other practices

In John Cowan's own words, "This book exists to introduce you to the kingdom of God. All else is meaningless in comparison." The book is written from the perspective of a parish priest who has also been formed by twenty-five years in corporate life, twelve years in a monastic environment, and the practice of daily meditation. Cowan draws on Christian teaching, although he cautions that he believes fewer doctrines and probably sees them differently than most. He liberally quotes from the Gospel of Jesus, an assembly of texts compiled by scholars of the Jesus seminar.

Cowan's premise is simple. During the early years of Christianity "when the ticket to the banquet was a willingness to be fed to the lions," there were a few who were attracted to the table as Jesus set it. When Christianity became a popular movement, however, people translated the message into something more palatable and lost the real message of the Master. Most Christians stopped taking Jesus seriously, and so they no longer experienced what he promised would happen to them. Cowan's message is that God's imperial rule is right here, in our presence, and it is through the practice of Buddhist meditation that we can experience the Divine Presence.

The book's style is poetic and cryptic, esoteric and practical, humorous and sobering, simple, yet challenging, written from the soul of a parish priest. The book was written for Cowan's Buddhist meditation classes and includes discussion of Christian and Buddhist beliefs, scattered scriptural references, and a practical guide to the discipline of Buddhist meditation. Each chapter ends with a series of questions and answers drawn from his classes held around the Twin Cities.

Unlike popular meditation that offers peace and escape, this meditation creates a heightened awareness of reality with all its inherent pain and suffering, for it is in pursuing the cause of our suffering that we can cease suffering. To do this we must replace our delusions with material reality, to become empty so that we might be filled with the Divine Presence. Becoming empty means letting go of all our delusions of who we are - delusions created by our ego, our peers, and our culture. It is in forfeiting our life as we know it, that we preserve it.

Cowan suggests several ways to do this. Become a balloon floating in space, accepting all that you see and loving everything as it is. Become a verb, always watching, ever loving, never clinging. Label your thoughts, acknowledging them as they float through your mind, but do not hold on to them for they distract you from realizing the Divine Presence. Cowan recounts that the Buddhist teacher waits for the moment of "no mind," when the noise ceases and she is simply "observing," with no delusions. He compares this with the scriptural passage where Jesus reminds us that we must become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Children are empty and since they have no memory of the past or expectation of the future they live in the present, experiencing the reality of now.

Cowan concludes that we have a choice, indeed, "all that stands between us and being Jesus clones is our willingness to be empty." We have a choice to join the great flow of life by sitting quietly with an awareness of our breath, our body, reality around us, and a loving consciousness without judgment, living with what God has given us. The kingdom of God is spread out before us and we do not see it. It is already here. We just have not been looking.

Review published in April issue of "Soundings"
The Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota