The Meeting of Zen and
A Course in Miracles

by Jon Mundy

I’ve been teaching university courses on comparative religions for forty years. I’ve been studying Zen lately. As a Miracles student I appreciate the similarities between Zen and A Course In Miracles.

A Little Story
A minister of the Gospel was conducting religious services in an asylum for the insane. His discourse was suddenly interrupted by one of the inmates crying out wildly, "I say! Have we got to listen to this tommyrot?" The minister, surprised and confused looked to the keeper and said, "Shall I stop speaking?"  The keeper replied, "Keep right on. That won't happen again. That man has only one sane moment every seven years."

Zen and the Course appeal to sanity. As I watched the airplanes fly into the World Trade Center, two lines from A Course in Miracles passed though my mind,

1. This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity.
-- ACIM, T. I. 2:6 and

2. Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego's drive for vengeance on the past.
-- ACIM, T. 16. VIII., 3:1

The Course uses the word underestimate six times. Twice, it asks us not to underestimate the insanity of the ego.

Zen and the Course, share similar metaphysical principles. Both say that this is not the real world and there is no time.

There is no world.
This is the central thought
this course attempts to teach.
-- ACIM, W - 132, 6:2-3

According to Zen and the Course this is not the real world but a phenomenal world, a dream world. According to Zen, Hinduism and the Course, this world is "maya" or illusion. The world is not "bad" and therefore to be condemned. It is not "good" and therefore to be praised. It is what it is. It is what we make of it. Zen says, "Be in the world but don't be of the world." Don’t be caught in the world. There is no need to renounce the world -- we need only see it as it is.

Many have chosen to renounce the world
while still believing it’s reality.
And they have suffered from a sense of loss,
and have not been released accordingly.
Others have chosen nothing but the world,
and they have suffered from a sense of loss still deeper,
which they did not understand.
Between these paths there is another road
that leads away from loss of every kind,
for sacrifice and deprivation
both are quickly left behind.
This is the way appointed for you now.
-- ACIM, W, L. 155, 4:2-4

Buddha's great enlightenment was that all of life is desiring or attachment. The ego's attachments to the "things" of the world keep us in illusion.

Words and the World
After my near death experience in 1976, I could not talk because I realized that anything I said would be an attempt to try to put into words the description of an experience which did not fit into words.

Bodhidharma the founder of Zen says, "Devise no words." They call this state in China "mo chao" -- when you are not projecting. "Mo" means serene or silent and "chao" means reflection or "awareness." It means a mirror like quality -- just reflect. In the same way The Course asks us not to judge the world but just let it be what it is. The line I quote most often from the Course is:

Let him be what he is and seek not to make of love an enemy.
-- ACIM, T-19. IV (D) 13:7

Just observe without comment or commentary -- without judgment. The Course says, words are but symbols of symbols and thus twice removed from reality. (M-31 1:9-10). The word starts the world. The moment we enter the world of words the world begins. We begin to have a construct. We begin to build a castle -- an ego. Over time, it gets bigger and bigger.

Don Miguel Ruiz in The Four Agreements talks about what he calls Domestication or the Dreaming of the planet. According to Zen every one is born a mystic, then we draw the child toward the school and the church and the mystical is lost in favor of the concrete -- the social -- the world.

To know God is to live in God -- to know one’s reality as part of God. God is not to be theologized and argued about. God is not "extrinsic." God is "intrinsic." God is not out there. God is in this moment -- in my immediate experience. The more awake I am the more aware I am of God -- not in some egoistic way -- rather in a deeply appreciative way.

It's Not About Theology
A Christian philosopher was attending a conference on World Religions in Tokyo. He went up to a Shinto master and said, "I don't think I get your ideology. I don't understand your theology?" The Shinto master looked at him for a moment and then said, "We do not have a theology. We do not have an ideology. We dance."

A universal theology is impossible. But, a universal experience is not only possible but necessary.
-- ACIM, C- In. 2:5

Zen is not a theology. Zen is pure, absolute, inculpable religion. Theology contaminates and pollutes religion. Theology is something about which we might have "debates." People have been arguing for centuries because of "dogmas," ideologies, geocentricism, egocentricism, nationalism, "anyism" will do.

Zen and theory don’t exist together. Zen is more like love. Try to define it. You’ll lose it. You can be in spirit or you can be in ego. Both are not possible together. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

There is no answer; only an experience.
Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you.
-- C- In 4:4-5

A religious person has no theology. A religious person has the direct experience, they have truth, they has luminosity. They do not have doctrine. They do not have dogma. There is no required way of believing.

Zen is an experience. The Course is an experience. The Course is not about doctrine and dogma and neither is Zen. In Zen there is no church, no priest, no pope. In the same way, with the Course, it is important that there be no hierarchy, no church, no priest, no pope. I’m not saying Course students should not worship together but there should be no hierarchy. The moment you have a hierarchy, egos get involved. Zen is the only religion which has not become a tradition like Christianity, and Judaism. It cannot. The Course will not become a tradition either. Like Zen the Course is a way of seeing. Like Zen the Course is a way of being.

