Zen Teachings and Christian Teachings
Zen Teachings Are Not Doctrines
One evening, in the early years of internet search engines, I was looking up the names of old friends to see if I could find out what had become of them and then I looked up my own name, curious about what I’d find. The search turned up a couple of things I’d written, a bunch of sites mentioning a golfer who happens to share my name, the site of Boykin’s Desert Surf Shop (no relation), and an article on Zen and Christianity that I didn’t write. I thought this was a weird coincidence—that there was another Kim Boykin involved with Zen and Christianity—but she turned out to be me.
I had given a lecture on Zen to an assembly of the high school students at a Christian school in Atlanta, as part of their International Awareness Week, which focused on East Asia that year. One of the teachers who had attended the lecture wrote an essay in response, “The Zen of Confusion,” which he posted on a Christian website. In the essay, he argued that one could not practice Zen as a Christian, despite what I had said, since there are fundamental contradictions between the two traditions. One example he gave was that Christianity teaches that human beings are distinct from God and from each other, but Buddhism teaches that “all is one.”
I realized that his argument was based on a misunderstanding of Zen. I had probably not made it clear enough in my lecture that Zen teachings cannot be considered doctrines, beliefs, articles of faith, or the like, in the way that these are often understood in Christianity. As I see it, there are three main types of Zen teachings, none of which are doctrines.
First, some of the teachings of Zen are practical instructions about meditation and ethical conduct, such as “Sit on the front half of the zafu” and “Do not misuse sexuality.” These are rules, guidelines, advice—teachings about how to practice, how to live—not about what to believe. What happens at Zen centers and monasteries is often called Zen training, and the phrase is apt. Teaching Zen is more like training or coaching than like catechesis or indoctrination.
Second, Zen teachings include hundreds of koans, which are used as a focus for meditation and as a jumping-off point for the Zen master’s talks to students. A koan (pronounced “koh-ahn”) is usually a brief anecdote from Zen’s early history in China, often about an interaction between a Zen student and a Zen master or between two masters. Later Zen masters compiled collections of koans, adding to each koan their own commentary and sometimes a verse.
This is a koan from a collection called the Mumonkan or The Gateless Barrier, compiled by Mumon, a thirteenth-century Chinese Zen master:
Shuzan held out his short staff and said: “If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?”
Mumon’s comment: If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. It cannot be expressed with words, and it cannot be expressed without words. Now say quickly what it is.
He gave an order of life or death.
Positive and negative interwoven,
Even Buddhas and patriarchs cannot escape this attack.
Don’t get it? Neither do I. Koans are meant to help Zen students awaken to wisdom and compassion, but there is nothing in them that Zen students are expected to believe or really even to understand in any rational or intellectual sense. Many koans seem more understandable if you’re familiar with the images and metaphors commonly used in Zen and if you’ve read the translator’s footnotes about the Chinese context and so forth, but even then, koans don’t make sense. Koans are not about words or ideas but about experience. To answer a koan is not to figure it out and come up with a response that is sensible, clever, or even wise, but to respond to the koan from a certain state of mind—an awakened state. While koans are a form of Zen teaching and koan collections are an important and voluminous part of the literature of Zen, koans clearly cannot be understood as doctrinal.
These first two categories of Zen teachings, practical instructions and koans, are not likely to be misunderstood as doctrines, but some Zen teachings lend themselves more easily to this misunderstanding. I will lump these together in my third category of Zen teachings: those that can sound like doctrines. Teachings like the Four Noble Truths and no-self can sound like statements of truth about objective realities. They can sound like propositions that Zen practitioners are expected to believe. Actually, though, these teachings are observations about human experience, and Zen practitioners are meant to use them as a guide for their own practice and experience.
The First Noble Truth, for instance, is not a proposition about an objective reality but an observation about human experience: that the ordinary human life is permeated by the experience of suffering. Likewise, the Second Noble Truth, that craving is the origin of suffering, is an observation about human experience. We can experience for ourselves how our cravings enslave us and cause suffering for ourselves and others. We can also experience the liberation from suffering that the Third Noble Truth says is possible.
The Fourth Noble Truth falls into my first category of Zen teachings, practical instructions, since it specifies the way of liberation from suffering. But it is also an observation about experience, like all of Zen’s practical instructions. The Eightfold Path has been observed to be a way of liberation from the experience of suffering, just as sitting with one’s spine upright has been observed to be conducive to the sustained experience of alertness and attention.
