by Ruben L. F. Habito

All the classic forms of prayer are fully activated as we sit in silence,
breathing in and breathing out. Zen practice in this way can be
considered a form of prayer that does not have recourse to words.

In my current role of guiding people in Zen practice at our Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas, Texas, I am sometimes asked in earnest by persons who come from a Jewish or Christian background: Is Zen prayer? At the orientation talks, beginning practitioners are taught the basics: Zen is about sitting in silence, paying attention to the dynamic reality of the present moment, and maintaining this mindful attention throughout the various activities of one's day-to-day life. If by prayer one means "conversations with God" (as the title of a bestselling series of books puts it), then the practice of Zen would not qualify as such. For one, it is not about conversation, since Zen "does not rely on words or letters."¹ For another, the term God is not in the operational vocabulary of Zen, which is agnostic and noncommittal on the matter of whether God exists or not.² So a firsthand answer to the question would appear to be: No, Zen is different from prayer.

But let us look at it from another angle. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, Paul exhorts his followers to "rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks" (5:16-18). What does Paul mean by this injunction to "pray without ceasing"? Evidently this cannot be taken in the narrow sense of "conversing with God," or "reciting prayers," for a human being cannot conceivably continue in this activity without having to stop to do something else, like take a break, eat, drink, take a walk, meet friends, work to earn a livelihood, and other mundane things that human beings need to do from day to day.

There is the story of a young man who liked to chew bubble gum, who entered the seminary to begin studies for the priesthood. He continued the habit even in the seminary, where the daily schedule was a rather structured one, including an hour's time for formal prayer in the morning, and specific times allotted for doing chores, going to classes, studies, meals, rest and recreation, and so on. One day he went to Father Superior and asked, "Father, may I chew bubble gum while I am praying?" The answer was a big, resounding "NO, of course not!" The young man followed obediently, chewing bubble gum only outside of formal prayer time. After a few days, he went back to Father Superior, and this time asked, "Father, may I pray when I am chewing bubble gum?" And the answer was, "Of course, my son. That is an excellent thing to do. And by all means, pray not only as you chew bubble gum, but as you do your chores, your studies, and everything else besides!"

The wise father superior had an important point here. His answer to the seminarian's second question resonates with what Paul enjoined his followers about praying "without ceasing." Now one may ask: What's the difference between "chewing bubble gum while praying" and "praying as one chews bubble gum"? There is a Zen saying to the effect that "even a tiny hairsbreadth of a difference is the distance between heaven and earth," and here indeed is a tiny hairsbreadth that makes all the difference. The first case, chewing bubble gum while praying, is trying to do two things at the same time, thereby dividing one's attention and rendering the prayer into a halfhearted and ineffectual effort. The second case, praying as one chews bubble gum, is letting the very act of chewing bubble gum become one's prayer.

For further elucidation, let us take a look at traditional Catholic teaching on different kinds of prayer, given in Sunday school catechism to children as well as to adults learning about the Catholic faith. Prayer, the instruction goes, can be of four kinds: praise, thanksgiving, repentance, and petition.

What is the prayer of praise? A most common form of this kind of prayer is the use of words to extol the goodness and the glories of the Holy, unnameable One: "I will sing your praises, for You are good. You are great. You are holy." Irenaeus of Lyons, a second-century Christian theologian, suggests another way of giving praise, in his famous saying, "The glory of God is the human being fully alive." In other words, the greatest praise we human beings can give to that "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) is by living our humanity to the full, being fully there, from moment to moment as we go through the various ups and downs of our human life on this earth. Getting up in the morning, taking breakfast, going to work, taking a walk, taking a rest, standing up, sitting down, laughing, crying, making love, chewing bubble gum. Cultivating an attitude of paying attention in and through the various events of our day-to-day life lifts up everything we think, say, and do to become a prayer of praise, without using words to say it as such. Sitting in silence, just breathing in and breathing out, cultivating full attention in each here and now, is a magnificent way of embodying this prayer of praise.

The prayer of thanksgiving arises in our hearts when something good comes our way and our most natural human response is to say "Thank you, thank you!" But more than mere words, we can convey this gratitude through the way we live our lives and the way we comport ourselves toward that One to whom gratitude is owed. "Don't talk of love, show me," Eliza Doolittle sings in My Fair Lady. In the same way, we may repeat the words thank you or a variety of the same a thousand times, but it would not be as meaningful if that gratitude did not become manifest in our life and action. Living out its implications in our daily life and in making choices that set our entire life along this direction of gratitude is a much more cogent way of embodying the prayer of thanksgiving. The practice of sitting in silence can indeed be a powerful experience of this gratitude simply beholding the wonder and goodness of things just as they are: trees stand tall, flowers bloom, rain falls. A cool breeze blows on a moonlit night. A dog barks. A bird chirps. "Flocks of birds and herds of deer, / Oxen and sheep and goats and cows, / Soaring birds and darting fishes, / All that swims the paths of the seas" (Psalm 8)³. And the heart overflows with gratitude for all of this, for each and everything, just as it is.

