Rest and Reset – Zen

Learning from the wisdom of Zen meditation. In this episode Gillian chats with the Revd. Chris Collingwood, a Christian Priest, former canon of York minster and Zen master.  

The conversation explores the following:

•  Chris explains how he felt called to be a priest.
• What Zen is.
• How Chris got interested in Zen.
• How he became a Zen Master.
• How Zen practice fitted with his role as a canon at York Minster.
• Christian theological connections with Zen and how it differs.
• How Zen impacts on how people relate to the world.
• The experience of non duality. 
• How Chris responds to folk in spiritual need – does he draw more on his Zen practice or Christian faith?
• The practice of compassionate non judgement towards others and ourselves.
• The one thing that Chris offers as encouragement to listeners.

Links:
Chris’s book: Zen Wisdom for Christians.
The GoHealth Everyday Healing Course
Get your GoHealth journal here.
Visit our website to get connected with the GoHealth Community.
Find us on our socials @GuildofHealth 

Introduction: How are you, Chris? You’re right. Very well, thank you. Julian. Lovely to see you. And you as well. So I’m because I got a blanket today. I am so I am off. It’s just I got up and now it’s freezing cold. So I think we’ve had the summer. I think that’s it. Yeah. You’re okay. Right. So I do a little bit of introduction then we’ll just just have a chat about Zen. So I did feel a bit intimidated when Rosie says, you can interrogate me. So I don’t know anything about that. Okay. right. Here we go.

Gillian: Welcome to the Go Health podcast. I’m Gillian Straine, chief executive of GoHealth, an organisation with a vision to enable churches and individual Christians to be a healing presence in the world. And in the GoHealth podcast, well, it’s our gift into the world. It’s where we have conversations that inspire and empower us through stories and wisdom about how to flourish in faith by chatting to people with unique insights and stories to share and this episode we are chatting with the Reverend Chris Collingwood, Christian Priest, former Canon of York Minster and a Zen Master. Chris, welcome to the podcast. I’m really pleased to be chatting with you today. How are you? 

Chris Collingwood: Very well, thank you, Gillian, thank you so much, it’s a joy and a delight to be with you thanks so much for asking me. I’m looking forward to this conversation. yeah. 

Gillian: Me too. And, so Chris, we’ve met before, haven’t we? So I came to one of your retreats. So this is great to be reconnecting as well. I think we’re going to chat about that as well or I’d certainly like to, because you’ve been on quite a spiritual journey, haven’t you?

Priest, Zen Master, where did it all begin? Can you first recall when you first felt called to to this way of life or to be a priest? 

Chris: Well, I grew up in a Christian family and, you know, churchgoing and so on was very much part of it. Sang in the church choir. I think my first sense of being called to be a priest was when I was about 14 actually, and it was a conversation with my dad in which he said he’d wanted to be a priest, but because of the Second World War, he hadn’t been able to follow that through. And I suspect that sowed the seeds of an idea and then, school was very stimulating in terms of spirituality and so on and then just before I got married, which I was quite young, I said to my then fiancé, Sue, I’ve just got this strange feeling I should be ordained. And she just said, if that’s what you want to do, I’m right behind you and that was, that was the beginning of the Christian journey. But, from a quite an early age, I was very interested in other spiritual traditions. I kind of, the, almost the first serious book I read on spirituality was by an Irish Jesuit priest called William Johnston, who was a professor of oriental philosophy at Sophia University in Tokyo. And he was exploring the relationship between the Christian contemplative and mystical tradition and Zen. Ever since then I’ve been meditating, in, in a variety of traditions. Going to India was really important for me and, going to the ashram that was led by Bede Griffiths, who was an English Roman Catholic Benedictine monk. And that ashram still is very much open to, engagement and dialog and learning from people of traditions other than Christianity, particularly Hinduism, and then and then Zen. I suppose it was really when I actually met proper Zen teachers. 

Gillian: Yeah.

Chris: That’s really what started it off. 

Gillian: So most of our listeners, I think will be they’ll, they’ll, they know what a Christian priest is or they have a good handle on it right. But could you just summarize what is Zen -for like the complete beginner in a few sentences if you can. So what what are we talking about here? 

Chris: Zen is really a practice which invites us to wake up to who we really are. At the heart of it is Zazen, which is, sitting meditation. It’s so unbelievably simple that most people think there’s got to be more to it than this and part of the practice is wrestling with all that. So you know, we sit, traditionally on a mat, on a cushion or on a, on a chair and we simply pay attention to our breath. We’ve just follow our breath in and out, and thoughts arise, we don’t try to banish them, we just let them be, but we keep on just coming back to the breath. And. And little by little, we find that this kind of unmasks us. So when I say it’s about waking up to who we who we really are, you know, we identify ourselves, with so many different things in so many different ways that, I suppose at the heart of it, Zen is just about being completely, totally present here and now with whatever is going on, whatever is arising, characterised by ultimately by the sense that we are much more than we think we are. And it’s the thinking which is often the problem. And when we realise that we’re, much more than that, we discover our interconnectedness with everything and everyone, which gives rise to a sense of compassion, which enables us then to act in, in ways which seek to avoid adding to the suffering of the world. 

Gillian: Right. That’s the…thank you, I want to dip into all those different things. But before we sort of get into the theory and the practice, really, of Zen, because there’s so much there and I’m thinking this sounds a bit like the contemplative, you know, bit of Christianity. 

Chris: Absolutely.

Gillian: To become a Christian priest, you study at theological college? 

Chris: Yeah. 

Gillian: And then are ordained, in the Anglican church by a bishop. And do certain things. Right. How do you become a Zen master? You’ve got this double title here.

Chris: As a practitioner or of Zen. You become a student of, of a Zen teacher and what that really means is that you commit yourself to, to learning from, to practicing with that, that teacher, that Master. And I suppose there are two strands to it really. One is called kōan study, which means that you, you sit with, classic stories, which are about exchanges between Zen masters and monks or two Zen masters or whoever. And, you you really allow the awareness of the, the Zen master in the kōan to become yours. So that’s that’s quite a long process. The other strand is in what’s called, Shikantaza, which is just sitting, which in a way is what I described when you asked me about, you know, what zen is and I talked about zazen. 

Gillian: Yeah. 

Chris: And so you, you you basically talk to the talk to your teacher, you, reveal your, your, your practice. And little by little, the teacher might say, well, I think, you know, you’d make a good teacher, or not, I mean, in my case, as it happens, my Zen teacher, who also was a Roman Catholic priest, said to me one day, I’ve got great plans for you Chris and I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. We were sitting in our kitchen in York, and Sue my wife said to me, he’s going to make you a Zen teacher and I said, don’t be ridiculous. And sure enough he did. And, one of the things about him was that he had amazing faith and confidence in me even when I hadn’t got it in myself. So he could see something in me which he thought would make a good Zen teacher.

Gillian: And if Christianity started with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is it is it possible to briefly say where Zen started and comes from? 

Chris: Yeah. Zen is is ultimately grounded in the experience of, Siddhartha Gautama, known as Shakyamuni Buddha, who, I mean it’s a wonderfully, inspirational story because he, he grew up, in a privileged, situation. He was expected to, become the leader of his tribe. He was going to be a king, but he, he encountered, so the story goes, he encountered sickness, old age and death almost for the first time and was deeply disturbed by it. So when this prompted him to make a spiritual search, which lasted for 5 or 6 years in utter exasperation, when he felt that he was no nearer what he was looking for, he just sat down against a bodhi tree and said I’m not going to get up until, until I’ve found what I’m looking for. 

So there’s something there about this meditation posture. He basically sat down and he was still, and again the story goes that when he caught sight of the morning star he had an awakening, and he realised that he wasn’t separate from anything or anyone. That’s not to say that he wasn’t distinct, but he wasn’t separate. Everything was profoundly interconnected and the tradition has it that, he said I, the great Earth and all beings simultaneously attain enlightenment. So the practice of Zen is about waking up to the fact that we are all already enlightened, which I suppose corresponds in the Christian tradition to, two things, perhaps, the first, the affirmation that we’re created in the image and likeness of God. The second would be if I went to Saint John’s Gospel. I would, start with the prolog where it says that all things come into being in Christ, all things. And without him, not one thing came into being. There’s no separation. So, I mean, on the surface level, they’re different. 

Gillian: Yeah. 

Chris: But there’s a great convergence. 

Gillian: So I want to get into some of this. What does that mean to awaken to yourself? This non-duality and things. But before we do that in practice, Chris, you are a canon of one of the most…

Chris: I know what’s coming…

[LAUGHTER]

senior…York Minster man!

