Death poetry

Living in hell
Is like taking a walk
In a beautiful park.

-Lin-chi (Jap. Rinzai)

A friend asks about the difference between God and Zen, and my thoughts turned to the parting poems that some Zen monks and poets compose at the hour of their death, sometimes called "death poems" (jisei).

Since there are so many different conceptions of God, and Zen as well, that's a question that might be better answered by a theologian than a layman, but that won't stop me from saying something anyway.

There's an emerging dialog between Christians and Buddhists seeking common ground. So-called "contemplatives" in the Catholic Christian tradition have a practice and vocabulary that's actually very Zen-like in nature, and I'm thinking of patriarchs like St. John of the Cross here.

Neither contemplatives nor Zennists take a very rational approach to their practice, and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense ... "non-rational" isn't the same as "irrational," it's just an acknowledgment that there is something that exists outside of the bounds of rational thought.

So while some view Zen as a philosophy, it's not. It's probably more correctly viewed as a practice. To what end? Is it incompatible with Christianity?

One of my favorite death poems:

Sixty-six years
Piling sins,
I leap into hell ---
Above life and death.

-Tendo-Nyojo* (1163-1228)

* Dogen's master