There’s a Korean Zen teacher named Seung Sahn. He’s famous for bringing the Korean version of Zen to America. He got his start working in a laundromat in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1970’s. He attracted some students from Brown University and this led to the implanting of his unique form of Zen in the West. His teaching can be summed up in a phrase he repeated over and over in his teaching – Only Don’t Know. Seung Sahn taught when you approach the world from the standpoint of not knowing anything and being okay with not knowing, you can live an enlightened, contented life. You know that phrase, ignorance is bliss? Well, Seung Sahn basically taught the truth of that phrase and built a spiritual teaching and practice upon the truth that ignorance is bliss. A Japanese teacher, Shunryu Suzuki had a similar approach with his Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. If we approach the world as if a beginner in the task of living life, we will live enlightened, contented lives. For a some time in...
There is the centuries-old legend that between the age of 12 and 33, which in the gospels are not mentioned, Jesus traveled to India and learned about Buddhism. These lost years were spent studying and practicing the Buddhist dharma. Jesus internalized the dharma on the basis of his cultural-religious background, and came back to Palestine and taught a kind of Buddhist-Judaism. There is no historical evidence for this. Yet there are groups of Indians and Tibetans who hold to it. And it is pretty interesting for us to consider. That the story continues to make the rounds with many people believing it to be true itself says a lot. Many of us would like to believe it! One thing is for sure, what Christ taught was often very buddhistic. Jesus’ teaching, whether knowingly or not, tapped into buddhistic notions of righteous self-emptying and righteous effort amid suffering, the exaltation of the poor and the vulnerable, and the focus on the imminence of truth and the practice of compas...