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
History and Religion
The Zen of Good Friday

The Zen of Good Friday

Last updated on: April 18, 2025 at 6:00 am by James Ford

0 Comments

The Zen of Good Friday 2025-03-24T09:54:05-07:00 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.

Good Friday
engraving after
F.H. Tompkins
1888

Yunmen, asked, “I do not ask you about the fifteenth of month. Come. Tell me about after the fifteenth. He then gave his own response, “Every day is a good day.”

Blue Cliff Record, Case 6

Today is Good Friday. And I find it a perfect day to consider a koan.

Koans are not puzzles, although they look like them. Rather they’re invitations. They point, they invite.

As, I believe, Good Friday can be. A strange turning moment in the Christian tradition. Historically considered a confusion, the prophet, the messiah, is unexpectedly arrested, tortured, and today, put to death in a terrible manner.

The whole of Holy Week is filled with conundrums, reversals, and even stranger turnings. Today, Good Friday is the linchpin.

As a text for today, I turn to Yunmen Wenyan. Who flourished on the cusp between the ninth and tenth centuries, dying in 949 of our common era. When I come to Good Friday I often think of this koan. And on occasion I’ve share my thoughts. Today I return to the story of Good Friday and that koan.

For those unfamiliar with the metaphor of the fifteenth of the month, in East Asian Buddhism, the fifteenth is the full moon. And it often stands as the image of awakening. Enlightenment. (So does the empty moon, but that would be another conversation.) So, the set-up is not a question about approaching awakening, our liberation, our saving.

The shared project of religion, as I see it. Meeting the world, and our brokenness, the anxiety that wracks most lives one way or another, and points to something. In Jesus’ telling, it points to the Kingdom of God. In his collected sayings we find that kingdom, whatever it is in its fullness, also exists partially in the future, and partially in the this moment.

The koan is an invitation into the awakened heart. And. Good Friday is an invitation into the kingdom.

One can, and people do argue over whether in some final sense these destinations are the same or different. For me the answer, and I mean it without trying to be glib, is yes and no. But as far as the no goes, I think we can find valuable hints in looking at the yes part. And this koan offers something of that yes.

This story was told in the midst of very, very hard times. In times of war and rumors of war. Marked by hunger and danger in every corner. No one on the Zen way takes that “every day is a good day” as a nostrum. This is not calling for some feel good response. Although feeling good is not not part of it. But here we’re being invited into something rather larger.

The Zen teacher Susan Murphy, in her wonderful book Upside Down Zen writes of a friend who was dying of AIDS. He offered his comment on the koan, “’Every day is Good Friday.’”

From a dying man’s mouth. Every day is Good Friday. A pointer.

Roshi Murphy tells us how “This is a powerful and illuminating turning phrase. The mystery and the passion of Good Friday – and the astonishing fact that such a day is called ‘Good’ – is enacted every day in every life upon the Earth, in some measure. This is where we live.”

She reminds us, “Yunmen was offering no blandishments at all, but the hardest of all possible challenges.” Slyly she adds, “We notice, with gratitude, that he didn’t say ‘Every day is a nice day.’”

Every day is a nice day is a lie. Or, rather, it is so far short of the reality that it is not helpful. Every day is a good day is the truth. As is every day is Good Friday. They are not two things. Here that yes and no of whether all religions point to the same thing, well, those words burn away.

Jesus’s last words as he hung dying on that cross, as captured by the gospel writers are each a bit different. Luke says he said “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” then “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” said to a thief, and for which there’s a lovely midrash where a Japanese Zen priest was told by an Orthodox Christian priest that this line should read “Today you are with me in paradise.” The Zen teacher wasn’t particularly impressed with “will be in paradise.” But he felt “are with me in paradise” a direct pointing.

Here. Now. Yes and no collapse in the hurt of a man hanging on a cross, in the simple words of an old monk speaking to his suffering companions.

There are other words tumbled up in the accounts of the event. John, whose composition is at least three generations after the events and so the farthest out of any of the canonical gospels has Jesus say “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother,” then “I thirst,” and finally “It is finished.”

The words I find most compelling, haunting, of them all is reported by both Matthew and Mark, generally believed to be the closest texts to the actual event, where Jesus says “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?”

The sermon-like last words, I take with a grain. Despair last words, those I get. When the great Zen master Yantou was old, his monastery was sacked by bandits. One of the bandits stabbed him. It is said his dying scream could be heard ten miles away.

That this renowned master could scream at his death so haunted a later young monk, Hakuin, that he would despair of even finding awakening, doubting that it could even be true. Hakuin would eventually see through to the heart of the matter. And it could be found in that scream. And, our own saving can be found in those last words, My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?”

Now Christian thinkers have had a terrible time trying to put this story, all of it from the entry into Jerusalem to this horrific death, and then to a story of resurrection, into some clear explanation. In fact, there are to this day contending explanations, what they call “doctrines of atonement.” Few of them square.

Reason and putting the things of our lives all together, sorting and sifting, is powerful and important. I so love Occam and his terrible razor to this day. But. And. When we come to this story and that koan, we are fully into the dream world of our human heart’s longing. And the heart’s reasons are of a completely different physics.

Here we find the razor cutting the divided world into one. Here we are invited into the Mandala of Holy Week, where the human journey is revealed.

And here’s where it points and the koan revealed.

In the midst of our suffering we are liberated. All the parts of our lives are it. There is no moment to be despised.

In the story recalled last Sunday, the entry into Jerusalem and those palm fronds. They are it. Turning over the tables of the money changers. That’s it. Sitting together at a meal with his friends. That’s it. He particularly points to that “it” of it, when he calls their attention to what the bread and the wine really are. Just bread. Just wine. And, him. Both. And.

Later, the empty tomb. That’s it. And, later the dream conversations. They are it, each of them. And they are not separate. Not one exactly, but not two, either.

And we can enter from any point of our lives. Although these hardest times, if we meet them full on, with all our heart and being, well, they may offer the clearest opening into the mystery.

So. Right here, today, as the day turns to night, and thirst and blood and pain, and dying are the matter at hand. That’s it. Every day is Good Friday. The meeting of earth and heaven.

For those have ears to hear, this is good news.

Every day is the good day.

New Visions

History and Religion

Previous Post

April 13, 2025

A Prayer for Palm Sunday, 2025

Next Post

April 20, 2025 Finding Zen teachings in the Easter Mystery

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Allowing anger to contaminate one's hard disk can be detrimental to one's holistic well being. ..."

Dr.Cajetan Coelho

Hot Anger: Meeting Anger in Zen ..."

"I love this koan. every which way you turn it bites you, Thirty years on ..."

Mark Strathern

Nanquan Cuts the Cat: A Jesuit ..."

"As a substitute for religion, Zen is probably better than taking drugs. However, it can ..."

Theodore Brandley

The Selling of Zen at the ..."

"Craving and aversion are detrimental to one's peace and happiness. Easter is a wake up ..."

Dr.Cajetan Coelho

Easter: A Zen Buddhist Appreciation

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

Who dreamed about the sun, moon, and stars bowing to him?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Daniel Elijah Adam Joseph