Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth (review)

126 SHOFAR Spring1999 Vol. 17,No.3 made clear the need for mutual understanding, if not mutual transformation, between religions, but it has also offered us an important contribution towards achieving this end. T. R. Lavin Department of Philosophy Clarion University Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth, by Ruben L. F. Habito. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993. 166 pp. $15.00 (p). Ruben Habito is a Christian Zen teacher. He has spent some two decades practicing Zen in Japan and presently is resident teacher at the MariacKannon Zen Center in Dallas, Texas. He also teaches world religions and spirituality at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. In this elegant volume he presents Zen spirituality in its full compass: not only personal, but also social and ecological. Zen has at times been criticized as introverted, focused only upon the individual. That is mistaken, for the personal practice of Zen meditation leads one into social and ecological engagement. The troubled mind does have to be healed, but things do not stop there, for human society and the entire cosmic world also stand in need of the concrete healing that Zen spirituality propels. Chapter One, "Toward Healing: Tracing the Roots of Our Woundedness," examines the root causes ofwoundedness in all of its dimensions, critiques the paired notions of the earth community as a resource to be tamed and exploited and an inner "I" who stands in opposition to that earth community. The root cause of woundedness is found in ego-centered consciousness, and Habito identifies the problem as one of overcoming that ego. The four noble truths of Buddhism are examined, as well as Christian teachings on how to overcome alienation. Both teachings describe the nature of our wounds and suggest treatments for their healing. Chapter Two, "Taste and See: The Zen Way of Life," treats the four marks of Zen-Special Transmission Outside Scriptures, Pointing to the Moon, Touching the Core of Our Being, and Seeing One's Nature and Being Awakened-all to stress the concrete and embodied natures of Zen practice. At its deepest level, Zen is not a verbal affirmation or a negation, although clearly it does involve both affirmations and negations. Rather, in its practice it points directly to our true self, our awakened minds. Chapter Three, "In Attunement with the Breath," focuses on the first fruit of Zen practice: the deepening ofmeditative concentration by attuning breath. Habito explains posture, breath modulation, silencing mental thoughts, the role of the Zen teacher as midwife, and the impact ofbreath awareness in both Zen and Christian teachings. Here, Topical Book Reviews 127 as elsewhere, he pays his respects to his teacher, Yamada Koun Roshi ofthe famed Sanbo Kyodan in Kamakura. Yamada Roshi taught a host of Western students, making no distinction between their religious backgrounds or beliefs, for Zen does not, he taught, function on the level ofverbal affIrmation. Rather, it stays content in pointing the silent finger of practice at the moon of awakening in any cultural tradition. Chapter Four, "Awakening to True Selfhood," looks at the second fruit of Zen practice: the experience of awakening to true selfhood, and its social and ecological implications. The famous koan Mu is discussed as an example of the dynamics of selfrecovery . Single-minded sitting (shikan taza) is also treated, not as the means to the end of awakening, but as its embodiment in practice. Such an embodiment is the leitmotif of Dogen's teaching, the medieval Zen founder of Soto Zen. Christian parallels are given, all with the point of encouraging one to discover the true self in its interconnectedness to all other beings and to the great earth that is our shared home. Chapter Five, "Embodying the Way," and Six, "This is My Body," focus on the third fruit, embodying the way in actual life. Monastic practices are described, and gospel simplicity and the quiet wonder and grace of tea are presented. The body of awakening is treated-for awakened persons are the body of Buddha, since they have "dropped off' the body oftheir separated individuality. But that body of awakening is not simply one's personal body, now awakened, but the body ofthe entire earth, for...