and see the viscous side of my own attitudes.

The reconstructed map of Xavier’s voyages look like meandering, but they were certainly purpose driven, as was he. Francis left Lisbon in 1541 and for the next 11 years traveled many thousands of miles, from Goa to Japan with stops in Sri Lanka, Malacca, the Moluccans. He established missions that were to be staffed by the many Jesuits who followed him. On December 2, 1552, two years after he left Japan, he died on the Island of Changchuen while waiting to gain entrance into the Celestial Empire. His body was dipped in quick lime and returned to Goa 15 months later.

In spite of my personal aversion to parts of Xavier’s personality, I still admire his courage and dedication. As a small tribute to his explorations, I’ve assembled the following images. I’ve supplemented Garry’s shots with others that I found on the Internet. My only criterion was that I found the images interesting or beautiful. Credits for the photos appear if they were available.

The Beginnings of my own Journey

I began reading about Xavier more than 8 years ago when Tom Marshall gave me the 4th volume of Schurhammer’s Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times. I had wanted to read Xavier’s letters to Ignatius from Japan, especially several in which he describes his meeting with the Zen adept “Ninxit,” his transliteration for Ninjitsu, the abbot of the Zen Temple, Kinryu-zan Fukushoji. This was the first encounter between Zen and Christianity. The year was 1549, soon after Xavier landed at Kagoshima on Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan.

I attempted to reconstruct the meeting between Xavier and Ninxit in Buddha S.J. There were some hints that he formed quite a wonderful friendship with Ninjitsu that was not entirely driven by his missionary zeal. Apparently Xavier broke off his relationship when he could not convert Ninjitsu and pushed further north.

Xavier’s letters to Ignatius are the only record of this encounter. Xavier was writing to his friend and mentor, but he narrated with a kind of the formality that I didn’t expect, although my understanding of writing letters conventions 440 years ago is entirely best guesses. Xavier may have taken a very dogmatic tone because intermediaries might read them, or they were what Rome and Portugal wanted to read, or they may have just reflected the rigid side of his personality. He also brought only the most rudimentary linguistic skills to encounter, and seems in no way prepared for the kind of conversation that he tried to have. He was aware of his handicap and, in his letters, recommended thorough linguistic training for the Jesuits who will follow him.

[Signature of St. Francis Xavier taken from a letter to the King John III of Portugal, dated May 16, 1546. The letter itself is in the collection of the 26 Martyrs Museum, Nagasaki, Japan. Go to their catalogue for further inspection. I have not reproduced the entire letter as requested. I am also conscious that the Museum may not be entirely comfortable with my portrayal of Xavier.]

The story with a larger series of images continues at “A saint for the East or the Portuguese expansion into the East?”

References:
Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, Vol. 4: Japan and China, 1549-1552, Georg Schurhammer, Jesuit Historical Institute, 1973

St. Francis Xavier, J. M. Langlois-Berthelot, Jean-Marc Montguerre [pseud.] Trans. Ruth Murdoch, Doubleday, 1963.

Buddha, S.J.

A personal investigation of the first recorded encounter between a Christian and a Zen adept.

The case that I am going to discuss is the first recorded* encounter between Christians and Zen Buddhists, a Jesuit saint and a roshi. It was written down in Latin by one of the first seven Jesuits, Francis Xavier, more than 450 years ago, sent on an uncertain journey from Japan to Lisbon aboard a Portuguese caravel, then carried onto Rome, and delivered into the hands of Ignatius Loyola. 

For me the conversations were so familiar, I could have been a fly on the wall. Sometimes the hair on the back of my neck stood up—the words, the phrasing, even the jokes seemed to be right out of conversations that I’ve had with my own Zen teachers. The tones were so familiar I thought I was remembering them, not hearing them for the first time. I had to restrain myself from finishing sentences.

When Xavier, who was for some reason known as a master of debate, shifts the conversation with the Zen master towards polemical argument, I’m embarrassed—he’s so prickly. But I also realized how much I had missed when I first set out to become a Zen student. I heard echoes from my Jesuit training in my responses to my Zen teachers. 55 years ago when I entered the Society of Jesus, carefully formulated points of doctrine designed to stem the tide of the Reformation were still taught in the curriculum, and for better or worse tended to form a rather rigid collective zeitgeist, It also created an easy target to rebel against.