A poem by the monk Saigyo (1118-90), said to have been composed as he was visiting a Shinto shrine, comes to mind. "Not knowing wherefore or why, / Tears of gratitude pour forth from my eyes." (My translation of "Nanigoto no owashimasu wo ba shiranedomo, / Katajikenasa ni namida koboruru.")

Another form of prayer is that of repentance. This is when we acknowledge that we have fallen short of the mark or when we admit that we have said, thought, or done things that we now come to regret. It is our selfishness and narrowness, our greed, anger, and ignorance, that make us think, say, or do things that hurt others and ourselves as well. So when we stop in our tracks, and in a moment of clarity, come to realize this fact, sincere repentance wells up from our hearts, moving us to ask for forgiveness. "Happy is the one who is forgiven, whose wound is healed. Happy the one restored to your harmony, in whose spirit there is no more deceit" (Psalm 32). Repentance is a big step beyond mere regret. Regret is a sentiment that comes when we realize we should have done otherwise, but it tends to stop there in bittersweet sentimentality; regret becomes genuine repentance, and becomes a prayer, as it envelops my whole being, moving me to ask forgiveness, and brings forth a resolve to make amends and never do such things again, ever.

A fourth, and most well-practiced, form of prayer is that of petition. Finite and needy beings as we are, we seek material and other kinds of things, so we ask for what we need or want. Prayers of petition are offered not just for our own needs or wants but more often in behalf of others. A friend is sick, and we pray for healing. A friend has fallen into hard times, and we pray that he or she be given strength to get through those difficulties. Many of our fellow human beings live in situations of poverty and destitution and suffering, and we pray for their well-being, whoever and wherever they may be.

We find this kind of prayer in early Buddhist scriptures, notably in the Metta Sutta, or Treatise on Loving-kindness. One who follows the path of the Buddha exclaims: "May all beings be happy, may all beings be at ease." This is a prayer that underlies the very practice of sitting in silent meditation, as one does so not only for one's own awakening and liberation from suffering but also for the awakening and ultimate liberation of all beings, beginning with oneself.

There is a fifth form of prayer that we need to recognize. This is the prayer Jesus himself expressed as he was dying on the cross, his body wracked with tremendous pain, his spirit weighed down to the lowest pits, with the world's suffering and violence and evil weighing down upon him, upon his very body: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22). This is a cry of anguish of one who is at his limits, in near despair, with no one to turn to except to cry out, "O, why have you forsaken me?" You may have experienced this kind of situation in your own life, or if not, may come to it sooner or later. This is a point where everything we have ever held dear is taken away from us, as happens to Job in the Hebrew scriptures, and we feel so isolated and dejected. Or our eyes may be opened to the unbearable suffering and injustice borne by so many of our fellow human beings in this world, and in empathy we can only cry out to the heavens, "Why, why?" "Out of the depths I cry. . . ." (Psalm 130). If we look at what is happening in the world today, we will see so many things that evoke this cry from the depths. In this actual world we live in, with all the technological advances we can all be proud of, we are informed by the World Health Organization that every year some twelve million children, which is around thirty thousand each day, die from malnutrition and related causes that could otherwise have easily been taken care of. Millions are forcibly made to leave their homes in different parts of the world, due to political, economic, social, and other causes, and become refugees living in dehumanizing circumstances. So many of our fellow human beings suffer and die through violence in many forms, due to racial, ethnic, political, and even religious factors. People seeking basic rights and demonstrating for those rights are gunned down by authorities like animals. We cannot even begin to imagine the anguish of those confronted by the violent death of a loved one in these situations. We are left speechless, in deafening silence, with an overwhelming sense of powerlessness in the face of all of this. What can we do but cry out in anguish from the depths of our being: "Why, Oh why have you forsaken us?"

As one sits in silence in Zen practice, this sense of solidarity with the suffering and pain of all sentient beings wells up and envelops one's entire being. The practitioner can only melt and turn into an unceasing flow of tears, tears, tears. But at the same time as one lets go and gives way to this flow of tears, something arises from deep within, assuaging the tears. It is the voice of the bodhisattva in us all, pronouncing the four vows: