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Ignatian Spiritual Exercises are divided into four main parts, which can be seen as four stages in the experiental journey of the exercitant. The first part involves a thorough look at everything that blocks the exercitant from attaining his or her ultimate aim. The second part offers prescriptions for making right decisions concemingone's way of life.
Ignatian Spiritual Exercises are divided into four main parts, which can be seen as four stages in the experiental journey of the exercitant. The first part involves a thorough look at everything that blocks the exercitant from attaining his or her ultimate aim. The second part offers prescriptions for making right decisions concemingone's way of life.
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Ignatian Spiritual Exercises are divided into four main parts, which can be seen as four stages in the experiental journey of the exercitant. The first part involves a thorough look at everything that blocks the exercitant from attaining his or her ultimate aim. The second part offers prescriptions for making right decisions concemingone's way of life.
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Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Als PDF, TXT herunterladen oder online auf Scribd lesen
7
Zen and the Ignatian
Spiritual Exercises
A Letter to Yamada Koun Roshi
Jesuit Theologate
Kamikshakujii, Nerima, Tokyo
September 15, 1975
Yamada Koun Roshi
San-un Zendo,
Kamakura
Dear Yamada Roshi,
Allow me to begin by first expressing my continued gratefulness to
you for your untiring guidance, especially during the last summer
sesshin. I shall keep on seeking your guidance from hereon as before, so
l ask for your continued forbearance.
Just recently (after the summer sesshin), I entered into my yearly
Ignatian Spiritual Exercises as prescribed by the Society of Jesus, and it
gave me an occasion to take stock of things and sum up what I had been
coming to realize through these years since I had begun to practice Zen
under your direction. Humbly and respectfully, I offer the following
reflections to you, as a report on how I have been able to see it from
excitingly fresh new angles.
169170 Ruben Habito
I have mentioned in previous letters to you that after entering the
Society of Jesus in 1964, I was soon introduced to the Spiritual Exercises
of our founder Saint Ignatius. I made this journey for a period of thirty
days in the first year of my life as a Jesuit. Ever since then, it has been part
of my regular yearly schedule to enter into an Ignatian eight-day retreat,
and this latest one was part of this schedule,
The Spiritual Exercises are divided into four main parts, which can be
seen as four stages in the experiental journey of the exercitant. The length
of each part depends on the disposition of the individual exercitant.
The first part, or first week as it is scheduled, involves a thorough look
at everything that blocks the exercitant from attaining his or her ultimate
aim, and this involves an examination of one’s sinfulness and inordinate
attachments with a view to uprooting them. The second part involves a
set of meditations on the public life of Jesus Christ, or his life on earth.
The third part is the contemplation of his passion and death on the cross,
and the fourth part is the contemplation of his resurrection and his new
glorious life in God. The capstone of the Exercises is the Contemplation
for obtaining Love (Contemplatio ad amorem) which I shall explain
below. As the exercitant is involved in the second part, prescriptions for
making right decisions concerning one’s way of life are offered. All inall,
the aim of the Spiritual Exercises is to form the individual toward
becoming a true Christian.
Based on the actual religious experiences of Ignatius of Loyola who
lived in the sixteenth century in the context of Christian Europe, the
Exercises were developed as a way of religious practice, and widely
known and made use of within the Catholic Church even up to our day,
They can be practiced within a three-day, a five-day, eight-day or thirty-
day period. However, there are inherent limitations as to the actual:
methods prescribed in the Exercises, and spiritual directors who make
use of these methods have been constantly faced with the task of renewal,
going back to the original spirit based on Ignatius’ experience, and
applying it to an ever-changing age. Anyway, putting all these aside, I
myself have been given an opportunity to take a fresh look at these
Exercises in the light of the very little and very limited experience in Zen
that Ihave been privileged to partake of up tonow. This is a way of seeing
the Exercises beyond the sectarian barriers of its particular verbal
formulations, going back to the original experience, in the light of the Zen
enlightenment experience.
What I am about to describe, therefore, is not a comparison between
Zen and the Spiritual Exercises, but a look at these two in the light of one
eye. This is to see the experiential substratum of the Exercises and
likewise to see what it means to be a true Christian.