Xavier records his conversations with “Ninxit,” Ninjitsu, who was the abbot of the Zen Temple, Kinryu-zan Fukushoji. “I spoke many times with some of the most learned of these [Zen monks], especially one to whom all in these parts are greatly attached, both because of his learning, life and the dignity which he has, and because of his great age, since he is nearly eighty years old; and he is called Ninxit, which means ‘Heart of Truth’ in the language of Japan. He is like a bishop among them, and if he were conformed to his name, he would be blessed. In the many conversations which we had, I found him doubtful and unable to decide whether our soul is immortal or whether it dies together with the body; sometimes he agreed with me, and at other times he did not. I am afraid that the other scholars are of the same mind. This Ninxit is such a good friend of mine that it is amazing“ (Schurhammer 1982, p. 85).

Over an extended period in 1549 on Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan, there was a real conversation between friends about what mattered in life. Xavier might have been seeking common ground with Ninjitsu, or, judging by his subsequent actions and recommendations for the missionary effort in Japan, he was looking for the weak points in Buddhist doctrine, the dharma, so he could prove Christianity’s superiority. Xavier read Ninjitsu’s “I don’t know” as doctrinal blindness and the work of the Devil rather than keeping his mind open in an inquiry.

Xavier writes, “Among the nine sects, there is one which maintains that the souls of men are mortal like that of beasts…. The followers of this sect are evil. They were impatient when they heard that there is a hell” (Schurhammer 1982, p. 283). Apparently Xavier informed Ninjitsu that he or some of his monks were condemned to hell because they did not hold to the immortality of the soul. Later Xavier began to regard zazen as a way of repressing the remorse he believed Zen monks must have felt for immoral behavior. Xavier was particularly offended by the sexual license of some monks and same sex liaisons with the acolytes in the temple.

The historian of religion might see this confrontation simply as the opening salvo of religious infighting that accompanied the civil upheaval in feudal Japan that was to last well into the solidification of the Tokugawa shogunate. The Jesuits did become embroiled, taking sides between the warring daimyos, tying their missionary success to military victories of lords who converted to Christianity. Daimyo Omura Sumitada and Koteda Saemon used their new religion to undermine the power of the Buddhist establishment, even burning Buddhist temples, images, and statues. These incidents, unfortunately for the Jesuits, were long remembered and bitterly resented (Boxer, p. 47).

To place Xavier’s arrival in the context of the religious history of medieval Japan, only 49 years later in 1597, as the Tokugawa shoguns continued to consolidate their rule, 26 Christians, including three Jesuits, two of them Japanese converts, and three young boys, were crucified in Nagasaki. That horrifying event marked the beginning of a savage anti-Catholic campaign that continued until the expulsion of all foreigners in the 1630’s, and closed Japan to all but a few trading ships from China and the Netherlands until 1854.

As difficult as it is to recount these events, and as deeply as it touches the central operating myth of Christianity that death freely chosen opens the way to salvation, this reading of history is a search for causal events, not a quest for meaning. These few facts connected with some of the actual written reports from the first Jesuit missionaries have located them in the circumstances of 16th century Japan. Zen is always contained in a specific time and circumstance. 

But, there is another dimension to these moments that lies in the realm of zazen, or what Christians call meditation or contemplation. Let’s take this unique encounter between Xavier and Ninjitsu out of time and space, and look at it through another lens, or really a pair of lenses, the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius and the tradition of the Zen koan, old stories of encounters between teacher and student that are used along with meditation, or zazen, to focus and illuminate the mind.

Allow me to use a meditation technique of Saint Ignatius, the application of the senses, to recreate this meeting. Allow yourself as much latitude as your imagination requires and enter into this world of long ago.

Imagine that you are a Zen monk with many years of meditation training, living in a fairly remote temple high above a harbor where you usually see only fishing boats and perhaps, very occasionally, a Chinese junk. You have heard from your followers when they bring you food from the village that there is a dark haired foreigner making inquiries about local priests. Perhaps you have heard about these barbarians before—Spaniards and Portuguese have been sighted in recent years and have made contact with some people living along the coast. But up to this point, these strangers have been merchants or heavily armed soldiers. The only foreigners you have met hail from Korea and China. You have never met a European.