Chris: Yeah, yeah. 

Gillian: and a zen teacher, you know, how did that work? Where were the clashes? And, where did you see flourishing in the two coming together? 

Chris: Yeah, yeah, that’s a really, really good question. Initially when I went to York…

I mean I was quite upfront, when I first met the archbishop on interview and, the dean and my chapter colleagues, future chapter colleagues, I was quite upfront about the fact that I practice Zen. And, one of them, on interview said to me, oh, you mean a bit like Thomas Merton? I said, yes, exactly like Thomas Merton. The great, 20th century Trappist monk, Cistercian monk. And then, I, decided to set up, with the help of my then teacher, a Zen group and. Yeah, I mean, we had the first time just as an information gathering thing, there were 50 people who came. I mean, it was absolutely astonishing. And then when my, my own teacher said that he was going to make me a teacher, what’s called \giving transmission’, my chapter colleagues were, and the Archbishop, very supportive. But then, when people hear the word Zen, particularly if they’re from a rather more conservative tradition, they get a bit worried. And so there were people who were unhappy about it, and they, they complained and, you know, said that I should resign. 

Gillian: And what do you think they were unhappy about, Chris? Because they’re not the same, are they Zen and Christianity? There’s clashes. Well, what were they upset about? And I guess also where do you see these, these two clashing or do you see them clashing?

Chris: I think, I mean, I understand why people, get worried and concerned because, you know, within the Christian tradition that started much the strong sense, you know, you are wholeheartedly committed in one direction. and you can’t deviate. And, and a lot of the biblical story is, you know, contains, issues where the people have, as it were, deviated from, you know, the straight path, you know Jesus says you can’t serve two masters. I think…so I understand why, why people get a bit worried. There’s also the sense that in Christianity it’s, I mean, I loved, I loved theology, absolutely loved it. But, theology that the kind of mental, intellectual process is only one dimension of who we are and Christianity is…it kind of prioritises that dogmatic perspective in many ways. So if it looks as though you are affirming another path or another tradition, then it looks as though you’re weakening, you’re diminishing the, the, the Christian perspective. But I think I would want to say that in many ways, it’s precisely a Christian perspective which invites us to be open to the other. So if we take, for example, you know, well-known story of the Good Samaritan, you know historically at the time, you know, Jews and Samaritans loathed one another. And yet in that story, it’s the Samaritan that Jesus commends as the one who is being open to what the law, the Jewish law, is really all about in going to the assistance of somebody who’s, who’s injured and, seemingly left for dead. And I think also in the, in the doctrine of the Trinity, you know, there’s this sense of sameness and difference, so that there’s diversity within, within the Trinity, which I think for me is the, is the basis for being open to that which is different. So, Zen is different from Christianity in the sense that it doesn’t actually require any kind of dogmatic assertion.It doesn’t require that you say, you know, I affirm that the the Buddha is better than Jesus or anything like that. It’s a much more, in many ways, it’s a much more contemporary, almost a scientific process. You, you almost don’t take anything on trust. You test everything out. So anything that’s given to you in the teaching, you test it out in your own experience and you see whether it adds up or not. And for me, you know, there is a huge convergence, particularly in the, the way that we approach suffering, for example, you know, Jesus on the cross, you know, goes to the cross voluntarily and willingly. I mean, it must have been horrendous. Absolutely horrendous. The physical pain and the rejection, knowing that that the the establishment is rejecting you completely. And Zen you see is also about how do we deal with that? How do we actually live in a world where there is so much suffering and seek not to let it overwhelm us? So there are different practices, but I think there’s a huge convergence in, in all this. 

Gillian: I read somewhere that you don’t you don’t learn what Zen is. You experience what Zen is.

Chris: Absolutely.

Gillian: It’s part of the experience. So am I right in thinking, well, so we don’t have to dispose of, what the Christian faith teaches us in terms of salvation? I think salvation that’s kind of the and the could be the big one really? 

Chris: Yeah. 

Gillian: And lots of people define that in different ways. 

Chris: Yes. 

Gillian: We don’t have disposed of that do we? It’s just about…Yeah. 