The teaching of no-self is often taken as a metaphysical claim, a proposition about an objective reality, and in some forms of Buddhism that may indeed be how no-self is understood: as a claim that there is no such thing as a self. But in Zen, the teaching of no-self, though it is sometimes discussed as if it were a metaphysical claim, is not finally about the existence or nonexistence of some intangible entity, but about our way of being in the world. No-self is simply another observation about experience: that it is possible to be liberated from the constriction of a life centered on “self” and to experience life more freely and joyfully and compassionately.
Related to no-self is nonduality, the teaching that the things we ordinarily see as separate and distinct from each other, or even as opposites, are ultimately not two, not separate and distinct. You and I are not two. Nirvana and samsara are not two. The absolute and the relative are not two. Everything in the universe is ultimately not two. Strictly speaking, nonduality does not mean that “all is one.” Nonduality means only that all is not two, period. Nonduality negates twoness but without going on to affirm oneness. All is not two, but all is not one either. So nondual can be understood to mean “neither two nor one.” Again, in Zen, this is not finally a statement about an objective reality but an expression of human experience.
If you find ideas like “neither two nor one” confusing, that’s fine. Since nonduality isn’t something that Zen practitioners are expected to believe, it’s no big deal if you don’t understand it. In fact, one function of the paradoxical language so common in Zen is to emphasize that we can’t think our way to enlightenment. Zen teachers will happily speak nonsensically, turn the teachings upside down, or yank them out from under you and land you on your behind if that might help awaken you to your inherent selflessness and freedom, which is what the teachings are pointing to.
A common image in Zen is a finger pointing to the moon: the finger of the teachings pointing to the moon of enlightenment. Zen is not about understanding the finger but about seeing the moon.
The lack of doctrines is one of the features of Zen that makes it possible to practice Zen as a Christian—or as a Jew, an atheist, a Buddhist, or whatever. There is nothing in Zen to conflict with whatever beliefs you may have about God and the nature of reality. Whatever your beliefs are, Zen has something to offer: a way of liberation from suffering, a way of being freed to live joyfully and selflessly.
I have been contrasting Zen teachings, understood as observations about experience, with doctrines, Christian or otherwise, understood as propositions about objective reality. This is a useful contrast for explaining what Zen teachings are not, but it isn’t actually fair to Christianity. I don’t want to imply that the only way, or the best way, to understand Christian doctrines is as propositions to be believed.
A contemporary Christian theologian, George Lindbeck, observes that there are currently three main ways of understanding Christian doctrines.
First, doctrines can be understood as “informative propositions or truth claims about objective realities.” I have been using this way of understanding doctrines (and Lindbeck’s articulation of it) in order to contrast Zen teachings with doctrines. In this approach, Lindbeck notes, doctrines are understood as similar to the propositions of science or philosophy. If we understand Christian doctrines this way, then, for example, the doctrine that Jesus rose from the dead is taken as a religiously significant claim about a particular person and a particular event in history.
Alternatively, Christian doctrines can be understood as “symbols of inner feelings, attitudes, or existential orientations.” This approach highlights the similarities between religion and art. If we understand Christian doctrines this way, then the doctrine that Jesus rose from the dead is taken as a religiously significant expression of the meaningfulness of human life even in the face of our mortality, or the ultimate triumph of life and goodness over death and evil, or our ever-present access to the divine even when it seems absent, or something along those lines. (You’ll notice that there’s a lot more room for interpretation when doctrines are understood in this way than in the first way. This can be considered a problem or a benefit or both.)
If doctrines are understood in this second way, then Zen teachings are like doctrines in being expressions of “inner” realities rather than claims about “outer” realities. But Zen teachings are different in that they are not generally symbolic (except insofar as all language is symbolic). The First Noble Truth, for example, is not an image or a story or a metaphor that expresses the human experience of suffering but rather a direct statement that life is permeated with suffering.
The previous two understandings can be combined so that Christian doctrines are understood both as propositions about objective realities and as expressions of human experience. (Lindbeck finds this understanding of Christian doctrines especially among “ecumenically inclined” Catholics.) So the doctrine that Jesus rose from the dead is understood to be religiously significant both as a historical claim and as an expression of human experience.
When the Christian high school teacher, in responding to my lecture on Zen, argued that there are fundamental contradictions between Zen and Christian teachings, he was revealing that I had not gotten across how Zen teachings function. He understood Christian doctrines in one particular way—as propositions about objective realities—and he understood Zen teachings in the same way, which is a misunderstanding. Thus he saw contradictions between competing propositions: Zen propositions vs. Christian propositions. But since Zen teachings are not propositions about objective realities, they cannot contradict or even compete with Christian propositions about objective realities. Zen teachings are not doctrines in this sense. Zen teachings are, rather, expressions of human experience.