Total Liberation 171
Iwould like to describe the Spiritual Exercises centering on three main
points,
The first point is the Principle and Foundation, which is the starting
point and presupposition for making the Exercises as such.
Man is created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and by this means to
save his soul. All other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him
fulfill the end for whichhe iscreated. From this it follows that man isto use these things
to the extent that they will help him attain this end. Likewise, he must rid himself of
them insofar as they prevent him from attaining it. .
“Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things, insofar as it
isleft to the choice of our free will and isnot forbidden. Acting accordingly, for our part,
we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, along life
toa short one, and so in alll things we should desire and choose only those things which
will best help us attain the end for which we are created.” (Translation by Anthony
Mottola, The Spiritual Exercises of SaintIgnatius, NY : Doubleday Image Books, 1964,
pp. 47-48.)
This passage, called the Principle and Foundation, not only explains
the aim of the Exercises, but presents the kernel of Christianity as such.
This would need much explanation, which I have to omit at present as it
would be only secondary to our purpose now.
A central element of this Principle and Foundation is the person who
is indifferent. This refers to one who has fully grasped the aim and
purpose for which the human being was created, and lives fully and only
for that alone. This is the person who is totally free and is not swayed by
attachments of a surface view of things, and transcends the so-called
common sense of the world. Now this "aim and purpose for which the
human being was created" is no other than "to praise, reverence, and serve
God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul," Rather than give a
theological formulation, the key point and goal of this Principle and
Foundation is to grasp experientially the aim and purpose of creation.
This experiential grasp of the aim and purpose of creation will enable the
exercitant to realize and actualize this aim and purpose in all his daily
activities and passivities, that is, sleeping, waking up, sitting, standing
up, and so on. For him, every moment is simply filled with the "praise,
reverence and service of God our Lord," and that alone. With this Irecall
that koan in Zen on the Original Face (without thinking of good or evil,
show me your Original Face before your father and mother were born!)
and Iam led to say that the solution to this koan is based on fundamentally
the same experience. Based on this experience, one attains the state of
being an indifferent person - not one who is unmoved by emotions, but
one who is totally free with regard to all things. Of course this is a state
that needs to be continually polished from moment to moment, and the
following stages of the Exercises are also geared towards the concretiza-
tion and further orientation of this total freedom.a Ee
172 Ruben Habito
In the Spiritual Exercises, this Principle and Foundation is set forth by
Ignatius right in the beginning as a presupposition of the whole enter-
prise. But behind this seemingly quite detached and "objective" expres-
sion is the totality of the mystical experience of Ignatius himself, reached
after having struggled through a tempestuous period of search and
agonizing interior struggle. ‘The exercitant thus can only really fully
appreciate and grasp the real import of this initial passage after having
gone through the whole process of the Exercises and being gifted with the
grace of "seeing the purpose of one's creation."
In Zen of course the centra{ aim is no other than “seeing into one's
original (or essential) nature,” which is not the adherence to a doctrinal
proposition as to what this original or essential nature is, but rather
consists of a fundamental experience. This is the experience of self-
realization that enables the person to see right through oneself and cut
right through one's ego-attachments, illusions and false conceptions. It
is this experience that throws in proper light one's place in the whole
universe, and thus enables one to cut at the roots of those inordinate
attachments, which are the sources of lust, anger, ignorant craving, and
so forth. In other words, it is the liberation of the person from these
fundamental shackles that prevents the True Self from coming to thefore.
Thus liberated, the person's decisions, thoughts, words, action, eating
and drinking, sitting and standing, talking and keeping quict, crying and
laughing, from waking up in the moming to retiring to bed, even his or
her very slumber, are all exquisite expressions of that original or Essential
Nature.
Thus, whether one be in a state of health or sickness, riches or pov-
erty, honor or dishonor, or whether one should have a long life or a short
one, as Ignatius mentions, in each particular state or situation one is
given, isrealized the fullness of this original nature, “the purpose of one’s
creation.”
In this connection, may Irefer to a Christian doctrinal formulation that
is at the background of this section, which is the notion of “creation out
of nothing” (creatio ex nihilo).
I myself was led to see the experiental significance of this “doctrine”
with that initial experience in Zen precipitated by my working on the
famous koan Mu which you presented me in my initial interview with
you. (Editor’s note: See Mumonkan, Koan No.1 on Joshu’s Dog, inKoan
Yamada, Gateless Gate, Los Angeles, Center Publications, 1979, p. 13.
“A monk asked Joshu in all earnestness, ‘Has a dog Buddha Nature of
not?’ Joshu said, ‘Mu'!’”
I must confess that I was inclined to do abit of intellectualizing on this
subject, having been trained in philosophy in my Jesuit formation, and
also being of an inquisitive temperament. The original context of the
Total Liberation 73
koan, of course, is simply a negative answer to the monk’s question: “No
dear monk, a dog does not have Buddha Nature.” But this goes against
all of Buddhist doctrine, which affirms the Buddha Nature, or original or
essential nature, in your usage in all living beings, including dogs and
cats, salamanders and cockroaches, and so forth. The koan also initially
set me thinking about the concept of “nothing” or “nothingness,” and I
ts philosophizing about this notion.
is vein, I read Nishitani Keiji’s Shukyo to wa Nanika_(Bditor’
note: later wanslated as Retigion and Nothingness, Berkeley, ee
of California Press, 1982), and got the very important hint that this Mu,
which is so central and plays the role of a fulcrum in Zen, is not the same
as that concept of “nothingness” that is simply dualistically opposed to
‘somethingness” or to “being,” but is something that transcends this
dualism.
Working on this hint, I stopped my philosophizing, and I simply sat
with my legs crossed, straightening my back, regulating my breathing,
putting my whole being into focus simply on this Mu and as you keep
urging your Zen disciples, to become one with it, to be absorbed
(botsunyu, literally, to lose oneself and enter) into it. Mu with every
breath, every step, every smile, every movement, And it was this
por korea es led on explosive experience which you have con-
, which now enlightens my whol i i
eatin igh y le being, enlightens the whole
And so, our traditional Christian formulation of creatio ex nihilo for
me is no longer a mere philosophical concept or doctrine that once upon
a time there was nothing, and then from hence came something, or
whatever, but is simply an expression of an ever-present wonderment,
with every breath, every step, every smile, every leaf, every flower, every
raindrop, realized as a grace-filled gift of God!
Everything in the whole universe, leaves, rocks, mountains, living
beings of every sort, is simply and originally nothing but the gratuitous
gift of God, uttered into being by his Word (Logos). Everything in its
particularity is in a relationship of absolute dependence on the Infinite
God, and nothing at all exists apart from this Infinite God. This can be
expressed also as “to live and exist in God, within God,” and likewise,
“to be enwrapped by the divinity.” This founds the Christian view of the
holiness of the whole universe.
So again, what Ignatius writes in the Principle and Foundation of his
Spiritual Exercises is actually already an expression of the summit of the
mystical experience waiting for one called to undergo these Exercises
with proper guidance, although he writes with rationalistic and appar- ,
ently dualistic ideas of his time, as when he refers to the “salvation of the
soul.” Shorn of this dualism and rationalism, we can be led to taste the174 Ruben Habito
center of his message, simply that “man is created to praise,
reverence,and serve God our Lord.” And this is the eternal purpose of all
creation, realized in every breath, every step, every smile. In other words,
to praise, reverence, and serve God in every breath, every step, a8 such,
is the “salvation of our soul” and not merely a means to it!
This doctrine of creation has another important aspect in Christianity,
that is, it also provides the basis for being a Christian doctrine. This is the
assertion that all things that exist have their foundation in the Word of
God, as pointed out in the Gospel of John, 1:3, and other passages. The
Word of God is one with God (Jn. 1:1, 14:9, 14:11, etc.) transcending all
time barriers and limitations (Jn. 8:58, Heb 13:7-8). It is the way, the
truth, the life itself (Jn. 14:6). It is the light of the world (Jn. 8:12) and is
empowered with all the power and authority in the whole ‘universe, Christ
the Lord himself (Mt. 28:28). Christ the Lord is one God himself, and is
likewise fully and totally a human being, the fount and basis of the
salvation of the whole universe (Phil. 2:5-10, Jn. 1:14). The first
disciples, upon meeting with Jesus of Nazareth, experienced the very
presence of Christ the Son of God in their midst, and this is the historical
starting point of Christianity. Christ the Son of God is the archetype of
all creation, of the whole universe, and is the foundation of all (Eph. 1:4-
12). With all this as a background, one who has experienced Christ the
Son of God is thus able to grasp at the same time the “purpose and aim
of creation.”
This leads us to the second point in the Exercises which I would like
to consider. The greater part of them is taken up with the contemplation
of the earthly life, the passion and death, and the resurrection of Jesus
Christ the Son of God. The point of this contemplation is to grasp the
mind and heart of Christ, to be atone with Christ. Christ is the Sonof God,
fully human, walked the earth, shed perspiration, experienced thirst and
dtank water to quench his thirst, rejoiced, grieved, suffered, died and was
buried. And according to Christian proclamation, he resurrected, and
now sits at the right hand of God, as the Lord of all creation, fully one with
the Godhead, in total divinity. The practitioner of the Ignatian Spiritual
Exercises contemplates on these mysteries of the concrete life of Christ
the Lord and grasps, becomes one with, becomes absorbed into the heart
and mind, the very presence of this Lord Creation, Andas one goes deeper
and deeper into this kind of contemplation, there comes amoment when
he can exclaim with Paul, “It is no longer I that live, but Christ in me”
(Gal. 2:20).
Christ the Lord is the fount of salvation of all creation, and acts
dynamically throughout all ages in this salvific action. This is the center
of Christian faith, and this is likewise the very content of the religious
experience that the Christian is opened to in practicing the Exercises.
Total Liberation 175
And it is the core of the Christian confession of faith to proclaim that
this Christ, the Word of God from all eternity, entered history, and took
on the fullness of humanity in Jesus of Nazareth, Or vice versa, that this
man Jesus, born of a woman in a particular age and in a particular
onan context, is the Christ, the very fullness of the Eternal Son of
_ With Jesus, the whole of the human is elevated into the realm of the
divine. That is why for us Christians, the earthly life of Jesus reveals the
“archetype” of what it means to live as a child of God: being bom,
growing up, accepting pain and sorrow as well as joy and jubilation,
taking on the tasks demanded of us in our particular historical and social
situation. So we contemplate on this life of Jesus as the life of the Son of
God, as enlightening our very lives here and now as children of the same
God in Christ. Passages in the new Testament showing us the various
aspects of this life thus revealed to us the way towards which we are
called, the Truth which we seek, the Life that is the source of our own.
individual historical lives. That is why the second and third and fourth
weeks of the Spiritual Exercises center on the contemplation on this life
of Jesus, from his public life, to the passion and death on the Cross, and
the Resurrection unto the newness of life.
Each particular passage in the New Testament then, revealing to us an
aspect of the life of the Word of God in the flesh, is our very food and
drink, and we approach these passages not with some intellectual
interpretation, but precisely as food and drink. And I may mention here
that Zen has taught me to appreciate better this Christian tradition of
reading Scripture not with the head, but as food that nourishes the life of
the Spirit: “Taste and see how good is the Lord!”
Every koan that I tackle in Zen is not an intellectual exercise, but
precisely something to be tasted and “eaten,” so that the koan is absorbed
into my being, and I become one with the koan, whether it may involve
a dog, a cat, a mountain, a star, a pound of flax, a person in distress, or
whatever. And so Scripture passages also present us with koans to be
a to be absorbed into our whole being, that we may become one “in
Here may I just mention one element that I feel is quite distinctive for
” the Christian bent on the unreserved following of Christ: to contemplate
on the life of Jesus of Nazareth is to assume this life as the archetype and
model for one’s own, and concretely this means taking the path he took,
making the fundamental options he made his own. And this means to live
one’s life as totally opened to the Spirit (Breath) of God, in proclaiming
the good news to the poor, in announcing release to the captives,
recovering sight for those who cannot see, in setting free the oppressed
(Lk. 4:18-19), This is acall for us Christians to situate our lives with Jesus176 Ruben Habito
on the side of the poor, the oppressed of the earth, and to let ourselves
become an instrument for the proclamation of this good news of
liberation.
