By Ron Barnett, Ph.D.
Germantown, Maryland, USA
What did Fr. Thomas Keating learn from Zen?
My contemplative teacher, Fr. Thomas Keating (1923-2018), learned from many sources – Indigenous American traditions, Hindu Advaita Vedanta, Western psychology, and various schools of Buddhism, among others.
As a Roman Catholic priest and Trappist monk he was unquestionably Christian in his theology and observance. Yet, possessed of a gifted intellect, curiosity and an open mind he engaged other religious traditions – especially their contemplative dimensions – not to dilute or replace his Christian path but to deepen his understanding, practice, and teaching. Among the traditions that influenced him, Zen Buddhism played a notable role.
Its influence contributed to the recovery of a Christian, non-conceptual meditation practice called Centering Prayer, and the structure of intensive, multi-day silent retreats.
During his 20 years as abbot of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, Fr. Thomas invited teachers from various religious traditions to share their wisdom with any interested monks (Common Boundary magazine, Resting in God, 1997).
These guests included: Swami Satchidananda (Hinduism), Achah Chan of the Thai Forest Tradition, Mahasi Sayadaw (Vipassana), and Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, (Rinzai Zen). These encounters were early seeds of what later became the Snowmass Interreligious Dialogs – an annual interspiritual gathering he hosted for two decades at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Colorado.
At St. Joseph’s, Roshi Sazaki (1907-2014) led multi-day sesshins (group sitting meditation or zazen) twice a year for seven years. Fr. Thomas had great respect for Roshi, especially Roshi’s koans. Koans are enigmatic questions designed to circumvent the intellect and trigger direct insight – answerable if it was evident that one understood the experience the koan was designed to awaken. For example, the well-known does a dog have Buddha-nature? or What is the sound of one hand clapping?
A key insight Fr. Thomas took from these Zen encounters was the recognition that the intellect is only one mode of knowing and that other, non-verbal modes exist. If he didn’t already know this, his experience with Zen was confirmation. When once asked, many years later, at a Contemplative Outreach Board meeting what he wanted for his upcoming birthday he responded with characteristic humor “more zazen!”
In Zen the primary discipline is mindfulness – attentiveness to the here and now without judgement during whatever activity is happening at the moment. With zazen, the practice of mindfulness is with respect to the simple activity of sitting formally.
From the sesshins, Fr. Thomas adopted several practices into Christian contemplative settings: the use of the Japanese rin gong for starting and ending periods of Centering Prayer, as well as kinin, mindful walking. These became integral parts of multi-day, silent Centering Prayer retreats he developed – a Christian form of Zen sesshins.
Roshi Sasaki was also the spiritual teacher of poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (1934-2016), who lived as a monk at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center in California and served as Roshi’s personal assistant for several years.
Fr. Thomas admired Roshi’s teishos, or dharma talks. In our final meeting (2012) at St. Benedict’s Monastery before his death in 2018, Fr. Thomas gifted me a collection of his notes on Roshi’s teishos – unpublished reflections he titled Zen and Christianity. Here are statements that stood out:
- If we are attached to any fixed identity, we will incorrectly manifest ourselves.
- … one who has sacrificed and merged with the Divine is amazed to see the Divine in everything.
- As long as we believe ourselves to be a personality, we cannot attain true love.
- If we cling to any teaching, we bring in identity…and that spells trouble.
- The ego mask is the creation of delusion. When we see it, it drops dead.
- The concept of separate and independent identity is our idea. When you release your ego mask, you fall into your heart – what is already here.
- It is important to preserve tradition but also to allow spontaneity and originality among people so they can express their understanding.
- Wisdom and love can only be reached when we have discarded everything.
- In Zen we do not ask for grace because nature is grace and we already have it.
- If we were all in Absolute Being, we would have no need of religion.
- The more you experience pure experience, the more you live. This is the life of oneness with God…
- Perfect Being has neither liking nor disliking. We should not hang on to them either.
(Unpublished notes: Zen and Christianity – Notes Taken by Thomas Keating in Conferences by Joshu Roshi Sasaki, year unknown)
I met him but I do not
know his name.
In gratitude, tears fall.
– Thomas Keating
(This article originally appeared in Ron’s Substack Contemplation Across the Lifespan. Fr. Thomas’ notes and Ron’s article will also be donated to the Thomas Keating archive at Emory University.)