Specialness and Zen
No one is special. No one is to be elevated over another, no one is to be placed on a pedestal. Jesus is our elder brother and we are all equal brothers and sisters. What Jesus has seen, we might see. Similarly, in Zen, everything is divine, so how can anything be special. Every delicate moment is precious. Nothing is special! Everything is special!

Time - The Great Illusion
The Course and Zen both teach immediacy, immersion, involvement, moment-to-moment, be present in the moment; no past (where guilt abides), no future (where fear abides) and thus it is that there is no hell. Zen says the mind is always in the past. Lesson 7 from the Course Workbook says, I see only the past. Guilt keeps us in the past. Zen is realistic, pragmatic and down-to-earth. Zen masters believe in immediacy. They don't believe in explanations.

The Course says that time is the vast illusion. There is only this moment.

Heaven is here.
There is no place else.
Heaven is now.
There is no other time.
-- ACIM, T-19 IV (D) 13:7

There is a section in the Course called: The Immediacy of Salvation. Salvation is immediately available and we need not wait for a single second. Jesus in the gospel says heaven is "at hand." It is as immediate as my hand. It is that available. As there is no time there just is what is. Living fully in the moment there is no time for time.

Ideologies are tainted glasses that obstruct vision. Zen and the Course bring sanity to the world by "undoing" the world through forgiveness -- just letting things be. "Look without any ideas" says Zen. Look without prejudice, no presuppositions, no judgment. The moment we have judgment we have a problem -- we have separation -- we have division -- we have duality. Just look -- sit still -- let things be what they are.

Zen says don't dissect, don't analyze. The Course says, "The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts." (T-11 V. 13:1) To analyze is to separate, to break down, to tear apart. Zen and the Course say -- accepting the situation (the world) as it is brings peace. God is not found by dissecting. God is the whole not the part. God can be found only in a vision of unity.

The path of Paradox.
If you want to possess God, don't try to possess Him -- then you will possess him. If you want to possess love, don't be possessive and it will be given unto you. The Course says, "what I give my brother is my gift to me." God is yours. Zen says -- relax. Don't seek, don't search, don't demand. If you relax, it comes. It does not come by demanding. It does not come through arrogance or by making others wrong.

It’s a winter evening and I’m sitting with my wife Dolores and our daughter Sarah in our family room. We're all reading. The fireplace is brightly ablaze. It feels very comfy, very much like home -- because it is home. I stop reading and allow the moment to be what it was. Here we are doing this essentially family thing. The moment is sufficient unto itself. Nothing is needed. This moment is perfect. Now as I write these words -- this moment is perfect just as it is -- right now as you read these words the moment is perfect -- just as it is and this morning when I was in a minor automobile accident -- that was perfect too.

Laughter, Zen and the Course

". . . laugh at your fears
and replace them with peace.
For fear lies not in reality,
but in the minds of children
who do not understand reality."
-- ACIM, T. 198

The ego is after all silly. It does lots of crazy tricks and it’s fun to watch the foolish games we often play with one another.
In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects.
-- ACIM, T-27, VIII, 9:1

Buddhist monks laugh because they are free, because they live in the moment. They are not tethered to the ego.

When I was a kid on the farm in Missouri we had a bull that I could lead around with a rope. On one end there was a metal devise with a spring on it that clasped around the soft part of the bulls nose. If the bull refused to follow me and pulled back on the rope, the metal clasp would tighten on the bulls nose. Stepping forward relieved the pressure. The bull would thus follow me around. It’s the same with the silly ego. It leads us around by our noses. We look funny being lead around by our noses.

Laughter is a high moment in religious experience. Once in meditation, I started laughing and I laughed and laughed for half an hour or more. For a moment, I gained insight into the absurdity of the universe and the insanity of the ego and I just laughed.

It's enough to make you cry!

The Course says; It is a 'joke' to think that time can come to circumvent eternity which means there is no time. (T-27. VIII, 6:4). The Course asks us to see things above the battlefield. (T. 23. IV) From a higher perspective we can laugh at the non reality of something which pretends that it is real.

The Ego is Hell
There is no other hell. The Course says, The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. (T-15, I. 4:1) According to both Zen and the Course in reality there is no separated self, no ego. There is thus also no hell, and no devil and nothing to be afraid of. There cannot be an opposite to that which is all encompassing. There cannot be an opposite to God.

The emphasis of the ego is on doing and the emphasis of spirit is on being.

Zen is just being.

The Course is just being.

Zen and the Course are both "undoing," unlearning -- doing nothing.

Now go, do nothing!

And have fun!

Love and Peace Now and Forever,