Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place of Zen in Christian Life
ROBERT E. KENNEDY
(BLOOMSBURY CONTINUUM, 192 PP, £12.99)
Tablet bookshop price £11.69 • Tel 020 7799 4064
The intersection of Christianity with Zen Buddhism receives an exciting renewal in this authoritative second edition of Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit by Robert E. Kennedy, Jesuit priest and Zen master. It is a concise introduction to Zen thought, tackling complex themes with an ease of understanding, and doing so in a commendably zealous spirit of enquiry.
Kennedy offers the Christian many truths compatible with Zen, referring to a vast array of teachers and theologians, spanning centuries. Thomas Merton is foremost among them. Zen and the Birds of Appetite was Merton’s last great work on Zen, written close to his premature death at the end of 1968. In it, he explores the naked intent of the will in reaching out to God – in essence, the practice of prayer without God. For Kennedy, this resembles a Buddhist-like emptying of knowledge, an almost total abandonment of what can be known.
