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Many of your are aware of the late Fr. Willigis Jaeger, a Benedictine monk from Germany who was, until the end of his life in 2020, the primary teacher of our own Fr. Greg Mayers. An accomplished scholar and priest, Willigis (as he is fondly known) wrote several books on Christian contemplation and mysticism. And he was a committed Zen practitioner and teacher who studied in Japan with the founders of the Sanbo Zen society, which was the progenitor of Willigis’ own Empty Cloud lineage. As such, he is one of our “Zen ancestors,” if you will.
In his book, Search for the Meaning of Life: Essays and Reflections on the Mystical Experience (© 1995, Triumph Books, Liguori Publications. St. Louis, MO), Willigis includes a paragraph in which he clearly states his appreciation of Zen in his own spiritual journey. He writes:
Zen helped me to understand an important part of our Christian spirituality that has been lost in the traditional teaching about prayer – the mystical element. (p. 75)
I think what Willigis is saying here is that Zen, with its determination to see through language and to press us on toward an experience of what lies within, meets mystical experience on its own ground. Both Zen and mysticism direct us toward a clear experience of what he terms “the dimension from which all things come.” In Christian terms, this means God; in Zen language, it is essential nature, our original nature.
In mystical experience, according to Willigis …
God is no longer just the One who directs and rules everything. Rather, we use the word God to designate the totality of everything that exists. (p. 57)
Now, as you can imagine, statements like this one tended to get Willigis in trouble with the powers that be in the institution of the Church. In fact, he was told by the Church not to teach for, I think it was a whole year, because it was felt that he was subverting fundamental Catholic doctrine. But that censure was eventually lifted, much to the benefit of all of us travelers on the spiritual path.
Willigis cites sources from many traditions in this book, including the Westerners Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross, the Eastern poets Rumi and Kabir, Jewish sources such as Martin Buber, and contemporary writers such as Ken Wilber and Carl Jung, among many others. And his basic point is that the intersection of God and man, of emptiness and form (as the Buddhist formulation has it) is just the realization that nothing is … well, that nothing is separate from anything else. In his view …
Humans are creatures of mind-and-body, and so they need religion as a profession of faith and they need language as a means of expressing themselves. But true religion attempts to lead its adherents beyond itself to the experience of the Divine. (p. 76)
In other words, we need to be able to see through the language of dogma and doctrine to the truths that lie within and underneath what our religious traditions teach us. And for me, this is what’s really important about our Zen practice.
In contemplation and meditation, especially Zen meditation, we are brought to quiet our minds (if not empty them) so that we can experience being as it is, in perfect brilliant stillness. Awakening. We are encouraged to see the things of the world as they are, as passing phenomena, as forms of and within a vast field of emptiness. Remember, this is what the Indian sage Bodhidharma said to Chinese Emperor Wu back in the 5th century. The East calls this vastness the Void.
Here is Willigis again (p. 22):
God, who has neither shape nor form, can be experienced only in forms. The Void … can be intellectually distinguished from shape and form. But in reality they can only appear together, just as the dance and the dancer can only appear together. The dance can be distinguished from the dancer, but they can’t make their way onto the stage unless they are together. …
Form is exactly emptiness; emptiness exactly form. Willigis goes on …
This world is the way the Divine expresses itself. God as our “opposite number” has become the God in everything. Thus authentic mysticism leads us back into the world.
In Zen, the Ten Oxherding Pictures chart a sort of path from the beginning of our spiritual journey to a point at which we “return to the marketplace” – the realm of everyday events, of ordinary mind. I think this is what Willigis is alluding to in this passage.
So, in our spiritual practice, within whatever tradition it presents itself, this is our charge, according to Willigis Jaeger (p. 219):
We have to press through to our true essence, to the place where we can experience oneness with God. There and only there will our life make sense.
Thank you.
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 