Thomas Merton seemed to think so. Dom Aelred Graham wrote about it too (both Benedictines), and lots of Catholic nuns here in Japan do zazen. I'm a lapsed Catholic myself, but consider myself a Buddhist.

Practicing Zen has made me a better Catholic. I have learned to see a lot better that that includes looking at Catholicism a lot different.

I was part of a sangha in one of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. A high percentage of the members were from Catholic backgrounds. It seemed some aspects of Tibetan Buddhism were particularly attractive for ex Catholics. Myself and my partner were not from Catholic backgrounds and in general seemed to have a more 'questioning' attitude. Coming away from that sangha after the death of my partner was necessary for various reasons. Fortunately I have found some Zen teachings extremely helpful which meant my connection with Buddha dharma has continued. Thanks for your interesting talks.

I consider myself a Zen Catholic due to my Catholic upbringing and my Zen Buddhist practices.

Found your video as I am doing research to form a spiritual system for a fantasy story I'm working on :) I was raised protestant and was very blessed to have parents that encouraged me to seek out spirituality for myself and not conform to hierarchy systems that humanity has created as we've seen how much that's simply a control thing. I always feel for ex catholics as that seems to be the largest church hierarchy and so much abuse and ignorance goes on in those systems. I appreciate the philosophies of Daoism and other Zen practices and believe that spirituality is an individual's journey, not a place in a hierarchy. I'm still very much protestant and I believe in Jesus and his teachings most of all. All spiritual truths I learn simply reinforce that faith for me. A spiritual journey is unending until we pass into the next life, and I wish you well in your own journey to ever pursue spiritual truth. 💖

Great video by the way. I found the same thing, that a few writers and thinkers within Catholicism really strike deeply, there's something there, but every time I tried to approach the actual church I was struck by the rules, intellectual arguments, and piety/sanctity defined as being based on submission to the authority of the church. Zen taught me to let go of all that and just listen.

I have sat zazen many times with Fr. Robert Kennedy S.J., who received Dharma Transmission from Bernie Glassman in the White Plum Asangha. When he was studying with Yamada Koun Roshi in Japan, he told Yamada that he was Catholic and did not want to become Buddhist. Yamada apparently told him, "I do not want to make you Buddhist, l wish to empty you in imitation of your Lord, Jesus Christ." I've also sat with Leonard Marcel, Roshi, who is Catholic, and Dharma heir to the late Fr. Pat Hawk, a Redemptorist priest. There are others, as well. I grew up Catholic but was unable to believe the Teachings. Zen doesn't require me to believe anything, really, so I find it more useful. But there are those who are able to practice in both traditions. More power to them.

Yes. I guess that answer would not have given us the Shozan video that we have today. Added later: I studied theology for ten years. Here’s a nugget: Lessing’s idea of “the ugly broad ditch of faith.” In order to make that leap into believing that G/J/HS are one and the end all be all - you have to believe. Faith in the Zen tradition is different - faith that teachings/dharma do lead us to awakening - if not they can change. Vastly different. There are other things I won’t get into. However, like you said, they all kind of have things in common and can be practiced alongside each other. I gave up the God thang a long time ago. However, like you, my roman catholic upbringing is still there. Peace!

Very interesting video, watching it I'm reminded of the religious syncretism that's so thoroughly baked into East Asian Mahayana. There are a lot of people who try to do that here in the west and I think much of the time it ends up being some uncomfortable pseudo-Manichean hybrid but your approach is what a more genuine syncretism looks like I think. We don't need to force Jesus and Buddha to hold hands, Buddhism simply existing in the context of western cultures will do the work for us.

Where was father Keating and centering prayer when we were kids, eh? I had zero sense of anything contemplative in the church school I went to. The closest I came to anything like that was having one or two friends who were Quakers. Who would tell about their silent meetings. Which seemed hellish austere but fascinating to me. Oh, and my Dad - who was less religious - would sometimes sit in the living room with his eyes closed. And this was called "doing TM".

Divine spaghetti monster!! AMEN :)

I loved your decription of zazen. Thank you!

Sometimes I am in the "Hail Jesus" camp and sometimes I am in the "What happens to God when there are no thoughts and words" camp.

Another excellent teaching Jack! Thank you.

