Healing Breath: Zen for Christians and Buddhists in a Wounded World

For Florian and Benjamin

Wisdom Publications

199 Elm Street

Somerville MA 02144 USA

www.wisdompubs.org

© Ruben L.F. Habito 2006

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Habito, Ruben L. F., 1947–

  Healing breath : Zen for Christians and Buddhists in a wounded world / Ruben L.F. Habito. — [Rev. and updated ed.].

    p. cm.

  Previously published: Maria Kannon Zen Center Publications, 2001.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 0-86171-508-X (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-0-86171-867-2 (ebook)

  1. Spiritual life—Zen Buddhism. 2. Spiritual healing—Zen Buddhism. 3. Zen Buddhism—Doctrines. I. Title.

  BQ9288.H33 2006

  294.3'444—dc22

  2006015194

ISBN 0–86171–508-X

First Printing

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CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Diagnosing Our Woundedness

Surveying Our Situation

Tracing the Roots of Our Brokenness

Four Ennobling Truths: A Buddhist Diagnosis

Sin and Salvation: The Christian Message

2 Tasting and Seeing—The Zen Way of Life

Four Marks of Zen

Three Fruits of the Zen Life

3 Listening to the Breath

Elements of Zen Practice

The Zen Teacher as Midwife

Rediscovering the Breath

The Breath as Connector and Healer

The Breath in Christian Spirituality

4 Awakening to True Self

The Fundamental Questions

The Koan Mu

Hearing the Way

Just Sitting: Shikan Taza

Cosmic Affirmation: God Is Love

5 Embodying the Way

To Become as Little Children

The Wonder of a Cup of Tea

6 This Is My Body

Dropping Off Body and Mind

This Very Body, The Great Wide Earth

Hologram: The Part Is the Whole

The Mystical Body of Christ

The Body Broken

Rekindling after Burnout

7 Coming Home—A Six-Point Recovery

Recovering the Now

Recovering the Body

Recovering Our Shadow

Recovering the Feminine

Recovering the Wonder in Nature

Recovering and Reconnecting with My Neighbor

Epilogue: Spirituality for Healing Our Global Society

Notes

Index

PREFACE

Zen is now a significant feature of the spiritual landscape in the West. In its original setting, Zen refers to a rigorous, demanding, and yet exhilarating form of spiritual discipline in the context of a Buddhist monastic way of life that flourished in East Asian societies.¹ In popular usage in the West, the term Zen has taken on an exotic air, and has come to be associated with certain styles or modes, as in the Zen of cooking, the Zen of golf, the Zen of driving, and the like. The well-worn joke about the Zen hot dog—one with everything—is also indicative of the way it is perceived.

These popularized associations of Zen, while sometimes on the outlandish side, are not entirely unrelated to the original setting out of which the term came about. This book, cognizant of its historical background in Buddhist monastic life in East Asian societies, presents Zen as a spiritual practice which opens one to a new way of seeing, and way of life in consonance with this way of seeing. It may hopefully inspire some readers to seek out a community of practice near their area. (Zen centers of various lineages can now be found in most major cities or in various places in North America and Europe, and in other parts of the world as well, and may be located through the yellow pages of a local phonebook or with a simple internet search.)

It is written especially for those who seek a spiritual path that leads to healing in the personal, social, and ecological dimensions of our being. If you are seeking guidelines for practice that connects these three dimensions of our being, this book is for you. If you seek wholeness, groundedness, and integrity in your life, to overcome a state of fragmentation or lack of direction in which you find yourself—Healing Breath is offered to you.

Perhaps you, too, have come to realize, with many others, that our world, our global community is in a sad state of affairs, going from bad to worse each day. In response to this state of affairs, you may already be engaged in some form of social, political, or ecological action, seeking to transform the way we live and relate to one another and to the Earth. You may also be one of those who feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. If you’ve been tempted to pessimism or have thrown up your hands in despair when your best efforts don’t seem to make a dent, this book has something for you.

