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Zen and the Several Assumptions of Mary

Zen and the Several Assumptions of Mary

Last updated on: August 15, 2025 at 9:24 am by James Ford

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Zen and the Several Assumptions of Mary 2025-08-15T09:24:27-07:00 James Ford

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Assumption of Mary

I’ve been drawn into Zen Buddhist reflections on (mostly) Christian holy days over the past few years.

One such day is the Assumption of Mary. It’s is a Christian festival universally celebrated in the liturgical churches. It’s marked in the Eastern Christian churches on the 15th of August as the Dormition of the Theotokos. And in the Roman calendar for the same day it’s called the feast of the Assumption of Mary. In the Anglican calendar the day is traditionally marked as the “falling asleep of the blessed virgin Mary.” Although it should be noted there are more than a few Anglicans who hold to some view of physical assumption for our lady.

For me something important is that there are stories within the great religions that are worthwhile well beyond their natural boundaries. Stories that need not be taken literally to find how we’re invited to take them seriously.

This is one such. I wrote about it last year. I’m revisiting again here, with some expanded thoughts.

I like to think of it as the festival of the assumptions of Mary. Assumptions. Plural. We have so many assumptions about her, after all.

I’m a person of the Zen way. But I admit I’m Christian adjacent. I’m genuinely grateful for the mystical impulses of the Christian way. And Mary. Well. She is one of the few biblical characters who by tradition, does not die. She’s also collapsed in many imaginations with other divine female figures. There are other layers to her, as well. A very complicated lady, she.

So, what’s not to be excited about? I reflect on her every few years in this blog. Each time, I notice, I’m drawn more deeply into the many nuances. I find it an amazing invitation.

My reflections about her are always refracted through the lens of someone at the margins of the Christian tradition (my confession is to have a physiology of faith, with a Buddhist brain, a Christian heart and a humanist stomach: all resolved rather messily for me as an ordained minister within the Unitarian Universalist Association as well as a Zen teacher in lineage). With all that I have many and thoroughly mixed feelings about Mary.

On the one hand I have difficulties with separating her from the commonality of our humanity. It is such an important point. What little we know as “factual,” is heart wrenchingly human. Her child becomes a disciple of a prophet and after his teacher’s death he becomes a prophet. A man calling out the rich and the powerful, offering succor to the poor, and calling everyone to a mysterious kingdom that is in part here, and in part somewhere else. And she witnesses is brutal execution in the wake of a year of his preaching. That woman, the mother of that man.

And then whispers, faint, unprovable, of a rising from the dead. And from there, stories. A small collection of a man’s sayings. Another small collection of miracles. Another layer of who both he and she might be.

And then a weaving and a reweaving and a weaving again of those stories, each enriched. Refractions of refractions.

And she, Mary is swept into this. She carries all these layers of story, some powerful archetypes. Images. This layered Mary touches my life, and many lives.

She becomes the mother. Perhaps best written The Mother. Something rich. A person we can call on. Our mother.

I’m absolutely taken with the fact that some iconic images of her appear indistinguishable from icons of Quanyin, who occupies some cross over places in Buddhist and East Asian hearts.

Mary! Guanyin! Hear our prayer…

And, one more layer to her mystery. There is something about the liberation theological take on Mary that I find myself particularly thinking of today. Here, again, my interest is less in her death, real or imaginal, and more in what she stands for now, today among the poor and oppressed, the people her son seemed particularly to love.

And the theologies that have woven out of the hymn she is said to have sung when she was informed by that dark angel of a forthcoming birth. (Story, story, legend, myth, truth beyond truths…)

Her song as captured in Koine Greek, one step removed from what she would have sung.

Μεγαλύνει ἡ ψυχή μου τὸν Κύριον καὶ ἠγαλλίασεν τὸ πνεῦμά μου ἐπὶ τῷ Θεῷ τῷ σωτῆρί μου,ὅτι ἐπέβλεψεν ἐπὶ τὴν ταπείνωσιν τῆς δούλης αὐτοῦ. ἰδοὺ γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν μακαριοῦσίν με πᾶσαι αἱ γενεαί,ὅτι ἐποίησέν μοι μεγάλα ὁ δυνατός, καὶ ἅγιον τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὸ ἔλεος αὐτοῦ εἰς γενεὰς καὶ γενεὰς τοῖς φοβουμένοις αὐτόν.Ἐποίησεν κράτος ἐν βραχίονι αὐτοῦ, διεσκόρπισεν ὑπερηφάνους διανοίᾳ καρδίας αὐτῶν·καθεῖλεν δυνάστας ἀπὸ θρόνων καὶ ὕψωσεν ταπεινούς, πεινῶντας ἐνέπλησεν ἀγαθῶν καὶ πλουτοῦντας ἐξαπέστειλεν κενούς.ἀντελάβετο Ἰσραὴλ παιδὸς αὐτοῦ, μνησθῆναι ἐλέους, καθὼς ἐλάλησεν πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας ἡμῶν τῷ Αβραὰμ καὶ τῷ σπέρματι αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.

Is rendered into English as

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for He has looked with favor on His humble servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed,

the Almighty has done great things for me,

and holy is His Name.

He has mercy on those who fear Him

in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm,

He has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,

and has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich He has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of His servant Israel

for He has remembered his promise of mercy,

the promise He made to our fathers,

to Abraham and his children for ever.

Me, I cannot think of Mary the divine carried into heaven without thinking of the girl confronted by an angel and her response. A story. Piled deep with other stories before and since.

A story. Assumptions piled high. Piled deep. Carried into dreams and from dreams to awakening.

I dream of what this awakening might mean for us, you and me, if we were to take it, as they say, not literally, but seriously.

I wonder…

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