'THIS BUDDHIST MIGHT MAKE A CHRISTIAN OF ME YET . . . '

Reflections on 'Meditation and Mindfulness', a Christian/Buddhist retreat held at Turvey Abbey, October 2006,  by Alison Joseph.

Alison Joseph regularly attends Christian-Buddhist retreats (at Turvey Abbey and at the Buddhist monastery Amaravati). She is a writer whose popular series about a detective called Sr Agnes is set against a background of the social and ethical issues of our times within well-drawn detective plots.  www.alisonjoseph.com

After the retreat, I recall moments; the chapel at night, candle-lit for Compline as Friday draws to a close; the silent walk back to the guest house, my feet treading autumn leaves in the moonlight; the brown robes of the Buddhist nuns at morning puja, incense rising through the early morning light.

These moments are like precious beads threaded together, rare and sparkling things to those of us who've come from a world where prayer time tends to be interrupted by phone-calls, loud music, the constant noise of domestic life.

It is a relief to go to sleep in silence and know that there will be no reason to speak until well into the next day.  And as the silence expands and my thoughts settle, I reflect that there's more to this non-speaking than having 'a bit of peace and quiet.' It's the silence of centuries, as old as the monastic tradition.  The merging of two faiths in one retreat does, of course, raise questions: 'But they (Buddhists) don't believe in God,' or 'They (Christians) don't know how to meditate.'  In answer, I would say that, at least as a starting point, the silence is where the Christian and the Buddhist meet.  Of course, they have more in common than that; the morning puja is a chanting in praise of the Buddha, the Dhamma (the Buddha's teachings) and the Sangha (those who have followed the Buddha), just as, were I to go to Lauds, I would be singing songs of praise to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But in silent practice, one's thoughts settle around the non-thinking non-self, and the heart finds a natural resting place: of love, one might call it; a place beyond theological distinctions.

There are differences, of course, and they should not be brushed aside.  For me, the aim of a retreat is to find a quiet place in which to settle the noise that gets in the way of remembering the eternal. It is to shed, albeit temporarily, all the bits of stories we weave around ourselves in our daily lives; all the wishes and aims and plans and desires that together make up a false sense of self that weighs us down.  The idea of the self is approached in different ways by Buddhism and Christianity, and an examination of the differences is something we can find helpful in our own spiritual practice. As Thomas Kirchner, an American who has lived as a Buddhist monk in Japan says:

    ‘If one is to die to self it helps to know what it is one is dying to ...’

He goes on to say:

‘The essential task of the monastic, "Death to self and rebirth in spirit," may be approached from two directions; the direction of the self, or the direction of the divine.  At the risk of great over-simplification, it might be said that Buddhist contemplation takes a 'from the self' approach, with the idea that when the processes that create the self are thoroughly understood, the self is seen to be fundamentally void and an opening takes place to the world that lies beyond the self - the world of the divine.  [Whereas] in Christian monastic life... the stress appears to be much more on surrender to the divine (what I would call a loving relationship with God) than on an understanding of the self.' (Thomas Kirchner, Bulletin of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 28, 2004).

There is a widespread sense that Christianity has turned away from its more mystical side.  The spirituality that flourished in medieval monasticism, and which is found in the writings of the Christian mystics and in works such as The Cloud of Unknowing, has fallen into neglect. For many Christians, it is through an encounter with eastern religion that we have re-learned this forgotten language; a powerful tool, not only for individual spiritual practice, but when arguing against unhelpful certainties and fundamentalism.  To turn to the God of The Cloud of the Unknowing is to encounter an absence, a gap, a state of yearning.  At the place where they meet, both Christianity and Buddhism allow us simply to sit with that yearning, and our own sense of incompleteness leads us to a place of silence.  Father Robert Kennedy, a Jesuit Zen teacher, was told by his Zen master Yamada Koun Roshi that he did not want to make him a Buddhist, but rather wanted to empty him in imitation of '"Christ your Lord, who emptied himself, poured himself out and clung to nothing." Whenever Yamada Roshi instructed me in this way,' says Kennedy, 'I thought that this Buddhist might make a Christian of me yet!' (Robert E Kennedy, Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit; the Place of Zen in Christian life. [New York, Continuum 1995] 14.)

I think it is possible that the monk or nun for whom community life has become an everyday thing may underestimate the gifts they bestow on those of us who, from time to time, come to share a few days of that life. One of the things I've learned over the years is that the wall that divides the monastic from those of us out in the world is in fact not made of impermeable brick, but is more like a veil, a floating, shifting thing. A lay person has a tendency to see the well-ordered routines of the convent as something other-worldly, even glamorous, perhaps, in its challenge. We say to ourselves, 'I couldn't possibly live that way': and this is a mistake.  A kind nun once suggested to me that those of us drawn to spend time in a monastic setting are carrying within us a 'monastic archetype'; an appealing idea, and very helpful, I think, in allowing a transparency between the monastic and the non-monastic. It means that we can take back into the world that quality of silence, of non-self, of the divinity of everyday activity; and that even in the compromised, messy, noisy bustle of daily life, a silent space can be found, in which to say, 'This is my monastery.'

I have the greatest gratitude to the communities I have encountered for sustaining a monastic life that is healthy and questioning, and yet whose discipline acts as a reference point for those of us in 'the world'.  It is almost as if my prayer life resonates at a frequency emitted by these places: like a low hum towards which I can turn and find myself once more in silence.

Quotations are from an article by William Skudlarek, OSB:   www.osb.org/aba/2004/proceedings