Perhaps as the abbot of a Zen Temple, you have also heard that this man who wears a simple black robe as unadorned as your own and his Japanese companion have been telling a story about the creation of the world, a great flood, a people who tried to follow a special law given by a god, and a man called Jesus who died and then was returned to life. We know from Xavier’s letters that he did craft an oral version of the life and death of Jesus, connected it with some of the stories from the Hebrew bible, had it translated into Japanese, and memorized it syllabically. Why did he come to stand in the middle of the town square and recite in nearly unintelligible Japanese what was, for most Japanese, a bizarre account of the creation and salvation of the world?

In your training you had worked with Jōshū's answer to a monk who asked him, “Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?”—his answer: “the cypress tree in the courtyard,” the Chinese answer, “庭前柏樹子,” attesting to the origin of the story in the early period of Zen, or Ch’an. Bodhidharma is the mythic remake of an actual monk, or perhaps a group of monks, who traveled to China from India in about the 4th century to plant Buddhism in Chinese culture. He is revered as the 1st Patriarch of Zen. And now, another bearded barbarian was standing at your Temple Gate with a question about life after death.

At this point in Ignatius’ meditation, when you have stepped into your imagination’s recreation of the event, Ignatius introduces another dimension into your meditation, the discernment. Simply allow whatever emotions are present to surface, and then examine them. Do they attract you? Do they produce joy and a sense of well-being? Or perhaps your gut tells you to stay clear. Examine the meeting between Xavier and the Roshi on an emotional level: what was it that drew them to become the best of friends? Perhaps it was simply intellectual interest. Some (Faure, 1982, p. 18) suggest a certain level of interior inquiry that established a common ground. It might also have been the mutual recognition of a person who meditates, a friend, in the deepest Buddhist sense of the word, a bodhisattva or a Bodhidharma.

From my own Zen training I think I understand why the Ninjitsu took Xavier seriously. A strange man who came from the other side of the world stood before him, spoke a strange sounding language, wore clothing that seemed somewhat monkish, and most importantly asked a question that demanded an answer, not rote, not just a yes or a no, but an answer that revealed a clear grasp of its full dimension coming from his experience in meditation. Even if I don’t know what Ninjitsu actually held about the existence of the soul, I do know that he considered the question important—Xavier asking it made it important.

When I first read the fragments of their conversations that Xavier reported in his letters, I experienced a torrent of thoughts, memories, and explanations, everything incomplete and all lying somewhere in my past, just as what I could either reconstruct or imagine of their encounter also lay in the past, 449 years ago, not as old as the koan stories or the gospel of Jesus, but belonging to a very different world than the 21st century.

Despite any difficulties with language, I think that Ninjitsu understood Xavier perfectly, and that might have even provided some answers given the extensive hells that are available in Buddhist cosmology. But perhaps Ninjitsu might have been more interested in allowing this man who had arrived improbably at his temple to figure out an answer for himself. Any question in the right hands can serve as a koan, and if a question lies close to a man or woman’s heart, summing up the purpose they have given to their lives, it can cut to the quick like a sharp knife. Ninjitsu certainly knew that Xavier didn’t risk life and limb to sail into Asia just to ascertain if Buddhists believed in heaven and hell.

We do not know if Xavier attempted to introduce Ninjitsu to the Spiritual Exercises, which might have been a good place to start, but we know for certain that Ninjitsu gave Xavier a critical piece of zazen instruction (Ninjitsu to Xavier, quoted in Faure, p. 17). “[W]hen asked what the monks sitting in zazen were doing, he ironically replied: ‘Some of them are counting up how much they received during the past months from their faithful; others are thinking about their recreations and amusements; in short, none of them are thinking about anything that has any meaning at all.’” (Schurhammer 1982, p. 74).*

Xavier had been trained in spiritual practice, you could even say “converted,” when he did the Spiritual Exercises with Ignatius with its rigorous, defined and orderly Four Weeks, the application of the senses, the invocations, colloquies and formal prayer. These are definitely things to do—so many that the mind has little time or space to move undirected. The closest one gets to listing recreations and amusements might be in the first week, which is a prolonged examination of conscience in the light of one’s purpose on earth. But it has no random or haphazard quality to it—it is directed. Ninjitsu’s comment about what filled the head while meditating had some irony that Xavier didn’t find amusing.

