by Kim Boykin
For excellent editing, I am grateful to Sheryl Fullerton at Jossey-Bass. For reading the manuscript and offering helpful feedback, I am grateful to Tom Frank, E. Brooks Holifield, Wynne Maggi, Brian Mahan, Steve Tipton, Bonnie Myotai Treace, and Laurie Watel. Thanks to Luke Timothy Johnson, Eric Reinders, and Neal Walls for looking over particular sections of the manuscript. Thanks to Bruce Emmer and Fred Helenius for copyediting and proofreading. Thanks to Torn Beaudoin for help with the publishing game, and thanks to my dad and stepmom, Noel and Robin Boykin, and my mom, Karin Paris, for the computer and printer. And thanks to everyone at Jossey-Bass who worked on this book.
Thanks to Jan Thomas, Derek Owens, Jennifer Watts, and my dad for e-mail conversations that led to drafts of sections of the book and to the scholars and staff of the Youth Theology Institute for all the great theological conversations by e-mail. Thanks to Jim Fowler for many kinds of support over the past decade and to Michael Warren for encouragement at the beginning of this project. I am grateful for Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and V. A. Howard and J. H. Barton's Thinking on Paper; I don't think I would have been able to write a book without their help.
For getting me started leading Zen meditation groups for Christians, I am grateful to the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. For opportunities to lead Zen groups and for their encouragement, I am grateful to Mary-Elizabeth Ellard, Budd Friend-Jones, and Helen Neinast. For other teaching opportunities, I am grateful to Carolyn Barker, John Barnes, Beth Luton Cook, Tom Curtis, Taiun Michael Elliston, Jim Farwell, Jerry Kane, Mari Kim-Shinn, Victor Kramer, Alison Mallard, Ellen Mintzmyer, Amy Murphy, Don Richter, Fred Rossini, Sue Sherwood, Dennis Teall-Fleming, Mark Monk Winstanley, and the Evening at Emory program. And I am grateful to all the wonderful participants in my classes and meditation groups.
My understanding of how to practice meditation and how to teach meditation to beginners has been shaped by many teachers, in person and through their writing, but especially by John Daido Loon, Bonnie Myotai Treace, and the other monastics at Zen Mountain Monastery; by Philip Kapleau's The Three Pillars of Zen, especially the teachings of Hakuun Yasutani; by Charlotte Joko Beck's Everyday Zen; by the writings of Chogyam Trungpa; and by the meditation instructors of Naropa University and Shambhala Training. I am grateful also to Sister Eleanor Sheehan, Fay Key, and Gerald May for spiritual guidance and to Roberta Bondi, Bill Mallard, and Helen Blier for Christian catechism.
And finally, special thanks to Fay Key and Steve Bullington of Green Bough House of Prayer, where I did most of the work on this book, for providing a place of prayer and silence and for hospitality, love, and good food.
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The Author
Kim Boykin (M.T.S., Candler School of Theology, Emory University) is a Christian practitioner of Zen and an experienced workshop leader and teacher of Zen practices and contemplative prayer, to both Christian and non-Christian audiences. She has written for a number of publications, including Shambhala Sun.
Table of Contents
Making Zen Practice Part of Your Life
FOREWORD BY GERALD G. MAY
An Invitation to Zen Practice
Practice: Zazen: Counting the Breath
1 How I Became a Christian Zen Practitioner
Practice: Walking Meditation
2 The Buddhist Way of Liberation from Suffering
Practice: Noticing Thoughts
3 Zen Teachings and Christian Teachings
Practice: Zazen: Following the Breath
4 Enlightenment: Already and Not Yet
Practice: Practicing with Everything
5 Making Zen Practice Part of Your Life
Practice: Zazen: Shikantaza, or "Just Sitting"
One More Thought: If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Badly
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE AUTHOR