Ycannot go into the details of this matter in this letter, except to indicate
» that following Jesus entails for us Christians a definite perspective in
looking at our present society, in looking at history, And that is the
perspective from the standpoint of the poor and the oppressed, as bearers
of the message of liberation that Jesus brought with his whole historical
existence. It is this message that brought him into direct conflict with the
religious and political authorities of his time, and brought about his
condemnation by those authorities to death on the cross. And for us, to
follow Jesus is to place our destiny together with the poor and the op-
pressed, proclaiming the message of liberation, and accept the conse-
quences of this message as Jesus did, which is death on the cross. This,
of course, includes not only the death to self, the death to all our ego-
centered attachments, but also the manifold implications of such a death,
in our concrete choices of our way of life, our values, our particular
preferences in this historical existence. In the words of Ignatius, “to be
poor with Christ poor, to be despised with Christ despised.”
This is an element which I do not find explicitly taught in Zen, and 1
beg to be corrected on this point if I may. Except that the process of
“emptying” in Zen disposes me to be perfectly free and able to place my
destiny with that of the poor and oppressed of humanity, whom I
inevitably encounter in this historical existence, in the way that Kanzeon
or the Hearer of the Cries of the World becomes one with the sufferings
of those she encounters, and offers a hand in the alleviation of those
sufferings. 7
So to experience being “one in Christ” which is a fruit of the Exercises
involves not only a “general” or “universal” kind of oneness in eating and
drinking and laughing and crying, but also a quite concrete kind of
oneness with the sufferings of living beings in this historical existence,
the oneness that Jesus Christ himself realized as he assumed the suffer-
ings of all humankind on the cross. The contemplation of the cross of
Christ in the Spiritual Exercises is then not just a self-flagellating or
masochistic enterprise that relishes the sight of suffering, but is the .
plunging of oneself into the lot of suffering humankind with Christon the
cross. It is also a call to look at the very concrete ways in which living
beings are made to suffer in this earth in our present day and age: at the
poverty and hunger, at the destitution and deprivation, at the discrimina-
tion and oppression, at the various forms of military violence that
desecrate the sacredness of human life which is a gift of God.
Being one with this suffering and death of Christ on the cross is also
to be one with him in the newness of the life of the resurrection. This
Total Liberation 177
solidarity with suffering humankind is the source of that energy that
enables one to give oneself fully in the concrete historical tasks of
liberation. Thus the contemplation on the Risen Christ gives the exerci-
tant the vision that alll this suffering is not in vain, that it does not all end
in defeat and desperation, butin glorification and triumph, Righthere, in
the midst of apparent defeat and despair, is the vision of glory. Itis on the
cross itself that Jesus tells the Good Thief, “Truly, today you are with me
in Paradise” (Lk. 23:43),
The third main point I would like to explain to you about the Spiritual
Exercises which indicates the centrality of experience is with regard to
the fruit of the concluding part, called the Contemplation for Obtaining
Love. Here, the exercitant is called to begin by seeing how God the
Creator and Lord is present in the entirety of the universe, in his fullness,
in all things. Here the “universe” is not taken as something abstract, but
is seen in each and everything, the earth, nonliving beings, plants, fruits,
animals, human beings (the exercitant himself), Here is an exercise in
contemplation (as opposed to meditation which involves a discursive
Inquiry into things) which is actually a tasting of things as they are. This
act of contemplation or tasting cuts through the subject-object barrier,
and this kind of contemplation is thus clearly distinguished from other
kinds of which presuppose a subject “contemplating” an “object.” In this
context, tosee how the Creator and Lordis “presentinall things” involves
an exercise of tasting (of each particular thing in the light of God, each
particular thing which, if we recall, is not at all apart from this infinite
God). Such “tasting” is quite akin to the mode of tasting in various Zen
koans, for example, in those that involve dogs, cats, a finger, a tree in the
garden, masagin (“three pounds of flax”). The Contemplation for Obtain-
ing Love can thus likewise employ these koans, to lead to genuine
experience, and not for mere intellectualization,
The Contemplation for Obtaining Love as explained by Saint Ignatius
can easily be taken and interpreted intellectually, saying that “The whole
universe is in God,” or “God is in the whole universe.” But the only thing
the Exercises aim at is not a theological or doctrinal explanation, but to
truly experience this presence of God in all, in each and every thing.