Ignatius also included in his Exercises detailed instructions on prayer. I have already used the application of the senses to recreate the meeting between Xavier and Ninjitsu; The exercise that comes closest to the practice of zazen though is what Ignatius calls the third method of prayer or the prayer of quiet. The instructions are quite simple, that one chooses a prayer that is so familiar that it floats in the consciousness with no effort: “Our Father who art in Heaven,” and then allow one word to rest on each breath. Perhaps that prayer becomes just a word on a breath until the bell rings to signify the end of meditation.

Here is the exact text from the Spiritual Exercises: “The Third Method of Prayer is that with each breath in or out, one has to pray mentally, saying one word of the Our Father, or of another prayer which is being recited: so that only one word be said between one breath and another, and while the time from one breath to another lasts, let attention be given chiefly to the meaning of such word, or to the person to whom he recites it, or to his own baseness, or to the difference from such great height to his own so great lowness.” 

Perhaps Ninjitsu had a similar experience when, as a young monk, he was given zazen instruction. I have every reason to believe that his instruction was not much different than the first time I sat in a Zen hall: simply count your breaths from 1 to 10, and when you lose track, simply redirect your mind back to 1 and begin again.

Although I had been practicing zazen on my own for years, when I officially joined a Zen temple, I asked for meditation instruction. I still recall that meeting vividly. One evening at dusk, after the six o’clock sitting, Zenshin Philip Whalen sat down next to me on the wooden bench overlooking the backyard behind the zendo on Hartford Street. He started by saying that I didn’t “wiggle around a lot” which he thought indicated that I had done some work, and then he asked me about my meditation. I listed my experience, almost like a spiritual curriculum vitae, zazen, vipassana, Tibetan initiations and, of course, the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. Philip listened quietly and then said that it would be best to put all that aside and to try to begin freshly, but as that in itself was impossible, just the intention to have “beginner’s mind” would probably be enough. It was all that most people could do. So I asked, “Well what should I do with my thoughts?” Phil said, “Anything you like. You can’t stop your mind. Don’t even try.”

Over and over in my early meditation interviews with Phil and Issan Dorsey Roshi, the instruction was clear: leave my mind alone. After perhaps a year or so, I was able to be present to my mind just running on, and I began to notice that the flips and loops of repeated inner conversations seemed linked in a way somewhat akin to the kind of insights that I had in psychotherapy. Again Phil cautioned me that zazen was not psychotherapy; that I shouldn’t be satisfied with that insight but continue to sit with an open mind, trying to be in “beginner's mind” as much as I could.

The meaning of Eternal Life

At the very beginning of a koan is a terse report of an actual encounter, usually a question and an answer, between teacher and student. Xavier asked Ninjitsu, “Do you believe in the immortality of the soul?”

From what I can map from the chronology in the letters, Ninjitsu and Xavier met many times over an extended period, at least three but perhaps as long as nine months. It was unlike today’s high-level ecumenical tightly scripted formal conference negotiated in advance to trumpet straightening out the thread of old argument—where the parties separated, where they might converge, or where they agree to disagree.

There are clues that the conversation had elements of spontaneity and laughter. It might have been a time to become friends, to learn to deal with the language differences that separated them, and to consider life from a religious or spiritual perspective. Ninjitsu could have answered Xavier’s question with the famous, often quoted response to the question about what happens after death, “Don’t ask me, I’m not dead yet.” I like it because it makes me laugh, and Xavier showed very little tolerance for humor when the Roshi talked about what might be passing through his monks’ minds as they sat in meditation focused on collection plates and sexual dalliances.

