“The word Zen, as we have already remarked, means ‘meditation’; but Zen itself is indefinable. Echoing Confucius’s cry — ‘I wish never to speak’ — the Zen masters are fond of quoting the Buddhist dictum: ‘Those who say do not know; those who know do not say.’ Nevertheless, an astonishing amount has in fact been said. What is of interest from the Christian standpoint is that Zen is not a theology; it has nothing to tell us about a supernatural revelation, nothing therefore that needs to be ‘corrected.’ Zen is not a philosophy; it does not have to be debated with or convicted of errors. Its exponents will tell you that, in a profoundly literal sense, there is nothing in it. Perhaps the best description is that conveyed by a single word — ‘unself-consciousness.’
Zen is an attitude of directness and simplicity, born of an awareness of one’s own nature. It is matter of fact and down to earth. Zen’s interest is not in words but in things. ‘When I raise the hand thus, there is Zen,’ says Daisetz T. Suzuki. ‘But when I assert that I have raised the hand, Zen is no more there.’ There is little that is devotional or religious, in the conventional sense, about Zen — only in the ultimate sense, in as much as religion is an unimpeded relation to Reality.
The enlightenment (satori) which is the goal of Zen is not something that can be achieved by working at it; it comes to those who dispose themselves to receive it. Or, rather, it is there already, if only our self-conscious little egos, cleansed from distracting thoughts and unclouded by emotion, would allow us to just look at things as they are. ‘Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere.’ When we do this, we have found the ‘secret’ of Zen.
Enough may have been said to make it clear that Zen is something universal. Professor R.H. Blyth — who remarks that ‘Zen, though far from indefinite, is by definition indefinable, because it is the active principle of life itself’ — has shown at length how the spirit of Zen can be illustrated by the great works of English literature. To Christians it is pointed out by orientalists that when Jesus of Nazareth invited his disciples to ‘consider the lilies how they grow,’ this was an act of direct pointing, the very hallmark of Zen.”
— Dom Aelred Graham, from Zen Catholicism (1963)