The spiritual path that leads to healing begins with a change in our way of seeing. According to Father Thomas Berry—a twentieth century prophet, and witness to our Earth’s woundedness and the urgent need to take it seriously—our basic problem is not one of strategy, but cosmology.² The following chapters trace our global malaise to a misguided cosmology. Our mistaken view of ourselves and our world begets destructive attitudes and violent behavior toward one another and toward the Earth itself.

Seeing that our ailing socio-ecological condition is fundamentally rooted in an erroneous view of things, we can also see that healing begins with a right view.³ This book describes a step-by-step healing process that can begin right here and now. Using the concrete situations of our everyday life, we can move toward a right view and toward a right way of living together on this planet.

Unfortunately, the spiritual path and the path of socio-ecological transformation are often regarded as unrelated human endeavors. Many who have avidly pursued one have no particular interest in the other. Growing numbers of us realize, however, that these two human dimensions are vitally connected. Healing Breath offers a way to integrate a spiritual path with active, socio-ecological engagement as the ground.

Healing the woundedness of Earth is not unrelated to healing our personal woundedness. The wounds of Earth and those of the individuals making up our Earth community cannot be separated. Thus healing in our individual lives becomes the basis for the healing of the whole Earth.

This book also addresses another set of questions. In Zen retreats over the years I have been asked: What kind of belief system is required to fully engage in Zen practice? Can a Christian practice genuine Zen? In other words, is Zen practice compatible with a Christian faith commitment? If so, how can such a spiritual practice in an Eastern tradition inform Christian life and understanding? Challenged and prodded on by such questions, I was inspired to write this book as a way of responding to them.⁴

I also want to address questions posed to me by Buddhist friends and colleagues. Some of them, born and raised in Jewish or Christian traditions, have written off their Judaism or Christianity as no longer pertinent to their outlook and way of life. Indeed, many Buddhists regard any form of theistic religious expression as an unhelpful worldview, an erroneous belief system, or unfruitful practice. Their question to me is How can you practice Zen as you do and still remain a Christian?

In the process of describing what is involved in the Zen way of life, I will consider various Christian expressions, symbols, and practices—not as an apologetic for a belief system, but as a way of suggesting how these expressions, etc., from Jewish and Christian traditions, too, point to transformative and healing perspectives and experiences opened to one in Zen practice.

In the 1970s, as I sat in zazen at the San-Un Zendo in Kamakura, Japan, I was receiving the regular guidance of Zen Master Koun Yamada. As he led me by the hand through the intricacies of the Zen path through koan practice, he asked me to share with him any insights or perspectives I found in the Bible or on the Christian spiritual path, especially in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius that I was familiar with from my Jesuit training, that related to what I was learning in my Zen practice. Writing this book has given me the opportunity to recover and reflect once more on some of those insights and perspectives, and to share them with Buddhist, Jewish, and Christian friends and readers.

This book is a personal testimony of an experience of "intra-religious dialogue": the encounter of two (or more) religious traditions within the same individual.⁵ In this kind encounter, we are invited to place ourselves within differing religious traditions, to possibly discover mutual resonance as they illuminate or mutually challenge one another.

More and more of us are engaging in this adventure. And as we do so, we are able to open our eyes to the treasures within the religious traditions that coexist in our global village, and find great fruit in the endeavor. We are coming to realize that we have many allies in our common concern for healing ourselves and healing the Earth, whom we can recognize across religious boundaries.⁶

A polarized global society wracked in pain calls out for the caring engagement of all it members, no matter what religious tradition, if any, we belong to. This book reflects on the healing power of Zen, a gift to the world from the Buddhist tradition. Zen is a form of spiritual practice, a way of life, and a vision of reality that not only can launch us in our inner work of personal healing, but also at the same time enhance and intensify our engagement in tasks of global healing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Josh Bartok and the staff of Wisdom Publications, as well as Helen Berliner, for their efforts on this new volume, Healing Breath—a thoroughly revised and updated edition of a book previously published by Orbis Books in 1993, and by Maria Kannon Zen Center Publications in 2001, under the title Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth. I also thank Bill Burrows and Robert Ellsberg of Orbis, who allowed the publication of the previous Orbis edition, and Helen Cortes, who supervised the publication of the Maria Kannon Zen Center edition.

