Ruben Habito describes the Fruits of Zen Practice:

As we celebrate the beginning of a new year, I would like to invite each of you to join me in renewing our resolve to affirm what is at the heart of our Zen Practice: the cultivation of compassion.

In this connection, I would like to call your attention to a movement addressed to all people of good will, inviting all of us to place compassion at the center of all of our lives. This is called “The Charter of Compassion,” affirmed by a growing numbers of individuals, including leaders and members of the world’s religious traditions, and now gaining momentum globally. The charter opens with the following statement:

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect. (http://charterforcompassion.org)

If you find yourself agreeing with this statement, please open the webpage indicated above, and consider being one of the signatories of this Charter for Compassion, following the instructions given there. It will help also to look at the inspiring testimonies of individuals who have been empowered by acts of compassion, as presented in that webpage.

But more importantly, whether you go on to sign the Charter or not, the question is posed to each of us: can we continue our sitting practice in a way that enables this dynamic power of compassion to take hold of and shed light on every aspect of our lives? Our own community logo, Maria Kannon Zen Center, as you well know, is built upon this very theme and principle. (Please review the essay on “Maria Kannon” in this webpage.)

My hope for this new year is that we, each in our own way, take steps to help one another in reactivating this power of compassion in concrete aspects of our lives, as a community of spiritual practice, and as individuals living in a global society marked by woundedness on so many levels. As we learn to bear one another’s wounds, and at the same time acknowledge our own woundedness, we may awaken that Power in us that we may offer in our own humble way as a balm for the world.

Yours sincerely, with palms joined,

Ruben Habito

“Listen, O Drop, give yourself up without regret, and in exchange, gain the Ocean. Listen, O Drop, bestow upon yourself this honor and in the arms of the Sea be secure. Who, indeed, should be so fortunate, an Ocean wooing a drop!”
—Rumi

Christian pioneers in interreligious dialogue with people of Eastern religions found their writings, if not their lives, pro- scribed. To note a few: Fr. Denobile in the 18th century in India; the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago in 1893 who was penalized from afar for appearing on the same stage as other religious leaders during the First Parliament of World Religions; Fr. Hugo Enomiya Lasalle, S.J. (1898-1990), after publishing his first book in German in 1958, Zen: A Way to Enlightenment, was ordered by Rome not to publish any more on this topic; and Abhishiktananda (Fr. Henri le Saux) and Fr. Jules Monchanin, European religious leaders in the 1940s and 1950s, were ostracized to some extent by their communities and by their fellow priests in India. As some Christian missionaries had taught in ignorance: things Eastern were considered magic, superstitious or diabolical.

In 1976, when setting out for India myself, I had not so much as thought of entering into interreligious dialogue. Fr. Bede Griffiths, the Acharya or teacher at Shantivanam Ashram where I stayed for one year, had left Prinknash Abbey in England in 1955 to find “the other half of his soul.” His name and pictures appeared in monastic journals from time to time, spelling out some of his involvement in intermonastic dialogue. But what came through to me the most was that he was a holy monk who lived radical poverty in a country known for its interiority and he spoke English. Abhishiktananda, one of the earlier founders of this same ashram, had passed away, or as they say in India, passed to the Other Shore, just three years before my arrival. Abhishik had spent the last years of his life in the hermitage on the Ganges in the North of India. It is from Abhishik’s reflec- tions on dialogue that I draw on. He, too, saw dialogue as communion.

Since we are social beings we ourselves are in communion: ontologically, relationship, fellowship, with others. There is actually no living person apart from others. So we discover ourselves, realize ourselves only in the meeting with others; the deeper the meeting, the more we find ourselves and blossom into persons. From a Christian perspective we are even more so created to be in communion, reflecting as we do the very “being-one-together” of the divine Persons in the Trinity, that ultimate secret of God’s life, as shared with us by Jesus. With Jesus, in Jesus, we are each a kind of cor- porate being, living in a most intimate and ontological rela- tionship with the whole of the Mystical Body, and with all humankind. We are interrelated whether we are aware of it or not. Abhishik insists that life in solitude is only possible after a long preparation in human fellowship. Call to mind Thomas Merton’s own struggle.

