Zen Faith

The Quaker affirmation of continuing revelation and freedom from doctrine calls for a new understanding of faith.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) on its website says, “PYM Quakers consider the inner light to be above and beyond the Bible and other formalistic, written dogmas. We trust that the continuing revelation of the inner light speaks to us in our everyday lives.”

Quaker teacher Rufus Jones, in Social Law in the Spiritual World, says that the concept of the Inner Light is used “to indicate the truth that whatever is spiritual must be within the realm of personal experience, that is to say, the ground of religion is in the individual’s own heart and not somewhere outside him.”

This Quaker perspective finds resonance in Zen thinking.

Zen wisdom is congenial to Quaker practice, as some Quakers have already come to see. In Mutual Irradiation, Quaker ecumenist Douglas Steere writes:

For some time we have been in the most friendly relations with the Zen Buddhists, who as antiliturgical, iconoclastic, unconventional witnesses to the spirit rather than the letter of the law have, in the Buddhist world, some marked similarities to Quakers in the Christian community.

The Rochester Zen Center, founded by Roshi Philip Kapleau, author of The Three Pillars of Zen, has at the top of its website the guidance: “Zen is a Practice, not a Belief.” This could be said of Quakerism as well.

Zen practitioners have long used sayings called koans to help in reaching self-realization. One well-known koan, taken from an ancient Chinese poem, is “Above, not a tile to cover the head; below, not an inch of ground for the foot.” (“Tile” here means “roof tile.”) This koan expresses the realization, shared by Quakers, that there is no fixed philosophy to hang your hat on, no religious doctrine upon which to stand. The koan is meant to throw practitioners back on their own devices, so that they can seek the truth within themselves.

Lack of certainty is not regarded as an evil to be put behind us, but as the basic situation we are always dealing with. The legendary teacher Boshan said, “Great doubt, great awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening.”

To characterize the open mind which we must maintain, some Zen teachers recommend an attitude of  “don’t-know mind” or “beginner’s mind,” as in the widely read Only Don’t Know: Selected Teaching Letters of Zen Master Seung Sahn, and Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryū Suzuki.

The deep listening called “expectant waiting” that Quakers practice in meeting for worship is a receptivity born of our innate knowledge that spiritually we are always beginners. Beginner’s mind and don’t-know mind are thus useful attitudes for Quakers to adopt, especially in meeting for worship, where we especially want to be open to what we don’t know.

The Quaker understanding of continuing revelation and freedom from dogma, especially in the light of a Zen perspective, calls for a refined understanding of faith. Faith has commonly been used to mean belief in something. If there is no doctrine to believe in, what does faith mean?

Faith does not require doctrine. Faith finds its central role, in fact, when we realize that there is no doctrine to believe in. Faith is not passive belief but is an act of will, an intentional openness to continuing revelation, to the grace of the ever-changing moment. Faith is thus a central part of Quaker religious practice. The intentional, moment-to-moment openness of expectant waiting (or beginner’s mind) is the work of faith.

We must create through faith a firmament in the midst of the waters of chaos. And we must recognize this work as an eternal process. While the fear of uncertainty is quieted by faith, the enduring fact of global uncertainty is a permanent part of our psychological reality, the anvil on which faith is worked. The courage and humility, and the rigor, with which Zen practitioners have long embodied beginner’s mind can provide guidance for Friends’ own practice, illuminating the meaning of faith.