The rest of this chapter will explore some of the similarities and differences between Zen teachings and Christian teachings, an exploration that can offer new insight into both Zen and Christianity. This is one of the things I like about interfaith dialogue: besides being a way of learning about an unfamiliar tradition, it also can be a way of illuminating a familiar one.
Similarities: Zen and Christianity on the Human Condition
If we understand Christian teachings as, at least in part, expressive of human experience, then we can see some significant similarities between Zen teachings and Christian teachings regarding the human condition.
Things Are a Big Mess, but It’s Okay Anyway
As I see it, Zen and Christianity share this fundamental insight about human life: things are a big mess, but it’s okay anyway. (I am borrowing some language here from Zen teachers Charlotte Joko Beck and Ezra Bayda.)
The Zen “big mess” is expressed in the First Noble Truth, the truth of duhkha, of suffering or dissatisfaction. Suffering is a pervasive part of the unenlightened human life. We suffer from the pain and impermanence inherent in this life. That’s the bad news.
But it’s okay anyway. The Third Noble Truth observes that liberation from suffering is possible. It is possible to live this pain-full life of impermanence freely, compassionately, joyfully, without fear, without suffering. Our liberation, our enlightenment, is found right here in this world pervaded by pain and impermanence. Despite the big mess, it’s okay. However unenlightened we may feel, we are already buddhas and we need only awaken to our buddhahood. That’s the good news.
Christianity also says that things are a big mess, but it’s okay anyway. The Christian “big mess” is our fallenness, our sinfulness, our alienation from God and opposition to God, our failure to trust in God, our failure to love God, neighbor, and self. We have fallen from a state of grace into sin and mortality. That’s the bad news.
But it’s okay anyway because salvation and eternal life are offered through Christ. Our gracious and merciful God came down from heaven, became human, to save us—not some flawless, sinless, perfectly loving beings but us actual flesh-and-blood humans who are significantly less than perfect. Strange as it seems, God loves and forgives sinners. We need only repent of our sins and put our faith in Christ. That’s the good news.
These similarities are summarized in the chart. (If you’re not into charts—if you just don’t think this way—please feel free to ignore it.)
Note that in both Zen and Christianity, we do not find liberation by escaping this messy world. Our liberation is right here in the midst of the mess. We thought we needed to avoid pain. We thought we needed to become sinless. No wonder we were getting so discouraged. But hallelujah! We had it all wrong! Enlightenment is discovered right here in this world of pain and impermanence. We don’t have to become buddhas; we already are buddhas. Salvation is offered to sinners. Enlightenment is better than pain reduction, and salvation is better than sin reduction. We can be free from the suffering that we usually attach to our pain. We can be free from the judgment of our sins.
Please note that I am not trying to equate suffering and sin, or enlightenment and salvation. Clearly, there are important differences. I just want to show what I see as some intriguing parallels between Zen teachings and Christian teachings about the human condition. I also hope that this comparison might help you to hear anew the amazing good news of God’s grace.
The Fruits of Liberation and the Role of Effort
But what about reducing the amount of pain or sin in our own lives and in the world? What about selfless compassion for all sentient beings? What about love of God and neighbor? These are obviously good and important things, so where do they fit in?
At least some strains of Buddhism and Christianity say that these good and important things flow out of our liberation. We commonly make the mistake of thinking that practicing in accordance with the values of our tradition will help us attain liberation. But, no, we’ve got that backward. Spiritual practice and love and compassion do not earn us liberation. Rather, they are the fruits of our liberation. A good tree bears good fruit. This is another similarity between Zen and Christian observations of human experience.
In Zen, our buddha-nature—that is, our awakened or enlightened nature—is always already present. Practices such as meditation and following the Buddhist precepts are fundamental to Zen, but not because they will help us earn or achieve or create our buddha-nature. Our buddha-nature is always right here, right now. Meditation and following the precepts are expressions and manifestations of our inherent buddha-nature. The practices of Zen can perhaps help us awaken to our inherent enlightenment, help us realize that the enlightenment we’ve been seeking is already here—and this realization can be transformative. The “actualization” of our buddhahood in our actions in the world flows out of this realization. Increasingly we will act with selfless compassion for all sentient beings. Our meditation and our compassionate action do not earn us buddhahood. Rather, they are the fruits of our inherent buddhahood.
