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Steve Herrmann's avatar

Such an important piece of counsel here, thanks Addison. The post might be old, but the wisdom is timeless. The Western mystics such as John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and many others, are, of course, all aligned on this. Your critique so aptly identifies the danger of seeking experience as an end, a temptation as old as the mystics themselves. Even the most sublime consolations can become idols if they are pursued for their own sake.

But the Christian alternative is not a rejection of experience altogether (which you do not assert here), rather, it’s the reorientation of desire toward the Thou, who cannot be possessed, only received. The darkness of faith is not the absence of God but the overwhelming presence of a light too bright for mortal eyes.

One wonders, though, whether the Zen teacher’s hatred of religion was not, at its core, a hatred of the personal, the unbearable weight of a universe that answers back. To reduce all things to illusion is to escape the terror of relationship, the vulnerability of love. But Christianity offers no such escape. The God of the Gospels does not dissolve into the void… He dies on a cross, and in that death, He reveals that even suffering, even dereliction, is shot through with meaning.

In the end, the difference between these two paths is the difference between resignation and resurrection. The nihilist’s meditation leads only to the silence of the tomb. The Christian’s prayer, even in its darkest night, waits for the dawn.

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Bill Wilkie's avatar

Very informative and helpful, with important distinctions laid bare. Thank you. When I lived in the Bay Area, I got buckets full of a kind of smug, lazy, self-indulgent, narcissistic, anti-western lifestyle Zen/Buddhism that too often had little noticeable impact on the goodness and maturity of a person, especially its more vocal practitioners. It was good to call bullshit on (that version of) it. But you and Merton put some necessary detail on what's missing. Appreciated.

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