Download Free Book on Christian Zen

Readers of this website know that, for us, “Christian yoga” covers quite a large territory. It basically includes mainstream hatha yoga practices as well as a bewildering variety of eastern and western meditative disciplines.


As a result, we write a lot about what is known as “Christian Zen,” which is basically Christians who practice Zen meditation without giving up their Christian values and beliefs. In the past 30 years or so, an emerging movement has developed in which dedicated Christians (mostly Catholics but some Protestants as well) have attempted to actually work out intellectually just how Zen practice and ideas can be integrated into a holistic Christian worldview. The results, naturally, have been mixed… and many people consider Christian Zen to be somewhat confused.

We, however, are encouraged. One of the leaders in the Christian Zen movement is the late Jesuit priest, Thomas Hand, S.J. , who died in 2005. Now, one of his associates — Judy Hayes, a former nun in both the Vedanta and Tibetan Buddhists traditions — has edited his writings into a new work titled Crossing Over Together: Walking the Zen Christian Path. It’s available for free download just by clicking on the link.

Jesuit Teaches Class on Patanjali’s Sutras

By Francis X. Clooney, S.J.

Several months ago I mentioned that I was teaching a seminar on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. This fundamental yoga text, from nearly 2000 years ago, is brief — 195 very succinct verses — but it is the reference point for all the later yoga systems. I promised to report on the results of the seminar (with ten fine students) at its conclusion (this week), and so here (and hereafter) I offer some reflections.

Given the great popularity and accessibility of yoga — I was told recently that 20 million Americans practice some version of it — it may seem a bit too academic to go back and study the Sutras, but I was convinced by my seminar that this is very much worth the effort, even necessary if we are to know what yoga is all about.
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Hindu leaders split over yoga for Christians

Hindu religious leaders have strongly criticised a Catholic spiritual teacher for encouraging her pupils to find God through yoga.

Winnie Young, 96, shown above with her teacher and one of the world’s leading yoga practioners, Yogacharya BKS Iyengar, claims to have spent most of her life teaching yoga.

The founder of a national yoga institute in 1975, Young said her institute practices Hatha yoga, which advocates controlled breathing to calm the body and cleanse the mind in an effort to achieve nirvana, an elevated mental state.

She questioned why people misunderstand yoga to be a religion. Read more

Christian Perspective on Yoga

By Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun

With its elegant, aging cathedrals spread out across the countryside, Roman Catholicism is Canada‘s largest official religion.

But with hundreds of stylish new studios opening up across Canadian cities, sometimes it seems as if Catholicism’s strongest new “competitor” is yoga.

Tension simmers between these traditions of the East and West, with polls suggesting each draws the support or interest of roughly 40 per cent of the Canadian population.

Yoga practitioners often dismiss Catholicism as a doctrinaire, uptight, hierarchical religion. Catholics often write off yoga as self-indulgent exercise — and, at worst, a heretical form of Hindu spirituality that could open practitioners to satanic forces. Read more

Hindu critics of Christian Yoga misguided

By Professor Harry Sewlall, Department of English, University of Fort Hare

I find both Kamal Maharaj’s and Ashwin Trikamjee’s contention that yoga cannot be taught from any perspective except Hinduism quite absurd (Sunday Times Extra, March 30, 2008).

Yoga is a cultural practice and, like any other such practice, it can be appropriated by non-Hindus, as it has been for many years.

The first time I heard the name of BKS Iyenger, the famous yogi, was from a former colleague at Unisa. A PhD in English studies, she was a staunch follower of Iyenger’s teaching, yet she was also a devout Christian.

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The Origins of Christian Yoga

 

By Ganga Kali Das Jaya

When I was about 25 years old and I was a novice in a Franciscan monastery, we had a monk who worked very hard, slept very little and was always so busy and one day I asked him “what is the secret of your health?”

“Yoga” he said “I practice Yoga”. I asked him to teach me and he lent me a book called “La Voie Du Silence” by Jean Dechanet ( a Benedictine monk) First Edition of this book, published in French, was in 1956.

I cannot speak to you about Yoga and Christianity without mentioning my gratitude to this French Catholic priest who, some 40 years ago gave not only me but many Christians a memorable introduction to Yoga. Up to today, his name is still known, his books are still in their libraries, in many a Catholic monastery and convent because of his rendering accessible the exercises and philosophy of Yoga to Christian contemplative minds. Read more

Christian Author Says Yoga Okay for Christians

By T.D. Jakes

Webster’s defines yoga as “a Hindu theistic philosophy teaching the suppression of all activity of body, mind, and will in order that the self may realize its distinction from them and attain liberation.”

Many simply define it as a system of exercises for attaining bodily or mental control and well-being.

The Lighthouse Trails and Research Project, a religious watchdog organization founded in 2000 by David and Deborah Dombrowski, call eastern spiritual practices “New Age Spirituality” and list it as “a sweeping phenomenon.”

The Lighthouse Trials and Research Project goes on to further say, “Christian leaders are embracing practices and a new spirituality that borrows from Eastern mysticism and New Age philosophy… and involve many of the most popular evangelical leaders including Rick Warren, Brian McLaren, Richard Foster, Tony Campolo, and Eugene Peterson.” Read more

Discover the Way of Zen

Zen offers you a practical way to refocus your life on what matters

Zen, the Japanese translation for the Chinese Chan, is a school of Mahayana Buddhism. Zen emphasizes strict, regular meditation practices and experiential wisdom — particularly as realized in the form of meditation known as zazen —in the attainment of enlightenment. It has a reputation for de-emphasizing both theoretical knowledge and the study of religious texts in favor of direct, experiential realization.

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The establishment of Chan (Zen) is traditionally credited to the Indian prince turned monk Bodhidharma who is recorded as having come to China to teach a “special transmission outside scriptures” which “did not stand upon words”. The emergence of Chan as a distinct school of Buddhism was first documented in China in the 7th century AD. It is thought to have developed as an amalgam of various currents in Mahayaha Buddhist thought — such as the Yogacara and Madhyamaka philosophies and the Prajnaparamita literature — and of local traditions in China, particularly Taoism and Huáyán Buddhism. From China, Chan subsequently spread southwards to Vietnam and eastwards to Korea and Japan. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Zen also began to establish a notable presence in North America and Europe. Read more

The coming of a New Age

Scotland on Sunday, Nov. 17 ,2002 http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/ Dani Garavelli There are two ways of looking at the Findhorn Foundation, the religious community in the north-east of Scotland dubbed the Vatican of the New Age. You can dismiss its members as a bunch of wackos, who grow giant cabbages for God and scan the skies for the spaceships [...]

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