Likewise, in Christianity, our salvation or “justification” is freely offered by God to those who simply repent and accept God’s overflowing love and saving work, accomplished in Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Christian practices such as prayer, worship, studying the Scriptures, and striving to be loving and moral human beings are, of course, central to Christianity. But we cannot, by doing all those good things, earn or achieve or create our justification. The practices of Christianity are ways to express and incarnate the amazing good news of God’s love for us. And they can be ways, perhaps, to discover and accept God’s gracious and salvific love—and this acceptance can be transformative. Our “sanctification”—that is, our growing saintliness, our growing faith, hope, and love—flows out of our justification. Our actions will manifest love for God, neighbor, and self. Our faith, hope, and love do not earn us justification. Rather, they are the fruits of our justification.
So in one way, human effort is irrelevant. In both Zen and Christianity, liberation cannot be earned or achieved. But this doesn’t mean, of course, that human effort is irrelevant to the religious life. Even though our efforts cannot help us earn or achieve salvation or enlightenment, they might help us open to the realization of our inherent enlightenment or to the acceptance of God’s free offer of salvation. Our efforts also play an important role in our more fully manifesting that liberation in the world. We can more fully actualize our enlightenment through compassion for all beings. We can more fully manifest our salvation through love of God and neighbor. More and more, we can live with the love and compassion that are fruits of liberation.
Illusory Differences
There are some purported differences between Zen teachings and Christian teachings that I think are not, in fact, differences.
“Works Righteousness”
When I speak to Christian audiences about Zen as a practice and as a way of liberation, some people get suspicious, thinking that Zen sounds like a Buddhist equivalent of what some Christians call “works righteousness.” That is, they suspect that Zen practitioners are trying to work their way to liberation rather than relying on grace, as Christians do.
But this is a misunderstanding of Zen. Zen practice, like Christian practice, is not about achieving or earning or working toward liberation. In Christianity, we do not work toward salvation. Rather, we simply accept the salvation that our loving and gracious God has freely been offering us through Christ all along. In Zen, we do not work toward enlightenment. Rather, we simply realize that the enlightenment we’ve been searching for has been right here all along. Neither accepting God’s grace nor realizing our enlightenment is a “work,” although we use verbs for them and it can sometimes seem awfully difficult, like hard work, to finally get to the point of accepting God’s grace or realizing our enlightenment.
Christians who are exploring Zen need not be concerned that Zen is a Buddhist equivalent of “works righteousness.”
Incidentally, a similar confusion happens within Christianity. In the same way that some Christians misunderstand Zen as “works righteousness,” some Christians misunderstand Catholic Christianity as “works righteousness.” Some people think that while the Protestant tradition teaches salvation by grace, the Catholic tradition teaches salvation by works. This isn’t true. The Catholic tradition also teaches salvation by grace. In 1999, the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed a “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” about this very point. In the declaration, the two traditions confess together that “by grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.” By grace alone, we are accepted by God. And the Holy Spirit calls us to good works, which are not a cause of justification but its fruits: “We confess together that good works—a Christian life lived in faith, hope, and love—follow justification and are its fruits.” There are some important differences in the understanding of justification between the Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations and also among Protestant denominations, but on this fundamental point that justification is by grace, there is general agreement.
Optimism and Pessimism
A friend of mine once asked me how I reconcile the Christian doctrine of human depravity and the fallen state of the world with the Zen conviction that we are all buddhas. This had never struck me as a problem before, but why not? It certainly sounds like a problem. How do I reconcile inherent fallenness with inherent buddhahood?
Well, I don’t. It doesn’t make sense to compare Zen and Christianity by examining inherent buddhahood vs. inherent fallenness. Setting it up that way is comparing the “big mess” part of Christianity with the “it’s okay” part of Zen. Inherent fallenness is Christianity’s bad news, and inherent buddhahood is Zen’s good news. Both Zen and Christianity have bad news and good news. Both traditions say that things are a big mess, and both say that it’s okay anyway. Comparing the bad news of one with the good news of the other leads us to see supposed differences that are in fact illusory.
I most often hear this mistake from Westerners who are disenchanted with Christianity. They talk about how much more optimistic and life-affirming Buddhism is than Christianity, since Buddhism talks about our inherent buddhahood while Christianity talks about our inherent sinfulness. But this isn’t fair. Of course Buddhism sounds more optimistic if you compare Buddhism’s good news with Christianity’s bad news.
When Westerners first encountered Buddhism, they tended to make the opposite mistake. They saw Buddhism as pessimistic because of its first premise, its First Noble Truth of suffering, in contrast with the good news of Christianity. But again, this isn’t a fair contrast. Of course Buddhism sounds more pessimistic if you compare Buddhism’s bad news with Christianity’s good news.
