Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Buddhist
Gabriel, Go Blow Your Horn! A Small Zen Meditation for This Holy Saturday

Gabriel, Go Blow Your Horn! A Small Zen Meditation for This Holy Saturday

Last updated on: March 26, 2016 at 9:45 am by James Ford

Gabriel, Go Blow Your Horn! A Small Zen Meditation for This Holy Saturday 2016-03-26T09:45:40-07:00 James Ford

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

This year in the Western Christian calendar today is Holy Saturday. A powerful moment in many ways. As a Zen Buddhist of a liberal sort, but raised and as it turns out inescapably culturally Christian, I find my mind goes to these big festivals of the church. And this week is filled with them.

However, I also notice there is a strange confluence here on this particular day, where in the Eastern churches, who will not be observing Easter until the first of May, today is the Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel is one of those wondrous mythical beings mentioned first in Zoroastrianism, and then fully embraced by the religions of Abraham, that serve as emissaries from the divine to the world.

When I was a child I was told we each of us have an angel assigned to us as protector. I also was led to understand they kept an eye on our behaviors, sort of our own personal secret police. I stopped believing in them a year or so before I stopped believing in the deity as any sort of projection of human ego into the sky.

Still angels remain fascinating things. Three, well, four if you count Satan, are considered premier, Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel. In addition to angel, or in their case at least from the writing the book of Enoch, archangels, they are also given the title “saint.” There are various legends of their actions.

But Gabriel is the great messenger, among other things foretelling the births of both John the Baptist, and of Jesus himself. In Islam it is he who dictates the Koran to Mohammed.

For me he has come to stand symbolically for the great disruptions that reorient our lives. I’ve tended to think of these moments as kensho, the Japanese word for awakening into reality.

Somewhere along the line I learned there are other ways of engaging our collective stories of the deep and true than simply as history to be proven true or false. There are universal currents of the heart and mind given explanation through some of these stories. And here with Gabriel we get kensho in a Western telling.

So, with Gabriel we get something quite rich. He brings revelations. Of course, most humans get these experiences from time to time. We believe the world is one way, in a moment we find it is some other way.

And. There are in addition to revelations of reality, revelations of ego, confirmations of what we have always believed, but now sealed with the dream of an external authority. So. Dangerous stuff these moments of revelation, and it is critical that we find ways to discern between the authentic and fool’s gold.

For me today of all days we get an invitation from the Western traditions into how to do just that, how to discern the authentic revelation of the real from the seductions of Mara.

Today is Good Friday. Today God is dead. We on the Zen path who are also interested in Christianity find a tiny passing passage in Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, second chapter, verse seven really, really interesting: “(Jesus) made himself nothing.” Or. “He emptied himself.” The nothing or the emptying is the word kenosis.

While it isn’t critical, I like that this letter is generally believed to be by the “real” Paul, the crazed, ecstatic mystic as opposed to the author or authors of those various bits and pieces of the New Testament that call on slaves to be obedient, women to be silent, and bishops to have only one wife. Kenosis belongs to that crazed ecstatic.

The conventional understanding of the term is self-sacrifice. Which has merits, although it also has a very unhealthy side. And ultimately it is not how I find the term most useful.

Rather I find kenosis the moment of seeing through.

The world and everything in it, including you and me, we have no essences, nothing special about us distinct from the great play of cause and effect. Our ego is a very important thing, it keeps us together and as animals on this little planet it allows us to survive for a time. But, it has a very unfortunate side effect. It makes us think we are something special. Or, at least we carry something special inside of us that is not part of the great mess that includes life and death. And protecting that specialness we often do bad things, particularly we do bad things to protect our fondest illusion, that one that we are special, when somewhere deep down we all know in fact we are the stuff of each other, unique yes, beautiful yes, but also woven out of each other, a moment in a great play of moments, a wave on the surface of an ocean.

Kenotic moments are those moments when we see through to the reality of things. We are. And we are empty. Kenosis is that moment when we see it for ourselves, not as words in a book, but as the revelation of Gabriel himself blowing that horn into our ears.

And for those who have the ears to hear it, the eyes to see it, today, Holy Saturday, even God himself, herself, itself empties.

It is the way of what is, the great play of all things, always special, but also, always empty, or, as I prefer as perhaps just a little less misleading, boundless.

And so today is a feast of sorts.

Today, in the confluence of East and West, at least in the Christian traditions, there is a great blowing of Gabriel’s horn, and a pointing to the great emptying.

