A Zen Cloud? Comparing Zen "Koan" Practice with "The Cloud of Unknowing"

Abstract

Profound similarities between Buddhist and Christian mysticism have often been claimed, but few detailed comparisons have been made. This is not surprising, for cross-cultural comparisons just multiply hermeneutical difficulties which are already plentiful enough in each tradition. Nonetheless, it is regrettable, since each may shed valuable light on other. In particular, such comparisons may be very helpful in task of trying to evaluate mystical claims-a notoriously intractable issue, since both Christian mystical visions and Buddhist enlightenment experiences are usually said to be nonrational, bypassing conceptual thinking and therefore our normal means of evaluation. Because such experiences cannot be observed objectively or replicated at will, claims deriving from them are not verifiable in usual empirical manner. But if ultimate, most-cherished experiences for Christians and Buddhists seem to be essentially same and have their most significant features in common, this would provide some important cross-cultural support for thesis that experience does in fact reveal what mystic or enlightened person believes it to reveal. Such a project may be inspiring but it is unrealizable. We cannot generalize about the Christian or Buddhist mystical experience in this way. Both religions are rich in a great variety of texts and schools, whose differences have been just as important in developing tradition as their agreements have been in maintaining it. Eckhart's sermons cannot be equated with sayings of desert fathers, and eighth-century debate at bSam-yas between Tantra and Ch'an warns us not to try same thing with Buddhism. So in this paper I will attempt to make a more limited contribution to subject by comparing two specific meditative practices. I shall examine similarities between one method of k6an meditation in contemporary Zen Buddhism, as I have practiced it and now understand it, with technique of meditative prayer recommended in The Cloud of Unknowing, well-known fourteenthcentury English manual of Christian practice.1 The k6an technique that I will describe is so distinctive that one might expect it to be unique; that The Cloud espouses such a similar technique is, as we shall see, very suggestive.2