Chris: No, no, I mean, I think Zen is…I mean, this is this is where, you know, we can get into so much difficulty with the words and the concepts. And Zen is, always, steering us away from getting hooked on the, the concepts and the the the ideas and the thoughts and so on…that salvation for me, you see, as you will know well, Gillian, has its, roots in notions of wholeness and health, holiness, you know, all these, all these things are connected. You know, we speak of, of a salve you know, which is which is something which which heals. So salvation is about healing. Zen is in a way about healing, could be seen to be about healing something which, we all experience, which is the sense of inner division, of separation, the way that we act out, conflict and so on. And you know, what we discover when we’re, when we’re sitting zazen, is that there’s something, as it were, deeper and beyond that, that it includes and enfolds all these things. And yet at another level, it’s none of them. So you’re absolutely right that we don’t have to, to, to to jettison any parts of the Christian faith as practitioners of Zen.

Gillian: I want to talk about the experience of Zen because I went on a Zen retreat which you were leading. And that was, you know, that blew my head. So I want to talk about that just just before we turn there. 

Chris: [Laughter] 

Gillian: …the practice. but yeah, I mean, some would say, right, salvation is about Jesus Christ.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. 

Gillian: How would you respond to that? Or, you know, you meet someone in the street or somewhere, I guess, Chris. And you see, they’re in spiritual need. They’re suffering an existential crisis. I mean, some ways of the world right now, we’re all suffering a bit because, you know, there’s so many things that, you know, the world’s a tough place.

You meet someone and you’ve got your two hats, Christian priests, Zen hats. I don’t know if Zen people wear hats…

Chris: [Laughter]

Gillian: But, you know, what do you say to them? Like what? What what do you go with? When you meet someone. I know it’s theoretical, but, you know…

Chris: It’s a very practical question which we all which we all meet. I mean, I think I would I would say the same in every situation. You have to be sensitive to where people are. And you, you have to, in one sense, kind of discern. You have to work out what’s, what’s really motivating this person. Where’s the question coming from? What do they really are asking about? I mean, in Zen, you see very often, you get in these koans, you get somebody asking a question…and, I mean, let me give you the obvious one to start with. Which is one that most students will, will, will begin with. A monk asks Joshu a Zen master, ‘does a dog have Buddha nature’? And Joshua responds, ‘mu’ , which means not or nothing. Now, the thing is that the monk had been taught quite correctly, that orthodox Buddhist dogma is that all beings are endowed with Buddha nature. So when he says, you know, does a dog have Buddha nature? He’s, I mean, maybe he’s sort of got a vision of the monastery dog, which is a bit skanky and, you know, what have you. Really this dog? Has this dog got Buddha nature? But at heart, what Joshu really knew he was asking is, do I have Buddha nature? Am I endowed with Buddha nature? Really? I know what I’m like. You know, I’m. I’m this dreadful, inadequate person, you know, do I really have Buddha nature? So when somebody asks me a question, I mean, I’m not going through all that, you know? Are they asking me about Buddha nature? But I’m trying to kind of fathom, where is this person really coming from? Now if if that person is somebody, for argument’s sake, just as an example, who has been, damaged and hurt, wounded by the church as, as we know, many people have, particularly through abuse, whether it’s sexual abuse or the abuse of power. You know people are very, very wary. And if they ask about, you know, salvation in Jesus Christ if, if, if they’ve come from an experience where the answer to that question has been mixed up somehow with abuse, then an intellectual answer perhaps isn’t going to suffice. It may be that that actually talking through with somebody, you know, about their experience and being sympathetic and compassionate and understanding, that might help. But equally, it might be, from a Zen perspective, one would say, something like, you know, we are all endowed with Buddha nature. We are, we are all truly, truly alive, awake, connected. We might then find ourselves saying we are all truly our Christ nature, you know? But going back to John’s gospel, all things were created in and through him so that from a Christian perspective, we’re waking up if you like, to the presence of Christ within us, and that then seems to me to be the beginning of salvation, because it’s the, it’s this very deep kind of relationship, with that which is in one sense, both other than we are and also exactly who we are. And that’s where we get in the difficulties with the language. Why, as you said, it has to be experienced rather than just talked about. 

Gillian: And what’s in my head right now hearing you talk about all this is, is some of the work that Jim Finley has been doing. He gets, he gets name checked a lot in this podcast. And he, of course, was, he worked with Merton. 

Chris: Yes. 

Gillian: And very much from the contemplative and the psychotherapeutic background but he often when he leads stuff, he thought he prays and, you know, talks about God as never, never, never, never, never not loving us, you know, and I love the repeated never.

