Catholic monk and Zen sensei: Trappist's new title sign of church's 'inevitable' encounter with the East
On April 17 (ca.2000?), at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Mass., Trappist priest Kevin Hunt was installed as a Zen sensei (teacher), making him the first North American Trappist to be both Catholic monk and authorized instructor of Zen. Jesuit Yr. Robert Kennedy, a Zen roshi (master) and Hunt's most recent teacher, oversaw the installation.
The monk's accomplishment, after years of study, represents an intimate East-West union within one Catholic religious and drew letters of commendation from the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and Yr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, superior general of the Society of Jesus.
Hunt's achievement is "one that we can all celebrate in thanksgiving to God," wrote Kolvenbach. Many Christians, he noted, "have found Zen to be a valuable instrument for progressing in the spiritual life. By coming to focus on the present moment through the practice of the techniques of Zen meditation, the Christian can become aware of God's immediate loving presence. This awareness is especially needed in the modern world, where the realities of divine grace are too often pushed to the margins of people's consciousness.
Approximately 80 people--Hunt's friends, relatives and fellow Trappists --attended the ceremony in the abbey's chapter room, traditionally reserved for the abbot's weekly meeting with the monks. At the solemn pounding of a large Japanese drum, a beaming Hunt and Kennedy, bearing a statue of the Buddha's head, processed in with other members of their Zen meditation community, including a rabbi and two Catholic nuns.
"All guests are to be received as Christ," said Fr. Damian Carr, abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey. "It is more than appropriate that this celebration is taking place during the Paschal Octave for it is in the presence and spirit of the Risen One that I welcome you today."
The interfaith ceremony, notable for its simplicity and generous tone, took less than 45 minutes. After donning the Robe of Liberation, a simple black Japanese kimono, and receiving his teaching staff, Hunt, 70, who has been a Trappist for 50 years, turned and thanked the members of his religious community. "Thirty of these years I have been on a strange journey," he said. "I am dumbfounded, gratified, pleased, whatever words are appropriate here, for the continued love and support you have given me."
Hunt's installation as a Zen teacher comes at a time when Rome, according to some observers, appears to be pulling back from its Vatican II openness to interreligious dialogue, particularly with regard to Eastern religions. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's top doctrinal official, has at times expressed caution and even hostility toward these traditions, arguing they could cause doctrinal confusion among Christians. During a 1997 interview, Ratzinger described Buddhism as an "autoerotic spirituality" that could lead to "the undoing of the Catholic church."
In March 2002, Ratzinger ordered German Benedictine Yr. Willigis Jager, a Zen master, to cease all public activities. Jager was accused of playing down the Christian concept of God as a person as well as stressing mystical experience above doctrinal truths.
Derived from Buddhism, which is a nontheistic tradition, Zen emphasizes seeking enlightenment through meditation rather than adherence to Buddhist scripture. Although Hunt had read essays by Trappist monk Thomas Merton, whose writings helped popularize Catholic interest in Buddhism, Hunt said his interest in Zen was personal rather than intellectual, prompted by his "own search for God in meditation. Because I was a monk, I was very interested in meditation."
Throughout the 1990s, the Trappist monk worked with Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, an organization sponsored by North American Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries to promote exchanges between Catholic monastics and followers of Eastern traditions.
Hunt said that "knowledge of your own tradition" is of "supreme importance" in interreligious work. "How does [Eastern practice] fit in with Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila? What is the difference in their formulation of prayer? In that sense, Cardinal Ratzinger is somewhat right. Too often people get enthusiastic [about another tradition] and they don't do that kind of work," Hunt said.
But Hunt predicts Buddhism will change Catholicism just as Greco-Roman philosophy influenced Christianity centuries ago. Because "Catholicism means universal" it has to "be open to the Buddhist experience of God as it was to the Greco-Roman experience," he said.
Although taken for granted today, the early church's encounter with Platonic and Aristotelian thought brought adjustments in Christian understanding, Hunt said. During that time, the role of the bishops was to evaluate these influences in the context of Christian experience. Hunt said the church is now going through a similar assessment with regard to Asian traditions.
Hunt said he doesn't see how the church can return to its pre-Vatican II parochial attitude. The [church s] center of influence is moving out of North America and going to the Third World. That means that Western emphasis in Catholicism is going to diminish. That means that other cultures that have not been as strong as Western culture are going to bring their understanding," he said.
This movement is "inevitable," he said. "Like any organic thing there are going to be false starts. We are becoming more aware of that."
Hunt has been installed as a teacher in the White Plum Asanga, a loosely organized Zen community that traces its lineage of instructors 84 generations back to the Buddha. As a sensei, he is now considered part of that succession. He said his new title means his "basic insight has been approved" and he is qualified to guide others in Zen practice. But when asked what it means practically for a Trappist monk to be a Zen teacher, Hunt laughingly admitted he doesn't have "the slightest idea."
"We're going to have to see how it happens and what happens. I never expected to be a Zen teacher," he said.
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Related Web sites
Monastic Interreligious Dialogue www.monasticdialog.org
St. Joseph's Abbey www.spencerabbey.org
White Plum Asanga www.whiteplum.org
[Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, a freelance writer, is a frequent NCR contributor. NCR Rome correspondent John L. Allen Jr. contributed to this report.]