The gift of seeing through.

The gift of setting down all our illusions about ourselves and the world, and instead, becoming one with.

Or, to use that other image. It is that moment, or can be, when the wave realizes it is the ocean.

There’s an announcement.

May we hear it.

May we see it.

May we live it.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

March 25, 2016

All In for Atheism

Next Post

March 26, 2016 Who is a Christian? A Holy Saturday Meditation

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Christmas Carol Abolitionist African-American Ahmadiyya Alan Watts Aldous Huxley Allen Ginsberg Amedkar Jayanti American politics American Zen Anaheim Zen Sangha Anglican Annie Besant April Fool Armageddon Art and Religion artificial intellegence Atheist Awakening B R Ambedkar Barlaam & Josaphat Beatnik Between Bhagavad Gita Bible biography birthday bodhisattva Bodhisattva Precepts Book burning Book of Common Prayer Book of Mormon Brahmo Samaj Buddha Buddhism Buddhist Buddhist Lord's Prayer Butterflies Calendars cartoons cat ChatGPT Chicken Tortilla Soup choices Christian atheism Christian mysticism Christian origins Christian Science Christian Zen Christianity Christianity and Buddhism christmas Christmas Truce Christopher Isherwood Church of Later Day Saints Cinco de Mayo circus covenant critical thinking culture D. T. Suzuki Dalit Buddhism Daniel Defoe Desert Fathers and Mothers dharma talk Dogen Donald Trump Dongshan's Five Ranks Dorothy Day dream Duty Easter ecology Edwin Arnold emptiness Empty Moon Zen Network Episcopal Church Eternal Now Ethics evolution existentialism Faith fantasy Fathers Day film film review fire Five Ranks Folk music food Form and emptiness Four Seals Francis of Assisi Francis Xavier Free thinker friendship George MacDonald Gerald Heard Glenn Taylor Webb God Good Friday Gospel of Gospel of Mark Gospel of Thomas grace Graduate Theological Unioin Graduate Theological Union Guanyin H R Blyth Hakuin Ekaku Hanamatsuri Hanukkah Harada Yasutani Zen Heart Sutra Henry David Thoreau Hermann Hesse Hinduism History and Religion history of religion Holy Spirit home Hospitality Icon Ides of March Isaac Newton Islam Islamic mysticism Jack Kerouac James Luther Adams Jiddu Krishnamurti Joan of Arc Johannes Gutenberg John Donne joke Judaism justice karma kensho King James Bible koan Koun Yamada Kyoto School Lewis Carrol Liberal Christianity Liberal Religion Life Plan Community Liminal literature Literature and Religion Liturgy Lord's Prayer Love Mahatma Gandhi Mahayana Martin Luther King Jr Mary Baker Eddy Mary Magdelene Mary Oliver Mayflower Compact Meditation memories memory metaphor money money and religioin Mormons Mother's Day movie review mysticism mythic Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church New Thought Nichiren Buddhism Nonduality not knowing Omar Khayyam Pacific School of Religion pagan Palm Sunday Passover peace Pentecost perennialism Phantastes Philip Kapleau philosophy Pilgrimage poetry Poetry and Religion politics Prayer Precepts Printing Press prophecy prophetic spirituality psychology Pure Land Queer religion queering religion Quietism Ram Mohan Roy rebirth recipe Relationships and religion religion religion and history Religious syncretism Resistance Retirement Retreat review Rissho Kosei Kai Ritual Robert Aitken Roshi Robert Ingersoll Rohatsu Romani religion Rosie the Riveter saints samadhi SanboZen Sangha Satyagraha science science and reigion science and religion science fiction seminary sermon Sesshin Sex and Religion Shinran Sikh Sikh tradition silence Social Justice Socially Engaged Buddhism Society and religion Soto Zen soul spiritual community spiritual practice Spirituality Sufism Suicide superstition Taoism Television Teresa of Avila Thanksgiving theological schools Theosophy Thomas Merton Time Transcendentalism Transcendentalist Trinitarian Trinity Uncategorized unitarian Unitarian Christianity Unitarian Universalist Universalism Vajrayana Vedanta Walking war Willa Cather William Ellery Channing wisdom women and religion women in religion World Teacher Writing zazen Zen Zen Center Zen inspired retriement zen meditation Zen Precepts Zen women

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which book is written almost completely as poetry?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Lamentations Jeremiah Isaiah Ezra