Chris: Yeah. 

Gillian: Because it’s sort of it’s waking you up to how loved we are. We just often forget it so often and and that I can see the strong interconnections with the Christian contemplative. It’s just a tuning in, noticing. 

Chris: Absolutely. And I think also you see to come back to this question about salvation in Jesus Christ. I mean, you will know, just as well as I do, that there are all sorts of any number of different kind of theories of what Jesus’s death on the cross is all about.

I mean, one of those is that, you know, we’re such kind of dreadful sinners that we need somebody else to sort us out. And of course, that has its value, there’s an impact there. But equally, it seems to me, if we go back beyond that, you know, that the way that we are, our creation is that, you know, God brings us into being because God loves us. God delights in us. God takes infinite joy in who we are whatever we do in our lives and we all get into messes. We all get into difficulties. But you know that, as you just said, with Jim, Jim Finley, you know, God never, never, never, never, never stops loving us. I mean that I believe to be true, absolutely true of every single human being. I mean, that’s a real challenge because there are some human beings that we all find, I mean, to put it mildly, incredibly difficult. But I think this is where Zen is so helpful because it, it keeps on probing the question, but who are you really, really, really, really, who are you? Are you this person who just fouls things up? Who makes a mess of life? Or are you something, as it were, beyond that, more than that, in another sense, less than that? Are you not that? Are you this, in Zen we talk about emptiness, you know, our true nature is empty, which means that, we can’t finally pin it down. We can’t categorise it or define it. There is this amazing, you know, when we when we’re sitting zazen, when we’re meditating, when the mind is still or even when the mind isn’t still, we become become aware of this extraordinarily creative, energetic potential that’s within us. That is who we are, which then manifests itself in our daily lives, in all sorts of ways. So to to go on asking that question, I think that that’s what the monk meant when he said, you know, does this dog have Buddha nature? You know, he’s he’s saying, who am I, really? I’m when Joshu gives the answer, mu, mu, no, you can’t categorise it. There’s no concept there. All you are left with is – me. This is this is who I am. You know? This is what reality is. And it’s, it’s absolutely not egocentric. It’s the reverse. 

Gillian: So let’s talk about that, kind of the practice side of it as well. So I went, earlier this year to, a week long sesshin, that that’s how we called it, sesshin. The sesshin, which is, a week long silent retreat,  Zen style and, I came home from that and my husband noticed how peaceful I was. I felt peaceful, I felt…so it was it was an experience which had an impact. And when I arrived, I remember, you know, a couple of things. How alien the room looked like, you know, as a Christian, quite used to churches. Yeah, I know where the pews are, what’s going to happen, liturgy and all the rest of it. I walked in, the room looked really different. There was mats on the ground, cushions to sit on, there was incense going on, those pictures of the Buddha. There’s pictures of Jesus. We’re all set up, facing each other across across this style. And I remember that one of the first things you said, Chris, was, it doesn’t matter if you get anything wrong. So that was sort of liberating, sort of like spoke to that church bit of me that’s like worried about where to sit. So that was great. And then the invitation was to, you know, sit on the mat for an hour and a half at a time was various walkings around in different things. And it left me with a deep you know, I came with a really sense of deep peace. And I might be wrong, but I felt it was like a spiritual version of psychotherapy. To sit and work out who I was via, you know, the silence or the teachings. We talked about one of those, little story nuggets, a koan as well. So it felt a very powerful experience and one of the things I struck with the different liturgies and prayers was this idea of non-duality.

Chris: Yeah. 

Gillian: This, this awakening to ourselves, sitting in silence, sitting with yourself, but an awaking to non-duality. That’s quite unchristian language. Could you say a bit about what that means and why in particular for you that was something that was attractive?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. yes. Non-Duality is very much, a kind of an eastern, philosophical notion, we find it in Hinduism, and in and in Buddhism, of course in Zen, non-duality isn’t, isn’t primarily something that we’re working out intellectually it’s something that we experience. And, it’s it’s quite important not to assume that non-duality is the, the opposite of duality, because if we, if we set up non-duality as an alternative to duality, then we’re still in the in the realm of duality, which is setting up something else that’s not dual, if you see what I mean. 

Gillian: And Chris, what does dual mean? So this way of thinking so splitting two things. 