The earlier publication came out of reflections based the experience of participating in, assisting at, and also directing Zen retreats over many years, since my first sesshin at Engaku-ji Temple in Kita-Kamakura, Japan, in May of 1971. Soon after that first taste of Zen, at the urging of my Jesuit spiritual director, the late Fr. Thomas Hand, S.J., I joined the Zen community practicing in San-Un Zendo (Zen Hall of the Three Clouds) in Kamakura, and was accepted by Koun Yamada Roshi as a student. To my Teacher, Koun Yamada, as well as to his successors, Jiun Kubota and Ryoun Yamada, I express profound thanks. To all my Jesuit mentors, including Fr. Hand, and also Fr. Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle, Fr. Kakichi Kadowaki, Fr. Heinrich Dumoulin, and many others who have inspired me and guided me in their own ways in the spiritual path, I offer this book with heartfelt gratitude.

To the late Fr. Benigno Mayo, S.J., who admitted me into the Society of Jesus in the Philippines, and to the late Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J., who as General of the Society, assigned me to Japan in 1970, my undying gratefulness. Here I also express my ongoing gratitude and warm fraternal sentiments to the members of the Jesuit Provinces in the Philippines and in Japan, who took me in as one of their own for twenty-five precious years of my life.

To the countless friends and benefactors and companions along the way, I wish to convey my deep appreciation and gratitude for the multitudes of ways they have supported me and kept me going in this path. Just to list down their names would take a whole book in itself, so I will desist from this here and will continue to cherish each of them in my heart. These include those whom I met in various visits to rural and urban communities in my own country, the Philippines, and in India, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. It was in these visits that I was privileged to meet many persons in grassroots communities, those who bear the brunt of the unjust and destructive structures of the world, whose children continue to suffer from hunger and malnutrition, whose daughters are sent off to the big cities to seek their fortunes in ways we would prefer not to imagine. It was in those precious times spent with grassroots communities in different places that I have come face-to-face with the wounds we all bear as members of this Earth community. During those visits, and in their aftermath, I have been blessed to experience the power of cosmic compassion at work in various ways toward the healing of our wounded Earth.

The continuing friendship and support of Sr. Elaine MacInnes, OLM, Roshi and founder of Zen communities in Manila, Philippines, Oxford, England, and Toronto, Canada; of Sr. Rosario Battung, RGS, a Dharma sister in the Sanbo Kyodan, and of Sr. Vicky Palanca, ICM, have been a source of strength and inspiration through the years.

Heartfelt gratitude also to Sr. Pascaline Coff, OSB, of the Osage Forest of Peace Monastery in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, who continues to invite me to direct annual retreats at their ashram, as well as to Sr. Priscilla, Sr. Benita, and all the sisters of her community, and to all of those who participated in those retreats through the years. I thank Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Christina Spahn, co-director, as well as Kathleen O’Malley, and the succeeding directors and staff of the Center, for the opportunity to assist at Encounter of the Heart retreats there over a number of years. The talks given at those retreats provided the kernel of the material that came to be developed in this book. I also thank the late Sr. Thelma Hall, RC, with fond memory, and Wendy Foulke, who provided opportunities to sit with their practice communities in the New York area, and Hugh and Susan Curran, who invited me to sit with their Zen group in Morgan Bay, Maine, several times.

All my Dharma sisters and brothers in our international Sanbo Kyodan Zen community have been and continue to be sources of inspiration and collegial support, and to each of them I offer my deep thanks, as I look forward to our annual gatherings.

The members of our Maria Kannon Zen Community have been my own companions on the path since I arrived in Dallas in 1989, and they have been my teachers in so many different ways. To all of them, especially those who gave of their own time and energy to serve on the Board of Directors through the years, including Lee Ann Nail, Roy Hamric, John Douglas, Dawne Schomer, Bob Curry, Don Champlin, Chris Runk, Helen Cortes, Susan Long, Joe Benenate, Mary Alice Binion, who each served terms as president. Deepest gratitude goes especially to Helen Cortes, our Executive Director, for her resilience and resourcefulness and tireless and caring service to the community, without whom we would not be where we are today.

I deeply thank my colleagues at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, beginning with