I'm trying to find some connective tissue that binds my faith to the martial arts path I'm walking upon, without watering either down or making of one or the other (or both) a syncretic mess. It's not quite a manifesto, but rather apologetics meets poetics of "holy violence." Christian Zen by William Johnston has helped provide me some of the foundation on which I'm hoping to build.
Johnston is a Catholic priest who, at the time of the book's publication, had lived in Japan for twenty years. He incorporated elements of Zen, which he defines as "imageless mental prayer," into his daily Christian prayer life. He does so by asking a lot of questions, challenging his own assumptions, and engaging in conversation with Christians and Buddhists, Western and Eastern. Two ideas that were novel to me were (1) separating the notion of Zen from Zen Buddhism, which itself seems a very Zen thing to do; and (2) aligning his concept of Zen with the apophatic tradition of Christian mysticism.
Once the notion of Zen becomes "agnostic" and a technique of meditation, divorced (in some sense) from its Buddhist roots, it becomes another tool in my toolbox of prayer techniques. Iaido (Japanese sword drawing) is often referred to as "Zen in motion," so I'm quite happy to land where I have at the conclusion of this book.
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I read the majority of it during the free time I had at a mandatory overnight work retreat. I read some in my room, some in a small chapel on the retreat center campus, and some next to the tennis courts I practiced Yi Jin Jing upon in the early morning. Even though it was itself "work" of a sort, it was welcome work and a relief from the "other" work I was engaged in. It was mine!
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