Zen jako droga duchowa dla chrześcijan

Electronic version of the publication available under CC BY-SA 4.0 license after 12 months from the date of release: November 2023

The purpose of this monograph is to show Zen as a spiritual path for a Christian. To achieve this goal, we have divided our considerations into three chapters. The first chapter presents an outline of the history of Zen Buddhism, showing its beginning in China in the 6th century AD, and ending with the 20th and 21st century process of Zen transmission to Europe and the Christian environment. Discussing the Chinese period of the formation of Zen Buddhism, we present two ways of schematizing its history. The first one, based on the lineage, is the traditional model by which the development of Zen Buddhism is shown since the arrival of the first patriarch, Bodhidharma, from India. The lineage scheme is still present both among the followers of Buddhism and in many popularizing or scientific publications. The second scheme, developed by J. McRae, is based on a historical-critical approach. It groups Chinese Zen history into successive periods. At the same time, it shows that the historicity of many traditional stories about patriarchs or important masters is questionable. These stories are the result of complex processes related to the formation of the identity of Zen Buddhism as one of the important religious components of Chinese culture. In the following sections of the first chapter, we also discuss the transmission of Zen to Japan, Korea and Vietnam, ending with a presentation of the inculturation of Zen in the USA and Europe, especially in the Christian environment. The considerations contained in the first chapter show that Zen is very flexible and open to the process of transmission from one country to another, or from one culture to another. It is therefore an important argument for the so-called a universalist interpretation of Zen, which assumes that the experience of awakening, called in the Christian tradition a mystical union, transcends all religious and cultural conditioning. Of course, historically, this experience has been expressed and conceptualized in Buddhist and Chinese terms and categories. Then it underwent the process of evolution reaching Korea or Japan and taking on a more Korean or Japanese shape. The fact is that the cultures of Korea and Japan have a lot in common with the cultural heritage of China, so these changes and adaptations were not very drastic or revolutionary. However, the emergence and presence of Zen in the West clearly shows that Zen has also managed to find a space and a way to function in the USA and Europe. In addition, many Christians have discovered in Zen their own path of spiritual development, allowing them to deepen their own living and experience of faith. In the second chapter, we present the most important Buddhist concepts in the form of a commentary on the Heart Sutra. This text collects and formulates the basic elements of both Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism in a condensed form. Then we show what some of the ideas contained in the Heart Sutra can bring to theological reflection. We based these considerations on a theological-comparative approach. The problem we focused on concerned immanence and transcendence in the Christian image of God. We first summarized the meaning of the presence of a transcendent God in the created world, based on Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theology (ST q. 8 a.1-4), and then looked at it from the perspective of the Heart Sutra. This reflection shows that the non-dualistic approach that characterizes the Heart Sutra can be a fruitful complement to a purely speculative theological analysis operating on a dualistic level. The third and final chapter was devoted to the presentation of the basic formal practices of Zen Buddhism, namely breath zazen, shikantaza, koan zazen, walking meditation (kinhin), working meditation (samu), and sutra recitation. We then evaluated these meditation methods from a theological perspective. Our analysis has shown that these formal Zen practices are perfectly acceptable from the Christian’s point of view, but require a great deal of maturity and knowledge of both Christian doctrine and Buddhism. This knowledge is essential in the process of theological translation of certain Buddhist concepts and categories in the light of Christian theology. Our considerations have shown that from a theological perspective there are no serious objections to the practice of zazen by Christians. Of course, entering this path requires a lot of personal maturity and a strong but open faith. In addition, meditation also creates a very important platform where Christians of all denominations and Buddhists of various traditions and schools can meet. Practicing zazen together with Buddhists is therefore an important expression of interreligious dialogue. Dialogue, which, although it is undertaken in the silence of contemplative concentration of the mind, very often communicates much more than words. However, the Christian-Buddhist dialogue remains a challenge also for the academic world. Comparative theology opens new areas of reflection that allow you to draw new impulses for theological reflection from Buddhist thought. It is enough to point to two philosophical and theological problems that can still be considered extremely important for interreligious dialogue. The first concerns the Buddhist idea of not-self (Pali anatta) and its possible implications for Christian anthropology, especially the study of the human soul. Consideration of this problem should also take into account modern achievements in the field of neurosciences. The second problem that still encourages reflection concerns the understanding of absolute reality/Absolute in Buddhism and the teaching of a personal God in Christianity. These two selected and exemplary issues already show that academic theological-comparative reflection still has much to offer for interreligious dialogue. At the same time, an essential element of this dialogue is also the space of meditative insight. For the truths that our speculative reason learns and analyzes also require an experience in the form of existential insight.