Zazen: A Path from Judgement to Love

by William Skudlarek, OSB 

This paper was inspired by an observation Thomas Merton made in his book Zen and the Birds of Appetite:

…Zen consciousness does not distinguish and categorize what it sees in terms of social and cultural standards.  It does not try to fit things into artificially preconceived structures…If it seems to judge and distinguish, it does so only enough to point beyond judgment to the pure void…

Here we can fruitfully reflect on the deep meaning of Jesus’ saying:  “Judge not, and you will not be judged.”  Beyond its moral implications, familiar to all, there is a Zen dimension to this word of the Gospel.  Only when this Zen dimension is grasped will the moral bearing of it be fully clear! (pp. 6-7).

The Japanese ecumenical translation of the Scriptures, which the Catholic Church in Japan uses in the celebration of the Eucharist, makes quite clear the categorical character of Jesus’ command not to judge when it employs the direct and somewhat harsh form of the imperative (Sabakuna!) to translate Jesus’ words. Exegetes, however, especially modern Western exegetes, tend to interpret Jesus’ words as a form of “Semitic exaggeration.”  I suggest that these attempts to mollify the command of Jesus about not judging are more a reflection of the preconceptions of the exegetes than of the mind of Jesus.  Coming out of a Western dualistic culture, these interpreters fail to allow for the possibility that Jesus may not be operating out of those same preconceptions.

I then turn to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, where admonitions not to judge are frequent and often rather colorful:  for example, “A dog is better than I am, [said Abba Xanthias], for he has love and he does not judge.” One of the reasons the Desert Abbas and Amas are so concerned about refraining from judging is that their extreme asceticism could all too easily lead them to look down on others.  A deeper reason is that, as Benedicta Ward, a translator and editor of these sayings noted, the aim of the monk’s life was not asceticism but God, and the way to God was charity.  As she put it, “One of the marks of this charity was that the fathers did not judge.”

The next section of the paper/talk surveys some of the literature of and about Zen.  In this literature–at least the body of literature with which I am familiar–there is very little said about judging or not judging.  I argue that the reason for this is that the world view of Buddhism–and perhaps of the Eastern world in general–is poles apart from the dualistic mentality of Western culture.

In his teishôs Kôun Yamada Roshi used to speak about the fundamental insight of Zen by contrasting Buddhist teaching with the presumption of ordinary people that subject and object are in opposition, that the objective world is standing before our consciousness as the completely different outer world.  For this reason, he said, these “ordinary people” suffer pain and agony because the outer world does not obey their will and circumstances do not go as they wish.  In one of his teishôs he insisted that the most fundamental point of Buddhist teaching, the true satori of Zen is that subject and object are intrinsically one. To intuit, experience, and realize this fact is the main reason for doing zazen. “In the world of the essential nature, is there anything, after all, to be called gain or loss, good or bad?  As I tell you so often, in the world of Mu there are no such dualistic oppositions” (Gateless Gate, 119, 131).

Although I have not yet come to an experiential understanding of this fundamental insight of Buddhism, it is possible for me to understand that if one operates out of a nondualistic worldview and strives to come to an experiential realization of this way of conceiving reality, there is very little reason to insist on the necessity of not judging.  That one should not, that one fundamentally is radically unable judge because there is nothing “out there” to judge, is simply taken for granted.  Thus, as I see it, it is precisely because Buddhist teaching is grounded in and built on the affirmation of the intrinsic oneness of subject and object that references to not judging are virtually nonexistent in the literature of Zen.

In the final part of my presentation I describe how I became involved in Zen and how I relate my practice of zazen to my Christian faith.  I conclude by observing that the reason Jesus tells us not to judge – Sabakuna – is ultimately because there is no one and nothing out there to judge.  In him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).  In him, who is divine love incarnate, we are all one.