Chris: Two things. And of course our, our our everyday life is quite substantially that of duality. You know, we experience this and that. 

Gillian: Yeah, us and them,

Chris:  Us and them, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Gillian: Good and bad.

Chris: And I’m about to come up to a general election, you know, so this lot or do we want that lot? Or do we want none of them?

Gillian: That’s a whole other podcast. 

[LAUGTHER]

Chris:  So of course we have to make choices and all that, that, you know, that, that sort of thing. But when we, when we’re sitting zazen especially, this is where it’s all rooted, we discover all sorts of things arising in the mind, which are unpalatable, unwelcome, unwanted and we have a question, a question arises, what do I do with this? Do I try to to kind of stop all this? do I do it? Do I try to eradicate it from me? Or if I don’t eradicate it, what do I do with it? Now the reality of life is, of course, we can’t eradicated. If we try to stop thought, then we just give power to thought. So we have this paradoxical situation when we’re sitting that we we don’t try to stop thought, we don’t engage with it. We just let it arise and we don’t pay any attention to it. When we do find that we’re paying attention to it, we just very gently come back to the breath. So we’ve got this. 

Gillian: So it’s like open acceptance. 

Chris: Yes, exactly. 

Gillian: Is this the same as this is the non-judgment I read in one of the heart…the sutras a teaching text, ‘but do not judge by any standard’. ‘So you’re not even judging yourself. 

Chris: No, no. 

Gillian: You’re just coming at things, the practice, practice helps you come at things as they are. Is that the thing? 

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Completely. So. So very often we find that almost one of the last things that we, we, we have to deal with is our self-judgment. You know, we we we can we find perhaps that we can stop judging others maybe, but that’s difficult. But, but, the self-judgment is deep within us, you know, somehow this self-criticism. And so learning, learning just to allow all these really uncomfortable things to arise without eradicating them, without getting rid of them, without judging them, but learning to accept them with compassion and love is actually in itself transformative. 

Gillian: So self-compassion in a way…

Chris: Completely.

Gillian: And this is thing, you know, you are not your thoughts. 

Chris: Yeah. 

Gillian: In many of the meditation traditions from all different worlds, it’s sort of it’s sort of even just identifying a thought is not you or you are separate from it. That, that’s something that happens on this, on those mats that you sit on. 

Chris: Yeah. And we have to keep on being aware of it, you know, because we can say to ourselves, you know, I’m not my thoughts or whatever it might be, but, you know, if we’ve just had I mean, let’s say, you know, we’ve had a terrible run in with somebody, might be a husband or wife, you know, and, you know, we sit down to meditate… ‘oh, I’m not my thoughts’, you know, but actually, what’s going on? Argh! Argh! Absolutely raging beneath it. 

Gillian: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: It’s quite difficult to, to let that be accepted, but but it is what we – that that is the practice. 

Gillian: What if, I don’t know, we don’t want to get too personal but our husbands and our wives here. But what if there’s a thing that needs to be? You can’t just sort of get rid of all the thoughts because there’s stuff to be done in the world…

Chris: Absolutely. So the whole point about, about the meditation is not that we do nothing. It’s rather that we, we withdraw in order then to be able to see a little bit more clearly, and, to allow the, the, the really negatively charged things, just perhaps to settle a little bit. 

Gillian: Yeah. 

Chris: So that we can then say, okay, now how do I deal with this? What’s the? What’s the…in Zen, we would say, what’s the wisest thing? What’s the most compassionate way we can deal with this? And it may be that we go back to our, husband or wife and we say, oh, darling, I’m so sorry. I was I was totally stressed. It’s nothing to do with you or whatever it might be. Or we might think, do you know what this has been a running sore all our marriage. And and I think finally we, we got we got to deal with this one. But again it’s not you know, ‘I’m fed up with all this’, you know, it might be, ‘could we I realise that I’ve brought something to this, you know, can we just sit down and talk about this without, you know, getting to, upset about it, would you be willing to do that? That sort of thing. It’s it’s absolutely not about just sitting doing nothing ever. Zen is very much about acting compassionately in the world. But but we can’t do that unless, as we said a moment ago, if we haven’t got compassion for ourselves, when we’re unlikely to find compassion for anybody else.

Gillian: Yeah. I was really struck about the mat. You sit on a mat. The mat’s got a name, what’s the mat called again? 

