Family Problems

Last week a sangha sister drew my attention to a dramatic event in the Zenosphere: Adam Tebbe, founder of blog hub/online magazine Sweeping Zen, outed himself as an Evangelical Christian on that organisation's Facebook page.

Details are convoluted, but there's been much calumny heaped on him by earnest advocates of "don't know mind" and "radical acceptance". Which is also par for the course.

In the meantime, the principal is spewing Bible-babble in the Zen forum he built, in that tone-deaf way some Christians have. (When a former colleague muses that the account may have been hacked, he's told, "It's been hacked by Jesus Christ. Have a blessed day!")

As some comments under Adam's confession of faith attest, none of this has endeared him to his erstwhile co-travellers.

I've spent a week sleuthing the thing out – in classic institutional-Zen fashion, public acknowledgement has been nil – and have since developed a throbbing discursive headache. The brother in question is not uncomplicated, and Sweeping Zen has never been uncontroversial. I myself have serious reservations about the way some members use that podium to call down violence on individuals they judge deviant.

With Buddhists like that, who needs Christians?

So I'm not going to pronounce. I take the Ancestors at their word: if a behaviour isn't hurting you, and you have no objective evidence it's hurting others, do nothing. Wait for insight before drawing your own sword and hacking away.

But as regular readers will have divined, I do in fact have a few observations to offer on the phenomenon of Zen re-un-conversion.

First off, it's nothing new. Western Zen is a convert religion. Virtually all of us – 99+%, I'm dead certain – got here under our own steam, as seekers. Necessarily, many of us will continue straight through and out the other side. I confess that sometimes the behaviour of others in the Great Sangha prompts me to ponder doing the same.

Then I remember that nowhere else is better. Enlightenment (and salvation) is about me and what I do, not others or what they do.

Anyway, this is not the first come-to-Jesus the Zen community has seen, even of the ordained. (Among us "true people of no rank", of course.) The brass swept (no pun intended) those under the tatami too, but they happened and I saw them and I so bear witness.

Because hermits don't cover for institutions.

I'm also deeply sceptical of any self-proclaimed religious awakening that expresses contempt for former paths. You often see this in Zenners – we're a convert religion, remember – who smirk and jeer at Christians, Christianity, and even Christ.

Except for the Jews. They're very different. They smirk and jeer about Jews, Judaism, and the rabbinate.

By that measure, Adam has been remarkably even-handed, especially for a Christian. His rambling testimony includes a single brief sneer on Zen, toward the end. I've seen other recently former Zenners exhaustively call down the Lord on us, preaching incessantly about the Devil. (And so reminding me why I'm not a Christian anymore.)

However, he has apparently not done what ethics require and turned over his creation and dependent projects to former collaborators, giving them everything he has of value to those undertakings, and wishing them success and happiness in this life and the next.

The Christianity of our time is so perverted with contention and enemy-think that such loving sentiment is condemned as apostasy, even by mainstream churches. It simply will not do to help, or even fail to hinder, members of another faith.

The notion – indeed, the truth – that all authentic walkers of all paths further everyone's understanding of God; that the work of all honest seekers is vital and good, is buried under a mountain of triumphalist doubletalk.

So fie on the Holy Rollers, right?

But let's be careful not to look too closely at ourselves while all of this is going on. Certainly, let's not look deeply into the way some of us respond to this unexpected (on our path that misdoubts expectation) turn of events.

Sweeping Zen has been criticised by sincere, disciplined Zenners – including Your Servant – for the self-satisfied way it sometimes reacts to inconvenient humanity.

And now that humanity has happened again.

Brothers and sisters in the sangha: may I respectfully suggest that this is just the break we need to stop talking about Zen and start doing it.

(Photo of Albrecht Dürer's Kain erschlägt Abel courtesy of the US National Gallery of Art and Wikimedia Commons.)