First, one must discover within him- or herself that center where no human being or other creature is distant from us. That same interrelationship between us and other people becomes dialogue when it reaches the level of the person, of consciousness, of the mind and heart. Dialogue has its prin- ciple in relationship with others, only when this relationship is accepted and integrated into the person, her- or himself, giving and receiving. The other becomes someone with whom we relate at the very level of our own self-awareness, to whom our own self-awareness is open. True dialogue is, at this level, a meeting, exchange, a mutual donation, not from the level of having but of being. Because it implies the mutual donation of what is the most essential to both, dia- logue takes place only in depth.

In the experience of the Catholic Church since Vatican Council II (1962-1965) there has developed one of the most remarkable and revealing encounters in the field of interfaith dialogue. The former head of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Church’s Relations with non-Christian Religions, Pietro Rossano, attributed this ‘new era’ in the world to Thomas Merton’s giftful presence and sudden death in Bangkok in the very process of dialogue with Eastern monastics. Since that time never before heard of exchanges among the monas- tic world have taken place, the most recent one was ‘The Gethsemani Encounter’ which took place in July of this year in Thomas Merton’s own monastery in Kentucky at the express request of the Dalai Lama. His Holiness had met sev- eral times with the Trappist monk in 1968 in Dharamsala, just a few weeks before Merton’s death. His Holiness wanted all of us gathered together with the present monks of Gethsemani Abbey to know the impact that one person, faithful to their own religion, can have on another. His Holiness said, “My own attitude toward Christianity com- pletely changed upon meeting this monk.”

The dialogue of religious experience is a sharing of experi- ences of prayer, contemplation, faith and duty, as well as expressions and ways of searching for the Absolute. This type of dialogue is the deepest, most demanding and yet most promising of all. Since it deals with experiencing the spiritual practice of the other’s tradition, a “crossing over,” to use John Donne’s phrase, it can lead to a “mutual trans- formation.” This transformation, in Thomas Merton’s words, is a “transformation of consciousness,” as he described in his Calcutta paper: “I come as a pilgrim who is anxious to obtain not just infor- mation….but to drink from ancient sources of monastic vision and experience…to become a better and more enlightened monk myself. I am convinced that communication in depth, across the lines that have hitherto divided religious and monastic traditions, is now not only possible and desirable, but most important for the destinies of 20th century man.”
With all these considerations we see that we have been creat- ed for dialogue and we are ceaselessly in dialogue at various levels: as parents, spouses, friends, children, students, apprentices, and job training, interacting on all human lev- els, but above all these is the level of religious dialogue which reaches in us a depth of interiority and personal com- mitment beyond the reach of all other levels. True religious dialogue begins in the depths of our heart and spirit, rooted in our deepest meaning where we are related to the Beyond. But we have lost, for the most part, this in-depth dialogue in ourselves, our families, parishes, communities, and therefore in our schools and seminaries. Today, individualism has per- meated our whole society with its self centeredness on the level of the ego; self-aggrandizement, competition, jeal- ousies, quarrels, wars, genocide and suicide. It all adds up to meaninglessness and chronic ignorance.

St. Mark, the ascetic, who lived in the desert of Egypt in the early 4th century, described what he called the “three great evil demons” or “giants” or “thoughts that poison us.” Notice he equates demons and thoughts. The first of these evil giants is ignorance which he insisted is the “mother of all the others.” The remedy he strongly suggested for this poi- son is “the light of divine knowledge.” This we can easily turn on and flood ourselves with by reading some scriptures, or recalling some teaching that will help, hearing another on this level of sharing, or reading some lines from the earliest Christians, the Philokalia or some of the Fathers and Mothers of the Church. Ignorance can play havoc in the area of dia- logue with assumptions, presumptions and the like. This is why it is important that we be authentic and “at home” in our own religious tradition and open to learning from the heart of another about his or her tradition and practice.

Editor’s Note: Sister Pascaline Coff has been a leading figure in promoting interreligious dialogue. Her monastery in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, is a crossroads for people in Christian and Eastern traditions.

Daybreak at the MKZC. During kinhin, the first sunlight slants in through the blinds, casting faint shadows on the wood-patterned floor. Morning has become my favorite time for zazen, and this room the best place to celebrate the beginning of a new day. The birds outside sing to the rising sun. It is difficult not to indulge in exaltation when sitting here in the morning. One imagines the whole universe conspiring to kindle joy.

The love of mornings is new to me. In only two years, this practice has become a central part of my daily life. I find it difficult to remember that not long ago I disliked early mornings, was indifferent to nature, and believed that the Intellect could somehow grasp the Essential.How could these shifts in perspective have taken hold so quickly?