Chris: Zabuton

Gillian: Ah you sit on the mat, and the mat becomes like your universe. 

Chris: Yeah, yeah. 

Gillian: You keep it clean. Wipe bits of dirt off as well. I thought, God, this is weird. It’s  not like church.

Chris: Yeah. 

Gillian: And then you get up, you make it all bit neat and bow at it and things like that. Like, what is this about? Was one of the things I struggled with. But the more I read or sort of experienced and all the rest of it, what it seems to me and I might be wrong, you know, is that the whole mat thing is sitting there is an awareness that actually you’re filtering the whole world through your thoughts and your experiences and so on and that’s sort of liberating, isn’t it? 

Chris: Yeah. 

Gillian: Because you suddenly say, well, I’ve got, I’m not this, this thing that’s subject to forces or, this things out with my control. It’s sort of a reminder, a practice which I found led me to realise I’ve got choices in how I respond to things, including my own past.

Chris: Yeah. 

Gillian: You know what comes up in my head if I’m not thinking about anything else, and there’s a peacefulness that comes from realising, that you have control with how how you respond to things. 

Chris: Yeah. 

Gillian: So becomes a…is that what the mat is? The whole process is, you know, is that right? 

Chris: Yes, yes. We, we talk about taking responsibility for whatever happens on the mat. So we sit to, as you said, we, we usually sit for 25 minutes at a time with, with what’s called kinhin, which is a walking meditation. And, we usually do three sets with, with two kinhins. And, of course, what, what arises on the mat, is completely unpredictable. You know, within three, three sits, you know, you can have a really peaceful sit to start with, the second set for absolutely no reason that you can identify, you know, you just feel you’re in an absolute whirl and then the third sit, it may be back to the peacefulness or something, But, we, we just accept that what is going on the mat is, is is me.

So we take responsibility for ourselves. And, you know, I’ve spoken about, you know, when we’re on the mat, we simply can’t run away from who we are. the totality of our, of our life is there on the mat. We’re aware of it. As you said, it might be something that’s arising from the past, or it might be something in the present, or it might suddenly be a great, you know, kind of sense of release or, little movement of, of awakening. But everything that happens on the mat is who we are, and and we just accept it. 

I’ve got my producer saying, we’ve got to stop chatting, Chris. I’ve got, like, a thousand more questions. It’s so interesting chatting to you. Anyone listening today if they’re listening in today, what what what could you say to them? What encouragement do you have for anyone listening today about the connections between flourishing and awakening to themselves. 

Chris: Yeah, yeah. We often speak in Zen of being perfect as we are. That seems a slightly odd thing to say when for many of us, if not all of us, our experiences is ‘but you’ve got to be joking. I don’t feel perfect.’ What it means is that everything, absolutely everything that we need for our awakening, for our flourishing, for our being truly who we are, is right here and now, absolutely everything. So, I would say trust, trust in your own innate love, compassion, acceptance. Trust in your own perfection, in that sense, trust, from a Christian point of view, trust that you are deeply and forever loved and nothing can ever alter that. And, whichever, whichever one helps. I think they they, they bring us to a very, similar place really.

Gillian: Trust in love. Thank you so much.

Chris: Gillian, thank you. 

Gillian: It’s been lovely talking to you. 

Chris: Well, it’s been a joy. And, thank you so much. It was wonderful to meet on that session. I’m so pleased that you were able to come. I mean, next time you can bring your husband with you. 

[LAUGHTER] 

Gillian: No arguments afterwards though, now we’ve thought about it. No, it’s been great. And, you’ve written a book on the subject as well, haven’t you? About this crossover. So we’ll link to that in the show notes as well. 

Chris: Thank you. 

Gillian: And we will be picking up this conversation over in our GoHealth community, which is a group of people committed to exploring all this. Exploring how to flourish faithfully today and to being a healing presence in the world. And I really heard that in your final what you said there, you know, if we know how loved we are, we can show love to others. And that is being a healing presence. 

Thank you to Rosie Dawson, who is our producer, and to Wendy Lloyd from the GoHealth team for all her work in the series and podcasts, if you’re listening today and being inspired, please do hit share and tell others about this podcast and the work of the GoHealth community, where we seek to flourish and be a healing presence in our world today.

Thank you so much Chris. It’s been great chatting with you.

Chris: Gillian. Thank you so much. It’s been a joy.