We were discussing the good news and bad news of Zen and Christianity in a session I led of a Methodist Sunday school class for parents of young children. One father commented that Christian parents need to be sure to teach their children the good news of God’s grace and not just the bad news of human sinfulness so that their children won’t grow up and feel like they have to leave Christianity to find some good news. I agree. Not being able to find good news in Christianity would be a sad reason to leave the church and a sad comment on one’s religious education.
I would add, conversely, that if children do not hear what their religion says about the bad news of life, then when they inevitably discover the bad news for themselves, they may think they have to look elsewhere for a religious or nonreligious worldview that recognizes what a mess human life is.
Christianity would be incomplete without both the bad news and the good news, and Zen would be incomplete without both the bad news and the good news.
Real Differences
There are, of course, many real and significant differences between Zen teachings and Christian teachings.
Although it isn’t fair to compare the good news of one tradition with the bad news of the other, it is fair to compare Zen’s good news with Christianity’s good news or Zen’s bad news with Christianity’s bad news. Even if both traditions say, “Things are a big mess, but it’s okay anyway,” they have different teachings about what the big mess is and why it’s okay anyway.
In Zen, the big mess is suffering, which is rooted in the illusion of “self.” In Christianity, the big mess is sin: our alienation from God and the resulting violations of the divinely established order. So in Zen the root problem is faulty perception, while in Christianity the root problem is faulty relationship.
In Zen, “it’s okay anyway” because we can awaken to our inherent freedom and selflessness. In Christianity, “it’s okay anyway” because salvation is offered through faith in Jesus Christ. There is no God or messiah involved in Zen realization as there is in Christian salvation. Again, the relationship with the divine is central in Christianity.
There is also a significant difference between the role of the Buddha in Zen and the role of Christ in Christianity. In the Zen tradition, the Buddha is not understood to be any sort of god, messiah, savior, or supernatural being, but simply a human being, a great teacher and example, someone who found a way of liberation from suffering and taught this way to others. While the Buddha and Christ are alike in some significant ways—and you can find many books comparing them and their teachings—in at least this one crucial way they are not alike. They play different roles in the liberation of their followers. The Buddha shows the way, while in most forms of Christianity, Jesus Christ is the way. Of course, Jesus’s life is also an example for Christians to follow, but it is faith in Christ that is salvific. There is no analogous “faith in the Buddha” in Zen. In Christianity, we are saved through Christ, whereas in Zen we are awakened not through the Buddha but rather by following the Buddha’s teachings and example. Jesus is necessary for salvation, but the Buddha is not necessary for enlightenment. Zen practitioners are grateful to the Buddha for his teachings, but someone else could have discovered and taught the same things he did. If archaeologists were to find evidence tomorrow that the Buddha never lived, it would have little to no effect on Zen practitioners or Zen practice.
The Buddha’s role is more like that of a Christian saint than that of Christ. The Buddha, like a saint, is an example to follow. We can be realized buddhas, and we can be saints. We can also be like Jesus in some respects, but in one fundamental and all-important respect we can never be like Jesus: we cannot be God. Jesus Christ is both fully human and fully divine, and the rest of us are only fully human.
In some ways, Zen and Christianity are not different so much as they are incommensurable. That is, in some ways, Zen and Christianity can’t be compared because they aren’t even talking about the same things, so comparing them would be like comparing tennis and mathematics, as Thomas Merton said. For instance, you can’t compare what Zen and Christianity say about God, since Zen doesn’t say anything about God or gods. Also, Zen does not make statements about the nature of reality that go beyond what can be experienced. There is no divine revelation in Zen as there is in Christianity. Zen has nothing to say about the origin of the world or about what happens after death, so we can’t compare Zen and Christian views about these issues. (Although the Buddhist tradition talks about reincarnation, I have heard little to nothing from Zen teachers or in Zen books about what happens after death.)
In Zen-Christian dialogue, the differences between Zen and Christianity are sometimes minimized or ignored—usually, I think, in a well-meaning attempt to promote harmony and respect among people of the two traditions—but I don’t think this minimizing or ignoring is necessary or fruitful. The differences between Christianity and Zen are significant and interesting and, in my opinion, they need not lead to animosity between Christians and Zen practitioners and they are no hindrance to the practice of Zen by Christians.
Zen and Christianity do also share significant common ground, especially, as we’ve seen, in their understandings of the experience of being human. Christian theologian David Tracy observes that while the Buddhist and Christian ways are clearly not the same, “neither are we two, in any easy way, merely other to one another.” Borrowing the Buddhist notion of nonduality, Tracy suggests that perhaps “we are neither the same nor other, but not-two. Only the further dialogue will tell.”
Welcome to the dialogue!