Any ex Buddhists become Christian or Catholic?

[gottalovemoses]

I used to be into Buddhism. Now gone back to catholischism.
Thomas Merton was a Catholic monk who wrote some books on Zen Buddhism. I think he saw some overlap with meditation and prayer.

 

[Sirona]

Hello,

two ex-Buddhists who write about having become Christians are Martin Kamphuis and Esther Baker. Kamphuis wrote "I was a Buddhist"

http://www.gateway-ev.de/home/pics/martin-kamphuis_i-was-a-buddhist.pdf

Esther Baker wrote "I Once Was A Buddhist Nun".

I liked Esther Baker's book better because Kamphuis really had naive expectations of Buddhism. He travelled from Germany to Tibet always in desperate search for someone to tell him what to do.

 

[Tmac]

I used to be into Buddhism. Now gone back to catholischism.
Thomas Merton was a Catholic monk who wrote some books on Zen Buddhism. I think he saw some overlap with meditation and prayer.

Seeds of Contemplation blew my mind.

BTW, he didn't write books on Zen but how experienced it. C. Jung was another, faith unknown.

 

[crossfire]

I can say that studying Buddhism has certainly helped me understand Christianity better. For instance, Matt 5:29-30 makes much more sense if you have read Buddha's Fire Sermon.

{However, that said, I'm not going to give up being a Buddhist.}

 

[gottalovemoses]

Merton was perhaps most interested in—and, of all of the Eastern traditions, wrote the most about—Zen. Having studied the Desert Fathers and other Christian mystics as part of his monastic vocation, Merton had a deep understanding of what it was those men sought and experienced in their seeking. He found many parallels between the language of these Christian mystics and the language of Zen philosophy.[38]

In 1959, Merton began a dialogue with D.T. Suzuki which was published in Merton's Zen and the Birds of Appetite as "Wisdom in Emptiness". This dialogue began with the completion of Merton's The Wisdom of the Desert. Merton sent a copy to Suzuki with the hope that he would comment on Merton's view that the Desert Fathers and the early Zen masters had similar experiences. Nearly ten years later, when Zen and the Birds of Appetite was published, Merton wrote in his postface that "any attempt to handle Zen in theological language is bound to miss the point", calling his final statements "an example of how not to approach Zen."[39] Merton struggled to reconcile the Western and Christian impulse to catalog and put into words every experience with the ideas of Christian apophatic theology and the unspeakable nature of the Zen experience.

In keeping with Merton's idea that non-Christian faiths had much to offer Christianity in terms of experience and perspective and little or nothing in terms of doctrine, Merton distinguished between Zen Buddhism, an expression of history and culture, and Zen.[38] What Merton meant by Zen Buddhism was the religion that began in China and spread to Japan as well as the rituals and institutions that accompanied it. By Zen, Merton meant something not bound by culture, religion or belief. In this capacity, Merton was influenced by the book Zen Catholicism.[40] With this idea in mind, Merton's later writings about Zen may be understood to be coming more and more from within an evolving and broadening tradition of Zen which is not particularly Buddhist but informed by Merton's monastic training within the Christian tradition.[41]

 

[gottalovemoses]

BTW, he didn't write books on Zen but how he experienced it.

I don't see the difference.

 

[Tmac]

I don't see the difference.

In my thoughts, If I said I wrote a book about Zen it would be about the mechanics, if I wrote about my experience with Zen, it makes it more personal. And by reading TM he let me see what he saw rather than tell me how to do it and then leaving me on my own.