by William Gardner

On July 4, 1989, William Gardner — a psychologist at the University of Virginia — posted this unusual piece to soc.religion.christian. The group had been discussing tradition and Scripture for weeks, and Gardner offered something the other participants had not: a view from outside. Not from skepticism, but from Buddhism.

Gardner is not a Buddhist and says so plainly. But he has been reading Dogen — the thirteenth-century Japanese reformer who wrote that enlightenment cannot be contained in texts and must be transmitted face-to-face, from master to disciple, in an unbroken living lineage. Gardner sees in this doctrine a parallel to what Christians mean when they speak of the Church as the body of Christ carrying the apostolic witness forward through time.

The essay is brief and careful. It does not claim that Zen and Christianity are the same. It claims something more modest and more useful: that Dogen's way of thinking about transmission offers Christians a concrete vocabulary for what "living tradition" means. The ending, where Gardner describes receiving communion from a minister whose face he suddenly recognized as the body of Christ, is among the finest moments preserved in these archives.

I have learned a lot from the recent postings on "Tradition" by Wingate, Hedrick, Siemon, and several others. They are serious, thoughtful, and do credit to the group and the net. As I often do, I find myself agreeing with Michael Siemon, who writes:

"Since everything human is changeable, we constantly revert to this fixed witness as a rein on excesses of reason (or of tradition.) But to the extent that we can trust them the witness in the Spirit by the community of the Church to what derives from that apostolic community has the same status as scripture."

However, any errors in what follows are mine, and not inspired by Michael.

It may interest others to read a parallel discussion from another tradition. As you may know, Zen places the practice of Buddhism above scholarly study. It also privileges the direct, personal transmission of enlightenment from master to disciple. The value for this group may be that they talk about what this means in a concrete way. I have to disclaim expertise here — I'm not a Buddhist and, more importantly, have never met a Zen master.

Dogen on Transmission

Dogen (1200–1253) seems to have been the great reformer of Japanese Buddhism. He wrote that "the raft of discourse is like yesterday's dream, and you must cut off your old understanding bound up in the vines and serpents of words." This is not a sola scriptura reformer! But I doubt that Dogen was anti-intellectual; he was clearly a scholar and a shattering writer. His point is iconoclastic, directed against an idolatry of scripture. Or perhaps it is a strategy for attacking intellectual self-involvement. This critical side of Zen is well known.

The positive side seems less appreciated. Dogen says that enlightenment is transmitted, face-to-face, from master to disciple. This began when

"Shakyamuni Buddha held up an udumbara flower and winked. Venerable Mahakashyapa smiled. Then Shakyamuni Buddha said, 'I have the treasury of the true dharma eye, the inconceivable mind of nirvana. This I entrust to Mahakashyapa.' Thus venerable Mahakashyapa received the transmission directly face to face, mind to mind, body to body, and eye to eye."

The same event is held to have occurred, in unbroken succession, through the authentic lineages of Zen masters. "All authentic heirs are the buddha face; each of them has received face-to-face transmission from the original buddha face." What is transmitted, and remains constant through the lineage, is, I guess, the information about enlightenment discovered by Shakyamuni. Dogen believes that the non-verbal component is necessary, though not sufficient, and can't be seen without intensive preparation.

But Dogen thinks that transmission isn't just a line: "...the 51 buddha ancestors are not present side by side or in one line. But it is face-to-face transmission among all the buddha ancestors at the same time. If you do not see in just one generation all the masters, you are not a disciple. If you do not see in one generation all the disciples, you are not a master."

I don't fully understand this, but then I don't completely understand what we mean by the body of Christ. Nevertheless, Dogen's discussion clarified an important experience I'd had years before. A minister handed me a piece of bread and told me that it was "The body of Christ, broken for you." I looked at her face and saw that it was.

Colophon

Written by William Gardner, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia. Posted to soc.religion.christian on July 4, 1989.

Quotations from Dogen are drawn from Moon in a Dewdrop, a selection of translations from the Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi, North Point Press.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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