Another wonderful talk, Jack! Oldest of 5 boys, here. I spent my earliest years in public schools, then my parents "braved" the waiting list, scraped up the dough and got us into Holy Trinity Elementary. Like you, I was a pretty serious student, attended from grades 2 through 6 and-a-half. Vatican 2 made the early 60's a very confusing for many, myself included. As an alter boy I learned the mass in Latin, then 18 months later the bishops decided English was the next big thing. I remeber being kinda bummed. But as you said the seperatness from god, lack of signs and general authoritarian vibe of it all toook its toll. But, your bathroom story got me remembering how I would unknowingly do what I learned later in college was a form of basic shavasana at night before going to sleep...after my Hail Mary's and Our Father's, of course. Anyway, my workaround to the closing the gap between me and the "allpowerfulallknowingsupremebeing" was to see myself in spiritual unity the concept of the body of Christ. Then in the middle of the sixth grade my parents moved and I was magically transformed into the "new kid" at a public junior high school...and discovered girls... and the rest is, as they say, history.

Just recently discovered your fantastic videos and a lot this one resonates. I was raised a Catholic but became atheist and left the church at around 12 or 13. In my early twenties I discovered psychedelics and the experiences opened me up to an entirely different view of life and of spirituality which I had hitherto dismissed. Thus, began a search for meaning and understanding the profound sense of oneness that I had experienced leading me to investigate Eastern religions such as Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism etc. I began a meditation practice and after around ten years of dabbling finally settled on Buddhism as the religion that I aligned most closely with. So I’d say I spent around 10 years practicing Buddhist meditation without ever fully committing to the idea of being a Buddhist. In Ireland even though we are now a very secular country, the Catholic Church still plays a huge role in peoples lives particularly in relation to the sacraments like funerals, baptism, marriage and so on. And a lot of people even though they are not practicing continue to allow their children to be instructed in religion and receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. My eldest daughter has now come to that age and will receive her First Holy Communion this year so as part of that process I’ve been returning to Church after many years away. I am now at a stage where I am able to feel completely at ease with being in the Church and saying the prayers and I love the sense of togetherness that it gives to our family as part of the wider community. At this stage in life having been taking spirituality seriously for 25 years I now see that religion and spirituality are two entirely different things - spirituality is your personal relationship with God or Spirit or Divine Love if you don’t like the word God (which after all is just a word) whereas religion is a set of beliefs that allow people to form a social system around their spiritual ideas. So as where I spent the first half of my life searching for the perfect religion, I now realise that that doesn’t exist but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have their place or that they lack beauty. Without meaning to disrespect religion I can happily wear a religion like a suit when the time is right and then take it back off until it needs to be put back on again. I enter into it with an open heart and engage fully but I don’t ultimately identify with any of it. I am what we refer to as an 'ala carte Catholic' I guess. :)

I have "practiced Buddhism" for several years. However, I love reading the Catholic monk Thomas Merton who also practiced Zen. I have a lot of respect for Catholics, but I also believe that if there is a God then nobody truly knows what God is and we only have ideas and concepts of said God. Maybe God is just the Dao? Who knows. Just my thoughts.

I have to get started now on my correction work as a teacher and find the correkt mark/ amount of points for all those sheets written bei 18year olds… Help, help, help… 🙏🏽🌸🙏🏽

Great, thanks. "Fingers pointing to the moon". This was my old teacher's definition of religion. Interestingly, I was recently looking at the etymology of the word religion. It's comprised of 2 parts in the one that I found. 'Re' and 'lign' are at the root and there's a suggestion of the word ligament. The implication is that we have been separated from some higher truth and "religion" re-aligns us with it! Seems relevant here! Thanks dude!

Catolicismo or zen .... They are good tools only if they can allow us to be open to the wonder of the beautiful landscape that you were walking through. The wonderful trees of different colors and the light of the Sun shining through the branches ... thank you for the walk , I enjoyed it, and the talk!

I had a Kensho experience while I was a devout Christian and afterwards Christian theology was completely unintelligible to me. I couldn’t go back despite trying for over a year.

When Sasaki used his plus minus analogy for man and woman, it sounded to me like he talked about agape.