With the above three points we can see the total aim and scope of the
Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and thatit is simply to form a true
Christian. This is someone who has “eaten” and “drunk” the mind and
heart of Christ the Lord, one who thus gives of his whole being towards
the salvation of the universe. Incidentally, the salvation of the whole
universe is the gathering up of all things in heaven and on earth into one,
with Christ at the head (Eph. 1:10). Nowa person who gives of his whole
being toward the salvation of the whole universe is also able to “save a
ghost” (as given in the Miscellaneous Koans studied immediately after178 Ruben Habito
the enlightenment experience), Such a person is one who is totally free,
, . Open to the universe, who is able to walk freely between heaven and earth,
as the Mumonkan preface describes,
'__ Inordertoreach sucha state of total freedom, according to the Spiritual
Exercises, one must first be freed from one’s inordinate attachments,
from one’s sins, This is the aim of the first week of the Exercises, after
the Principle and Foundation, before going into the contemplation of the
life of Christ. And this reminds me of Zen Master Dogen’s Prescription
for Learning the Way (GakudoYojin-shu), where he gives as one of the
conditions for entering the Way the cutting off of all those blocks to the
Way, such as inordinate affections for honor and glory and for material
possessions.
The Spiritual Exercises are thoroughly within the Christian frame-
work, based on Christian tradition, doctrine and devotional practices as
background. So in thatsense, this limits those who can participate in them
to those who share this background. As a way of practice, this method has
other limitations which can be pointed out. Its most salient characteristic
as a way of religious practice can be understood better in comparison
with Eugen Herrigel’s description of the art of archery. Herrigel first
describes the Western way of archery where the archer aims at a target,
and with his whole strength concentrated upon it, attempts to hit it. In
contrast with this “purposive method” of archery, Hertigel describes the
Oriental art of archery in which is found the spirit of Zen, whereby one
sitaply disposes oneself, in posture, breathing, inner focus, and Jets the
arrow hit the target in a most natural and unforceful way (Cf. Eugen
Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1953).
ay “purposive” way of the West of course has its own results, and we
cannot deny that this way has led countless individuals to the “target” of
living true Chrisitan lives. However, it must also be pointed out that there
are many (raps and dangers for the practitioner in the process of being
sidetracked into doctrinal or intellectual interpretations.
This kind of danger is not only applicable to the Spiritual Exercises,
but to Christianity in general. Traditional teachings and doctrines are
interpréted intellectually, and in many cases, one misses the fundamental
Christian experience that underlines such teachings and concerns. But in
fact, many elements within the religious tradition of Christianity are
mainly geared towards such a fundamental experience, to guide believers
to this experiential dimension. ‘n Christian doctrine, the fundamental _ ,
core is something that transcends the intellect, expressed in some form
of conceptual contradiction that is geared to toppling (killing ') this
discursive intellect, and to guiding one toa genuine religious experience,
Thus, to say that Jesus is both Gad and man at the same time, or that there
Total Liberation 179
are three persons in one God, are examples of such conceptual contradic-
tions, but without them Christianity cannot stand!