Xavier will eventually condemn Zen as the work of the Devil. He was the product of the frayed religious culture that the Reformation left in its wake; he set a confrontational tone for the early Jesuits in Japan. He seemed to love the role of hurtling condemnations like an Old Testament Prophet. That is what spiritual life had come to in Europe and what he expected to find in Asia. I don’t know if Ninjitsu would have passed Xavier on his koan work—probably not, but Xavier did come to appreciate the depth and subtlety of the Zen mind, so much so that his recommendations for the Jesuit mission included, besides training in the Japanese language, as complete an understanding as possible of the religious traditions practiced in Japan.

For Ninjitsu, I would like to believe that Xavier’s question opened a window into his own soul, like a koan. Xavier writes: “I found him [Ninjitsu] doubtful and unable to decide whether our soul is immortal or whether it dies together with the body; sometimes he agreed with me, and at other times he did not” (Schurhammer 1982, 85). What Xavier takes to be wavering and indecision could also indicate Ninjitsu’s working with the koan. I can feel some kinship with an attitude that Ninjitsu’s answers might have betrayed. I have looked into the eyes of the teacher that I was working with a koan, and not known what to say, or how to respond, feeling one thing in one moment and something entirely different a split second later. If Xavier’s question did not open a new way of viewing the world for the Roshi, it did for me.

If you are inclined to find your own answer to Xavier’s question, I recommend that you include the practice of zazen to help your search and study. Over time, you can expect that your meditation will reset the language you, and your community, use to describe religious experience. Each time you say “life” on a new breath it will bring that word into the present moment. Each present moment wipes away more traces of the inherited meaning we give to words, the misunderstandings, the exaggerations, the lies and adjustments that we humans make for our precious beliefs, the fairy tales that we were told and believed as children. I won’t say that your language will reset to reveal the Truth, but you will certainly be more in touch with your own experience.

1549 or 1550 marked the end of the encounter. Xavier left Japan early in 1551. He died just over a year later on Sancian, a small island off south China, while waiting for a boat to carry him into the celestial empire. “Nixnit” died in 1565. The historical record shows that the groundwork for further conversation about religious beliefs between Zen Buddhists and Christians was not very firm. The gifts of friendship, however, cannot be underestimated.

The expression “eternal moment” is more than poetry, but something that can be really experienced in meditation. Lovers, and sometimes friends, can also share this experience. It might also be a lens to open up all of life in every dimension of time and space.

Jesuits enter the Zen hall

Koans can enter our consciousness, and change our point of view. They can even change a society. The wheel of the dharma, as the Buddhist metaphor clearly tries to show us, never stops. I have no evidence that Xavier ever really taught Ninjitsu anything about the Christian way of life, but I will posit some anecdotal evidence that it just might have happened as I imagined. 

Father Enomiya-LaSalle, S.J. is buried in Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, he was walking only eight miles from the epicenter of the atomic explosion that destroyed the city. He survived. He also was a Zen student for the remaining 45 years of his life, attaining fluency with the practice of zazen and a mastery of the koans that was fully recognized by his teacher, Yamada Koun Zenshin. He wrote about his long experience with the practice, and led many fellow Jesuits into the sphere of zazen, including Pedro Arrupe who was his superior in Japan and Ignatius’s successor as the General of the Society during the time that I was a Jesuit. 

My friend and teacher, David Weinstein Roshi, was a student of Yamada Roshi during Father LaSalle’s last years, and often saw him coming and going at the zendo in Kamakura. He worked with his teacher almost until the day he died. David told me this story. One morning after zazen, after Yamada had finished seeing students who were working on a koan, he was standing next to Yamada as LaSalle was leaving. Yamada turned to David and said, “There is the man who taught me how to apply the koans in my life.”

After reading Xavier’s letters to Ignatius describing his encounter with Ninjitsu, to my mind it seemed inevitable that some Jesuits would eventually enter a Zen hall, and, that with the discipline learned from their training under the Spiritual Exercises, some would complete their koan training and teach Zen. 

