Zen Druidry and other meanderings

My friend Jo van der Hoeven’s lovely little book ‘Zen Druidry’ is out in paperback now. I’ve already read it, and can vouch for it being very nicely written and full of interesting and engaging ideas. I’m not a Zen person, but I enjoy reading about different paths. I believe we can learn a great deal by exploring the commonality between faiths, and also looking at the differences. There are enough overlaps between Buddhism and Druidry that plenty of people pair the two. Druidry, after all, suffers from a lack of ancient texts. Buddhism has plenty of source material, but is very much part of a different land and culture. Taking the bits that make sense and placing them where you are can work with many different paths.

I read widely and am fascinated by other faiths. Shinto, Jainism and Hinduism have recently featured a lot, and I’ve been reading about Zen (aside from Jo’s book) and want to get some Zen Koan teachings. I want to be very clear that this is not about a pick and mix approach to religions, nor about any kind spiritual tourism. I want to learn about what it is to be human, and I think belief is a window to the human condition as much as anything else. Cultures and alternative perspectives fascinate me, I read what philosophy I can manage, I read atheist writers… I’m a bit of an omnivore.

Zen Druidry made a lot of sense to me. I might not choose to go that way, but I can understand it, I see the attraction and it has influenced me a bit in terms of my meditation practice. Recently I’ve also had a look at some reconstructionist Druid writing. Now, given that this is just Druidry, it would be fair to assume this would be even more appealing and meaningful to me than all the ‘foreign’ faiths. I’m hugely interested in history, in the Celts, archaeology, the mediaeval fiction… and yet I fall down entirely with Celtic reconstruction. Why is it that, when I can comfortably read so widely, I struggle with what *should* be closest and most accessible? I can read, and know mostly what’s being referred to, recognise the source material, it’s not like I don’t know my stuff. I’m not an expert on Celtic history, but I’ve got some awareness.

I think it’s this. Religions evolve, and they do so slowly over long periods, punctuated by the occasional upheavals that, for example, bring Christianity out of Judaism, or creates splits into new subsets. Through the evolution process, religions stay with us. If I read about Shinto, I’m reading about something written for a modern audience. Even history is filtered through so that my mind can take it in. The one thing I struggle with is the idea that anyone, of any faith here and now could hope to fully understand the thoughts and beliefs of anyone from two thousand and more years ago. This is the premise on which reconstruction depends – that we can go to the source material, such as it is, and from that we can even viably attempt an understanding at the people who lived it at the time. That from our centrally heated houses with a supermarket down the road we could have some hope of comprehending what it would mean to be utterly dependant on the land you live on, just for starters.

I don’t think most of us have the slightest chance of making the jump.

I remember being told once that Vikings couldn’t have brightly coloured clothes, because as soon as you wash them, those old dyes run, and wash out. Of course he’d chucked his trousers in a washing machine. Soap. Hot water. If you don’t wash often and you don’t wash hot, you can have those colours just fine. A tiny example of how easily we fail to grasp the implications of difference.

Zen Druidry looks a little bit like modern, western Zen, which probably looks a bit like Japanese contemporary Zen which in turn bears some resemblance to other forms of Buddhism, and that no doubt has some stuff in common with forms of Buddhism through its history and through those roots back to the Vedic culture it began in and from there back into something I don’t know much about yet. But apparently that was an oral tradition, teaching in groves. It could be that Buddhism and Jainism, as post-Vedic attempts at reviving pre-Vedic culture have more relationship with something Indo-European that looks like Druidry than picking over Roman remains ever will. A living, evolving tradition may have more to say to us about how Druidry would have evolved, than the remnants of Druidry do. We’ll never know.

In the meantime, you can find Jo’s blog here –www.octopusdance.wordpress.com and here book here – http://www.amazon.com/Pagan-Portal-Zen-Druidry-Natural-Awareness/dp/1780993900/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365680961&sr=8-1&keywords=zen+druidry