Lectio
“The best description of God is ‘isness’ without any limit, ‘I am,’ without any other pronoun. The Buddhists have done well in establishing an attitude towards the uncreated God as distinct from the God of creation or the creator God. It’s the same God, of course.”
— Thomas Keating, interview with Rick Archer, Buddha at the Gas Pump
Meditatio
When I took my first conscious steps onto the spiritual path, one of my early mentors was a lay Buddhist. Through him, I was introduced to that tradition, as well as the Taoist tradition, both of which I would carry with me as dialogue partners for years to come — and still do.
The Zen tradition, in particular, spoke to me in a language I recognized before I had words for it. The silence it pointed toward, the stripping away of concept and image, the willingness to sit in pure unknowing, the way its outer forms embodied its inner silence — something in me leaned toward all of it. It was at once completely foreign and intimately familiar to me. It resonated with a part of me unknown to even myself, and drew me into a mysterious world that somehow felt like home.
Throughout the years that followed, I wandered — through traditions, philosophies, and seasons of rejecting them altogether. But somehow, the simplicity of the Zen tradition, coupled with concepts and language from Buddhism in general — compassion, lovingkindness — always drew me back. I think it was the promise of transformation, coupled with a practice — meditation, mindfulness — that was so attractive to me.
For as long as I can remember, I have longed for the ability to be at peace in spite of my tumultuous surroundings, and I have had the deep desire to hold in love — to have compassion for — even those who would insult, abuse, or neglect me. Zen appeared to offer not only the stillness and compassion I craved, but a way to accomplish this through meditation and mindfulness practices — but in spite of all that it promised, and seemed to fulfill in others, it somehow always fell short for me — or rather, I always felt called to something more. I had, without knowing it, hit a ceiling.
Then, one day, in the midst of an existential crisis — an unrelenting darkness I have not known since before getting clean and sober several decades prior — I reached for some familiar Buddhist texts to help ground me, but the ground was not there. This lifeline for which I reached was beyond my grasp. And I fell. And fell. And fell. Into the abyss of fear, confusion, and loneliness that has no bottom. Dharma could not catch me, meditation did not comfort me, and mindfulness did not slow my descent.
And then, unexpectedly, like manna falling down from heaven, a book came into my path that introduced me to the Christian tradition of centering prayer, and, like waking up from a horrible nightmare, out of breath and covered in sweat, as my eyes adjusted to the returning light, I intuitively knew what was missing in everything I studied, believed, and practiced, all of which led me to this very moment — Christ.
To be clear, it is not the form that matters. However God calls us to commune with God is how we should — and perhaps must — commune with God.
As James Finley writes in Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, “Prayer is a journey in which — if God wills that we take only one step — one step places us in Paradise. Likewise, if God wills we take only one step, but we take two, we find ourselves in the depths of hell” (p. 84). I took many steps with and toward God from within the Buddhist tradition, but then, when God willed that I go elsewhere with and for him, one more step in that tradition was one too many — and I was met with desolation. But this desolation was not punishment. It was love.
St. John of the Cross teaches that this type of desolation in the midst of one’s earnest seeking of God, which he calls the dark night of the soul, is not, as it feels from within, the withdrawal of God’s presence. It is, rather, the withdrawal of the consolations that have, until now, mediated that presence — the feelings, the insights, the spiritual sweetness that made God feel near, prayer feel alive, and meditation feel centering. God removes these consolations not as punishment, but as invitation — drawing the soul beyond its dependence on beliefs and experience and into the naked, imageless faith that is the only posture capable of receiving what God most deeply wishes to give, which is Godself. The darkness is not absence. It is a presence too pure, too bright, too close for eyes still accustomed to looking at shadows.
For God’s love is never absent, it never abandons, and it never fails to light our way.
The contemplative Christian tradition, particularly the practice of centering prayer, did not draw me away from what it was in Buddhism that attracted me. It drew me further into that same silence, the stripping away of concept and image, the willingness to sit in pure unknowing, and the outer forms that embody inner silence — and, through it, into the fourteenth-century mystical tradition of The Cloud of Unknowing — but it did, and does, all of this with and for God. And for me, that has made all of the difference.
The Cloud of Unknowing, written in the fourteenth century by an anonymous monk to his spiritual directee, insists that God cannot be reached by thought, concept, or image — not because God is less than these things, but because God is infinitely more. The mind, however disciplined, however refined, however emptied of distraction, cannot think its wayr Ato God. It can only be brought to the threshold — to the cloud of unknowing — and what carries us across is not understanding. It is what the author calls “the sharp arrow of longing” — given to us by grace to pierce that cloud and reveal the infinitude of God’s face to us.
This is what Zen had always been calling me toward, but what it could not, finally, give. It brought me to the threshold with extraordinary fidelity. It taught me, however inconsistently I adhered to its practices, to be still and to allow the silence to do its work. But stillness and silence, as it turns out, were nel no ver to be my final resting place. They were but a means to an end, and that end, for me, was consent — consent to God’s loving presence and action within the stillness and within the silence.
Zen pointed me toward the unknowable, unnamable ground of being. But the ground of being was not a what. It was a Thou. And that Thou, I discovered, was God — and God was calling me into Godself.
The ceiling, as it turns out, was a floor, a bottom, the ground — and the ground was Love.
Oratio
Love
calling me home
through the cloud
of unknowing
into the ground
God
Contemplatio
Where have you experienced desolation in your spiritual life? Looking back, can you see it now as invitation rather than abandonment?
Related Scripture
“You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
— Psalm 16:11 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like You Awakened Me: Prayer, Longing, and the God Who Is Always Near, which explores the same paradox of divine nearness and unknowability — the God who is closer than breath and yet just beyond the veil, drawing us into longing that becomes prayer.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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