I recall talking to a kind woman, a long-time practitioner, at the Thursday evening meal before my first sesshin. She said that Zen practice would dramatically change my life. She may have used the words, “unrecognizable to yourself.” I nodded in skeptical acknowledgement. It wasn’t that I doubted Zen’s transformative powers, but life-altering change was not my goal. Yes, I was seeking answers to some deep questions, but my life didn’t need dramatic change.

Peaceful Kanzeon sits above the fireplace this morning, and as we turn to face the wall in zazen, I am reminded of the Three Treasures and how they are manifested and celebrated in this very room: the Buddha, the Sangha, the Dharma, all fully present in the zendo. Hakuin is present too, and I often hear an echo of his kindly admonitions in my daily activities: “How near the truth, yet how far we seek…the gateway to freedom is zazen Samadhi… what is there we lack?”

Anyone inclined to self-observation will acknowledge the transience of identity. Buckminster Fuller expressed this transience in the title of his 1970 book, I Seem To Be A Verb. But something more is required to move “past clever words” and truly experience the vibrant truth that intellectual images can only model. That missing element is Hakuin’s praiseworthy practice, and for me at least, it has become the finest way to begin a new day.

Leaving the MKZC in the morning, nothing is familiar. The door closes with a crisp new sound. Regardless of the season or weather, the quality of the light is unique. It reveals all things-the grass, the trees, the buildings, even one’s “self”-in their dynamic, miraculous aspect. The ordinary is banished; nothing plain or lowly remains.

When the opportunity presented itself to make a Zen/Christian retreat with Robert Kennedy, S.J., I had no decision to make. Of course I would, despite my knowing how painful it is to get up so early and sit for so many hours. After four and a half years of practicing Zen, I am still constantly integrating and balancing Zen with my Catholic religion and training that has claimed such a large portion of my life, and that I have embraced at such a deep level. Catholicism showed me St. Teresa of Avila’s description of the Interior Castle and St. John of the Cross taught me about a way to pray without words and the necessity of letting go of desires. These teachings nourished and offered meaning. I came to Zen looking for help and guidance from a tradition based not on doctrine or oral prayer, but one based on meditation. The retreat with Father Kennedy offered another opportunity for integration.

Having said that, it is still difficult to describe what I took from the retreat. It was hard to get up very early and sit so long. However, I found pleasure and enrichment in sitting with others from multiple religious backgrounds. Meeting in a place where other groups went about their activities seemed to demonstrate the oneness of matter and spirit. Sitting was actually less distracted than usual. In my advanced age, I can no longer remember a great deal of what Father Kennedy said. I am grateful to have heard these things. To sit well is labor and requires great energy, the greater the energy the greater the reward. Keep your back straight and pay attention. Attention is key. Here, for me, is an important synthesis. To what am I paying attention? To what cannot be named or imagined or understood, to “no thing”. I remember that Jesus said the wheat must fall into the ground and die or it cannot give life. That seems the same as saying there is no self. It makes perfect sense even while it makes no sense. It is a hard saying, but I believe it is good to bear it.

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of articles on The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures. View all the available articles of the series here.

By way of preparation for this third picture, let me give a summary of what has been covered before. The first picture depicted the launching of the search in an individual’s spiritual journey.  It marks that time in life when you begin to suspect that there should be something more to life that what you deal with on a day to day basis. This can be when something that jolts you comes into your horizon, shaking your foundations. It could be the death of a loved one. It could be the own confrontation with your own mortality, more concretely, the realization that I am going to die, conveyed to you through an illness or an accident or uncanny premonition. It could be something out of the blue, that makes you realize that there is something more than meets the eye in our day to day life. So you begin ask the big questions, and seek out books and articles on spirituality and religion, or start talking to close friends and confidants about such matters. Going one step further, you be led to join a group engaged in some form of meditative or contemplative practice.

The second picture describes the stage when one begins to receive inklings of a deeper reality than this humdrum existence. I recall the poem by Wordsworth entitled “Ode to Intimations of Immortality,” which describes a time

“…when meadow, grove, and stream,
the earth, and every common sight,
to me did seem
apparell’d in celestial light…”

Needless to say, this is not yet the decisive and transformative experience that the Zen tradition calls “seeing into one’s true nature” (kenshō), but can be regarded precisely as “intimations” of that Infinite realm that we will be referring to later. This can come to one engaged in a sustained practice of sitting in Zen, who now begins to taste the fruits of this practice: being more centered in one’s daily life, being more aware of the wondrous little things that come into view from day to day, being more able to “smell the flowers along the way,” so to speak. At this stage you may be experiencing consoling thoughts, receiving significant insights about being connected to all, finding a deeper sense of harmony with one’s surroundings and with one’s fellow beings, and so on. All this confirms that you are on the right path, and are inspired to go more deeply into it.