What I have tried to do above is to present to you a form of Teligious
practice that has been and is still quite influential in Christian tradition,
namely the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and have tried to look
into these Exercises with a Zen eye. The aim of these Exercises is the
formation of the true Christian, in what can be distinguished as three
interrelated stages. First, the uprooting of the inordinate affections and
ego-centered attachments, by ascetic discipline, by ordering one’s life
and cutting off those elements that serve as hindrances in the fulfillment
of the aim and purpose of creation. The accomplishment of this stage
enables the individual to attain true freedom, detachment, indifference,
to be able to reach the second, which is the putting of one’s whole being
in the mystery of Christ, seeing the life of Jesus as presented in the
Scriptures as the archetype and model, and following him through his
public life, suffering and death on the cross, and to his new life in the
Resurrection. This newness of life is crowned in the third stage, wherein
God is discovered in all things, in the Cosmic Love which vivifies the
whole universe, in every stone or mountain, plant or animal, and in every
human being encountered, each in fullness in its historical and concrete
particularity. This is the crown of the Christian life, as experienced by
ignatius, and as he offers to all who would follow him through these
Exercises.
Now these three stages of the Exercises remind me very much of the
“three aims of Zen,” which are, 1) development of the power of
concentration, 2) the attainment of enlightenment, and 3) the actualiza-
tion of this supreme way of enlightenmentin daily life. While they are not
exactly the same as what I have described regarding the Exercises, the
affinity is quite striking. The development of the power of concentration
through the sitting exercise together with the elements of discipline that
it involves, in the regulation of one’s life, one’s food intake, sleep,
environment, as prescribed as conducive to one’s unhampered practice,
is in many ways not unlike the ascetic attitude and self-abnegation
required of one about to begin the Spiritual Exercises, cutting off all those
elements in oneself that hinder the attainment of the purpose of one’s
creation, which is to praise, reverence, and serve the Lord God. The
realization of one’s nothingness before God, and the realization of how
God fills and fulfills all things. The various Exercises of contemplation
can dispose the individual towards this realization experience, if he or she
is not derailed in conceptual entanglements and intellectual gymnastics
while undergoing these Exercises, But with the grace of this experience,
the Exercises of the second and third stages described above are an
effective way that leads to the actualization of the experience of one’s180 Ruben Habito
nothingness before God, of the fullness of God in all things, in the
concrete events of one’s daily life. In Zen the tackling of one koan after
another is what aids in the actualization of the enlightenment experience
in daily life, just as the continued practice of contemplation enables the
Christian to “incarnate” that experience of realization.
Ignatius’ ideal is summed up in the phrase “contemplation in action,”
wherein the two are no longer separate, but are complementary moments
of an integrated life. For such a contemplative inaction, the reality of God
is no longer confined to the chapel or in the meditation hall but is right
there, in the busyness of daily life, in the dining room, in the marketplace,
in the peace marches, in the human rights rallies, in the hospital rooms,
in the prison cells, r L
Iclose by asking for your continued guidance and direction, and with
deep gratitude for taking me and other Christians like inyself into your
discipleship in Zen. Warmest greetings and acknowledgments also to
Mrs. Yamada, for all the generosity extended to us just like we are
members of your very own family.
Gassho, with reverence,
Ruben Habito
8
Christians and Zen
Enlightenment
A Dialogue Between A Zen Master
and His Christian Disciples
Yamada Koun Roshi: Recently more and more Christians, especially
Catholics, have been coming to zendos to undergo genuine Zen training.
More and more priests and sisters are beginning to practice zazen.
For such people a common apprehension is felt in the beginning of
their practice. Can they continue and go deeply into this practice and still
remain steadfast and faithful to their Christian faith? I suppose it is
natural for a dedicated Christian to have such an apprehension, but letme
say first of all that such worries are unfounded. Let me lay aside Buddhist
doctrine, and speak of just zazen, the Zen experience in its purity. Here
there is no coloring of religious doctrine at all.
If you lay before the human spirit a certain set of conditions, a natural
outflowing will result from those conditions. Whether one believes in
Buddhism or Christianity, or Hinduism or Islam, or whether one has no
religious convictions whatsoever, or to put it in other terms, whether the
color of one’s skin is white or black or yellow or whatever, as long as one
is a human being, if one’s spirit is given a set of conditions, a certain
development will naturally take place. This can be said to be scientific
truth.
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