QUESTION (resumed) :
Is the Christian God incompatible with Zen?
QUESTION (original) :
In your writings, you keep on speaking about God, and even, of Jesus Christ. That can appear, a priori, surprising coming from a Zen Master, considering that in Buddhism, it is almost never spoken about God. Therefore, is the idea of God, in any case of the Christian God, incompatible with Zen?
ANSWER :
The idea of the Christian or Jewish god with a white beard, who created the world approximately ten thousand years ago, is more than ever ridiculous and however it exists absolutely just like Father Christmas. And the lamp of Aladdin also exists in the culture of our dreams, and is thus real somewhere in us, even if one day we stopped believing in it completely.
Christmas for example, we celebrate this superstition as real and we happily mix the Father Christmas, Jesus and the “foie gras”, everything like at the times of those pagan gods which Moses had forbidden us to believe.
Do you believe that in Buddhism does not also exist many buddhas with the most improbable names, which the Asian religious zealots bring offerings to?
That one believes to believe in God or not, that one is an atheist or not, the search of man has always been in my opinion that of his origin. And his origin, this is what I call god.
What makes the difference with the superstition is to become aware that this origin is within us.
KOSEN!