In this connection someone who comes to mind is Satomi Myōdō, a Japanese woman who was married, had two children, and in midlife received the Zen guidance of Yasutani Rōshi, becoming a Buddhist nun. Her story is found in a book in English under the title Passionate Journey, translated from the Japanese by Sallie King.  She recounts an experience as a young woman, pregnant and unmarried, having returned from Tokyo to be with her parents in their farm. As she was with her father working in a field, her father beckoned her to stop and look at a tiny winged ant making its way up a single weed. She describes what she saw at that moment in this way:

“I saw the grass and trees, the hills, river, fields and stones, the hoe and sickle, the birds and dogs, the roofs and windows—all shining brightly under the same sun. For me it was a wonderful breath of fresh air. Both the animate and the inanimate were vividly alive, familiarly addressing me and waving their hands. Struck by the unearthly exquisiteness of this world, I broke into tears and lifted up my face, weeping, in ecstasy. (p.9)

I cite Satomi Myōdō’s account of this experience to make the note that many of us may have experiences of a similar nature, whether we have already formally in the practice of Zen or not at all. Such “uncanny” experiences may have visited us as a child growing up, beholding the wonder of the world of nature, or perhaps in our youth or adult years, as we are thrown off our usual routine of things and are given a “close brush with the Infinite” in the midst of something very ordinary, like stopping on a hike to catch our breath, or leisurely looking at a starry sky at night, or patting our dog gently. But we must not confuse these experiences with what is called kenshō in Zen. They may be a prelude to it, or as indicators that we are not far from it at all. But these “close brushes” need to be distinguished from the transformative experience that actually seeing our true nature is all about.

This is the experience depicted in the third picture in the series, referred to as the sighting of the ox. This time, you know that the ox is really there because now you see it for yourself.  It’s no longer just a matter of believing that “the ox is somewhere there” and that you need to seek for the ox because others have told that they have seen it, or because others whom you trust have told you that there is an ox. Now that darn ox appears right there before your very eyes.

Going back to Satomi Myōdō, it was to take her many more years after that initial intimation of the Infinite, having gotten married, giving birth to two daughters, having been abandoned by her husband and losing one daughter, experiencing a nervous breakdown, and then recovering, and then at midlife entering into the formal practice of Zen under an authentic teacher, to be able to arrive at the decisive experience that turned the her world upside down. Describing this experience that gave her immense joy and freedom, she composed the following verse:

Dew drops, even dust—
Nothing is unclean.
The own-nature is pure. The own-nature is pure.
Kami and Buddha,
I’ve searched for you everywhere.
But you are here, you are here! (p.76)

Reading accounts of individuals who have traversed this path of practice and have arrived at that much-heralded point of “seeing into one’s true nature” (“own-nature” in the translation above) may encourage us and convey to us that we too are not far from it. The Three Pillars of Zen, edited by Philip Kapleau through the cooperation of Yamada Koun Rōshi, includes a section of such accounts of individuals who came under the guidance of Yasutani Rōshi. However, reading such things can also have the opposite effect of discouraging us, saying, “Oh, no, this can never happen in my case.” If this is how you are feeling at this point, my recommendation is for you to just forget about such stories and get back to your breath, and just be there in the present moment, where you are right now. And let me tell you, plainly and simply: it’s right there!

If these words manage to hit the target and trigger an experience, stop reading this, call your Zen teacher and make an appointment for dokusan, and take it from there.

If not, then you may go on reading. But please take note that this third picture is referring only the sighting of the ox.  You now know from your own experience that the ox is there, but the ox may still run away and disappear from your sight. This is because that initial sighting can recede into a simple memory or even “degenerate” into a mere idea or concept or philosophical notion, of “nonduality of absolute and relative” or “emptiness of all form” and or what have you. Or it can remain clouded with some doubt in your own mind, and you ask yourself, “Was that really the ox I was looking for, or was it something else? Or was it only a dream of an ox that I now remember vaguely?” And so it can regress to that level of a concept or memory or can be clouded in uncertainty, if we do not continue to polish the mirror of our mind, or if we do not continue to be alert and pay attention to that ox that is always there before our very eyes.