I begin my acknowledgement of Jesuit and other Christian Zen Masters with Fr. LaSalle. His example and teaching influenced most of these men and women who became Zen teachers in their own right. I cannot even guess where their Zen practice will lead, but I hope that their work will open and enrich the spiritual lives of many people. —— Fr. Hugo Enomiya-LaSalle, S.J. (dec. 1990); Fr. William Thomas Hand, S.J. (dec. 2005); Fr. Willigis Jäger, O.S.B., Roshi (dec. 2020); Bro. Tom Marshall, S.J. (dec. 2010); Fr. Bill Johnson, S.J. (dec. 2010); Fr. Pat Hawk, CSsR, Roshi (dec. 2012); Fr. Kakichi Kadowaki, S.J., Roshi (dec. 2017); Fr. Niklaus Brantschen, S.J., Roshi; Ruben Habito, (former Jesuit), Roshi; Bro. Kevin Hunt, OCSO, Trappist, Sensei; Rev. James Ismael Ford, UU Minister, Roshi; Fr. Robert Jinsen Kennedy, S.J., Roshi; Sr. Elaine MacInnes, Our Lady’s Missionaries, Roshi; Rev. David Parks-Ramage, UCC, Roshi; Fr. Ama Samy, S.J., Roshi.

The Verse

Here are a few lines from Rumi translated by Coleman Barks that I have chosen to close the question of “the immortality of the soul.” 

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?

Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?

Who comes to a spring thirsty

and sees the moon reflected in it?

Who, like Jacob, blind with grief and age,

smells the shirt of his son and can see again?

Who lets a bucket down

and brings up a flowing prophet?

Or like Moses goes for fire

and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,

and opens a door to the other world.

Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.

Omar storms in to kill the prophet

and leaves with blessings.

Chase a deer and end up everywhere!

An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.

Now there's a pearl.

A vagrant wanders empty ruins

Suddenly he's wealthy.

Notes:

*I first read about Xavier's encounter in Bernard Faure's Chan Insights and Oversights. I asked my friend Bro. Tom Marshall to locate Xavier's Letters. He did, and another friend, Robert Blaire Kaiser, helped me get them out of the Jesuit Library at the Univeristy of San Francisco. The Jesuits are meticulous about recording their dates and places of their missionary work. I knew that part would be easy. I had not expected to find any evidence confirming the enounter from Japanese sources, However when Ninjitsu, abbot of the Zen Temple, Kinryu-zan Fukushoj, appeared in Zen records along with his dates, it was easy to match them up, and say with a great deal of certainlty that “Ninxit" was in fact Ninjitsu.

*Fukushoji has been alternatively designated as a Soto Temple (Faure), a Rinzai Temple (Kagoshima records), a Sendai Temple (Xavier Memorial Association). Although this encounter was before the 17th century Rinzai revival of Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768), the instruction has the distinct feel of shikantaza, “just sitting,” favored by the Soto school, founded by Dōgen Zenji, (1200-1253).

References:

Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, Vol. 4: Japan and China, 1549-1552, Georg Schurhammer, Jesuit Historical Institute, 1973.

Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition, Bernard Faure, Princeton University Press, 1993.

Gateless Barrier: Zen Comments on the Mumonkan, Zenkai Shibayama, Shambhala, 2000.

A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542-1742, Andrew C. Ross; Edinburgh University Press, 1994.

Papers on Portuguese, Dutch and Jesuit Influences in 16th and 17th Century Japan, Boxer, C.R., compiled by Michael Moscato. Washington D.C.: University of America, Inc., 1979.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Ignatius Loyola and Father Elder Mullan, Cosimo Classics, 2007.

The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks, translator, Harpercollins, 1995.

Thank you!

Bro. Tom Marshall, S.J. was a koan student par excellence, a wily fox, an ordained priest in two Zen lineages, a brother in the Society of Jesus and a true son of St. Francis Xavier. You held my hand, or laughed, as I worked my way through the account of Xavier’s travels in Japan. Bless you, dear Tom, as you explore worlds yet undiscovered.

I also thank the late Bonnie Johnson and her husband Daniel Shurman who brought the Exercises back into my life after being dormant for more than 30 years.

Morgan Zo Callahan gave me the time and space to complete “Buddha, S.J.” as a tribute to those Jesuits who have traveled both the paths pioneered by Ignatius and the Buddha. Morgan, I don’t know yet whether it is a mark of completion or beginning for us—perhaps both.