If you were raised Catholic I feel very sorry for you. I say that because I was raised Catholic, went to a very conservative RC school and church (Vatican II was still very new and people were debating about it). Our parochial school was still way conservative as were the nuns, although the pastor-monsignor was one of the biblical scholars and driving forces - in Rome - behind Vatican II conceptual changes). I had to go to Mass everyday, learned Catholicism daily in class, and had it all literally beaten into my sensitive head, usually every week or two by one of the brutish conservative RC nuns. When Vatican II finally rolled out the younger nuns were quick to embrace it, the old or middle aged nuns, angry about it, beat a few of us boys even more brutally. My dad wasn't sure what to think, he was staunchly conservative but had issues with some of the nastier nuns (he worked for the church and had to confront some of those nasty nuns). By 7th grade I reached the end of my rope and wasn't allowed in the classroom by one very conservative, combative, and especially brutish nun. The principal rescued me, sat me in her office for a week querying me on the curriculum school work. I knew it cold even without being allowed in the classroom. She recommended that I go to public school because I'd never make it in Catholic school with the crop of conservative nuns in place there. So off I went to liberal/commie/pinko public school. My life forever changed, I became a top of the class student after about 6 months to settle in. I asked about weekly religious instruction but the brutish hateful 7th grade nun I guess didn't want to see me back there and said I didn't need any. I didn't know how to take that, but 8 or 10 months later I decided "god" didn't really exist anyway. F..k the Catholic church I was free and if nothing else I learned in Catholic school god was only at best a nebulous dream. I didn't know it but I was headed toward zen even back, well before, my expulsion from RC parochial school, it just seemed I leaned that way all my life with or without Catholic school training. Maybe that's why these wicked nuns beat on me so much and so often - I valued the truth above all else and what they were selling wasn't even close to being true, not the way they packaged it anyway. Many many years later in college I stumbled on weekly broadcasts of Alan Watts talks, later many of his astounding books, which baffled me while simultaneously pulled me in.They made no sense yet made all the sense in the world. Only later I discovered Alan Watts had been at one point an Anglican priest. More and more Buddhism made more and more sense; zen even more so. I was getting answers, the kind my Catholic prayers never brought. I hated my life in Catholic school and with the RC church at most times. Maybe I had to go through all of it be what I've become within the reality of zen.

I like Buddhism because as an atheist/agnostic it gives me a path toward spirituality without all the trappings of the cult of Christianity. Sometimes I think there may be a god or hope there is one, but in light of the evidence for god I’m forced to withhold believing in such things without evidence. The Buddha didn’t really seem to be very interested in the question of gods existence which I find to be very refreshing and his support of the idea that we can experience spirituality through our own merits. I will continue to drive religious people insane when I tell the them the question of god is not important and until they provide hard evidence to prove their religion I’m content to let go and live my life on the likely chance that these people are insane for believing in and things with such poor evidence.

Thanks for the video sir. My question to you, Christianity is not only Catholics and Protestants. Do you know anything about Orthodox Christianity, its a much more mystical path that goes back to the first days of Christianity. Have a great day!

Yes you can if you want to. You can be or do anything it's all in the mind.

Awww. Buddhism is a religion as well and can take on pretty stiff forms. Catholicism, just like Buddhism is neither good nor bad ( I had to say it lol). Seriously there are quite a few Sanbo Kyodan Catholic Zen masters. I have one in one of my local sanghas, a Jesuit nevertheless - great great guy ! It can be done successfully. I can recommend him to your subscriber if you wish.

I was genuinely worried during the first part of this video when you were describing silence as a snub from god. Then you came around to Silence as something all encompassing. A place wherein no further answers are necessary. A big sigh of relief escaped me. Christian mysticism or mystical practice is the silent undercurrent where the institution and its theology/philosophy cannot go. Thankfully. So much more to say, but maintaining Silence is perhaps the better course.

It's like for Catholics the universe works as if it was a sort of cosmic monarchy in which God is like the emperor and you a peasant. It's like the concept of spirituality they have consists on following the rules of such monarch.

I have to say that your experience of "Catholic" is absolutely un related to mine, which was formed in the Christian Mystical Tradition, which is not that well known in many rank and file Catholics, sadly.

I think monotheism is exactly wrong. As in, the proposition of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, ever-present god creating the world is about as wrong as you can get. However, I think that personhood is one of the highest (if not the highest) values that our consciousness is primed to recognize. So it makes sense and may even be necessary to personalize (if not anthropomorphize) "Ultimate Reality."

I'm doubly lapsed. Say what you want about the Bircher's they knew how to Keep the K in kampf.

Lucky, lucky fellow. Not only are your toilet prayers answered, but ufo's too!

Maybe the reason why your "Help" prayer works is because it's being heard by a divine being who comes to help you 🤣