To express this in Christian terms, we may have been touched by the Infinite and Loving God in unmediated encounter at some point in our life, in a way that is clear and unmistakable to us at that moment when it did happen.  But in the aftermath, our insecure ego keeps trying to recapture that experience, wanting to frame it in our own terms. Having had the experience even make us feel “special” and “set apart” from others because of that precious gift we may have received, an “epiphany of the divine.” But precisely in doing so, the experience has now been downgraded into a mere memory of it, in a way that can bloat our insecure ego even more. We think we have an idea or notion about what God must be like, and so on, that we try to put it in conceptual language in the best way we can. And as we do so, the ox has now vanished from our immediate sight again, replaced only by a mental picture of it.

The initial sighting can be experienced by  many persons in various kinds of circumstances, but it one needs to continually polish one’s mind’s eye if it is not to regress into a mere idea or memory or a hazy image that can be coupled with a lot of delusions or connected with misleading notions. And so, sustained Zen practice what enables one to be always alert and able to keep that ox clearly in sight.

The fourth and the succeeding pictures describe stages of our journey whereby we become more familiar and intimate with the ox, bringing it home, making it part of our own household, and so on.  The main point I wanted to convey in describing this initial experience of seeing the ox is that it is not the be-all and end-all of Zen practice, as some literature may have us believe. It needs to be continually nurtured, through ongoing assiduous practice of sitting in stillness and coming back to the awareness of the here and now in paying attention to the breath. Now, if we maintain this stance of being alert and being totally present in our day to day life, the ox will be there in clearer view, and will not recede into such a mere concept or memory. Instead, it will continue to shed light on everything we think, say and do, and will continue to be an integral feature of who we are.

This initial experience of sighting the ox then can be a veritable turning point in one’s life.  As I noted earlier, in The Three Pillars of Zen, there is a section devoted to accounts of individuals who have seen the ox, in what context and life circumstance they were when they saw it. The account of Yamada Rōshi himself is included, in the section marked as “Japanese executive, age 47.” You may take a look at those accounts to give yourself a mental picture of what kinds of things happen in “seeing the ox.” At another time I would like to share a little more of my own experience.

It need not come only to those engaged in formal Zen practice. Many people might have had something like this early on, in childhood, or other stages of life, and some have recounted such experiences to me. It may come to one even without an explicit intent of looking for it, but just out of the blue. In a teishō I recall given at San-un Zendo in Kamakura, Yamada Rōshi related the story of Japanese woman in her 60s who was in a hospital bed, in terrible pain, and unable to sleep, she could just heard the sound of the clock, tick tock tick tock, all through the night. As she recounted it, she just disappeared in the “ticktock, ticktock,” and that experience was later confirmed by a Zen master as genuine kenshō.

This experience is not something that any one religious group can claim to have a monopoly on. Another example that comes to mind is Fr. Hugo Enomiya LaSalle, who had received guidance in Zen from Harada Daiun (Sogaku) Roshi as early as 1930s. He had continued practice on his own for many years, and then was inspired to come to Yamaha Roshi in the 1960s, and was confirmed in his own kensho experience in the early 70s. In a talk soon after confirming Fr. LaSalle’s experience, Yamada Roshi noted that this was not the first time Fr. Lassalle had “seen the ox” but had had such “sightings” many years back in his life as a Jesuit. Fr. Lasalle himself then responded by recalling his own experience as a young man, seeking God in one’s life, and wishing to do only what God willed for him in his life. This attitude is what predisposed him to the experience of God’s presence in his life. Those who knew him and worked with him through the years can confirm that he was a godly man indeed, marked by deep humility and openness, and you could tell that this was a person whose center of life was not himself, but God.  It was only in the last dozen or so years of his life, through Yamada Rōshi’s astute guiding hand, that his earlier experiences were formally recognized from a Zen perspective.

In the Miscellaneous Kōans given in our Sanbō Kyōdan lineage for those who have been confirmed as having had “sighting of the ox,” a glimpse of that world that the Heart Sutra refers to in saying “Form is no other than Emptiness, Emptiness no other than Form,” the following reminder is given: “Attaining the Way, Realizing the Mind, is just putting your head through the gate.” Now you are invited to open the gate further, come in, and reclaim the vast and infinite territory that opens out before you.